The 2024 Year’s End Quiz continued

tax the rich!

Last year, which is to say yesterday, I  started to do the 2024 Year’s End Quiz that Kelly always does. But my answers became Too Damn Long, so I split it up. 

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Oh, there’s a bunch of people trying to fight the good fight; I suppose there are a lot of local heroes. And there’s a person who has taken a great deal of interest in my genealogical process, which I greatly appreciate. 

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

There are SO many.

A wide swath of the American public seems to think that taxing rich people is a bad thing, even though they’re not rich themselves. I remember the discussion over the so-called death tax a few years ago, and people balked at it even though they’re extremely unlikely to be in that situation. The Ultra Millionaire Tax Act of 2024 (H.R. 7749) is far less likely to impact them. They won’t be making $50 million, which might be taxable. Income inequality has been rampant since Ronald Reagan’s time, and it has only worsened.

And then, there are the politicians.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) “authored a resolution that would ban trans women from women’s bathrooms at the U.S. Capitol” after saying how much of an ally she is to LGBTQ people.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), possibly the most incompetent Senator, said it’s ‘Not Our Job’ to vet djt’s Cabinet picks (psst: yes, it is)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) blames Democrats for weaponizing the weather.

Most of the Cabinet picks (Hegseth, RFK Jr, Gabbard, and especially Kash Patel)

Orange

Elon Musk and his tech bro buddies (rump jr, Vance)

Where did most of your money go?

The house, specifically a new back porch; the daughter’s education.

What did you get really excited about?

The mystery project

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sharply sadder, though better now than in the summer.

Thinner or fatter?

Definitely fatter. There is a distinct correlation between my emotional state and my food consumption.

Richer or poorer?

Poorer.

Science!

What do you wish you’d done more of?

I’d be in good shape if I could only get that cloning thing going.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Brooding.

How did you spend Christmas?

With my wife, daughter, and MIL.

Did you fall in love in 2024?

Absolutely.

How many one-night stands?

Lessee: (two cubed) minus (the square root of 64).

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Saturday Morning, Abbott Elementary, Elsbeth. 

I’ve discovered that I like watching NFL football in the last year or two that I hadn’t felt for decades. It’s always recorded. Every week, I learn something new. In a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the hated Dallas Cowboys, the score was tied near the end of the game. Cincinnati punted the ball, but Dallas blocked the kick. All the Cowboys needed to do was to let the ball go. They would have possession, and they were already in field goal territory. Instead, one of the Cowboys touched the ball but could not control it.  The Bengals regained possession and soon scored a touchdown to win the game. I loved it.

There’s a thin line…

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Hate is such a terrible word. If I did, and I’m not saying I do, it’d be Elon, who helped buy an election by spending over a quarter of a billion dollars on djt and his cronies. Then he dances around, threatening to slash Social Security. As a friend likes to say, “Chuck YOU, Farley!” (Sidebar: one minor reason I don’t prefer the term African-American is that recently, someone referred to Elon Musk as an African-American, and it hurt my head.)

What was the best book you read?

Prequel and The Undertow are in the same vein.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Cage the Elephant, who Anthony Mason interviewed on CBS Mornings.

What did you want and get?

To get to sing, listen to music, go to plays.

What did you want and not get?

Democracy

What were your favorite films of this year?

ConclaveThe Wild RobotSing SingGhostlightThelmaInside Out 2Poor Things, and Anatomy of a Fall. But my favorite was American Fiction.

What did you do on your birthday?

It was a Thursday, so I went to choir and took out the trash. Beyond that, I have no idea.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?

Comfortable.

Facts not in evidence

What kept you sane?

I think I went a little insane this year.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Bill McKibben

What political issue stirred you the most?

Global warming, abortion rights, book banning, racism, sexism, homophobia. Oh, and the possibility that good chunks of Project 2025, which I only mentioned a half dozen times, will be enacted, threatening democracy.

Who did you miss?

In the throes of my despair, it was my friend Norm, who died in 2016.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:

This is part of what Kelly wrote last year. I think it works.

The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:

I don’t take many selfies. The one above, taken at the Museum of Broadway in Manhattan (and I don’t mean Kansas) in January 2024, is the only one I can find. 

The musical portion of the post 

 

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I was leaning into the third segment of the Monster / Suicide / America medley on the Monster album. The first part is relevant but slightly clunky, but there’s something very basic about the end of Suicide. The third part is anthemic. Lyrics and the track.

Cause there’s a monster on the looseIt’s got our heads into the nooseAnd it just sits there watchin’
America, where are you nowDon’t you care about your sons and daughtersDon’t you know we need you nowWe can’t fight alone against the monster
Also

The other song that came to mind was American Idiot by Green Day. This is the 20th anniversary of that album. I’m fairly sure that ADD gave it to me at some point. It’s a great collection, and the title song seems very appropriate. Lyrics. “Starting off the album with a bang, ‘American Idiot’ is a scathing takedown of American culture in the years following 9/11.” The track.

Don’t wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria

It’s calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow

For that’s enough to argue

What 2024 Meant To Me

I DO make resolutions

And now, a general exploration of What 2024 Meant To Me:

I often wonder why I do what I do. This summer, I was struck by something that John Green, the vlogger (no relation), had posted: that he questioned whether his actions were worthwhile. I thought that was odd: he was helping fight infant and maternal mortality in Africa, fighting disease, etc., so I couldn’t understand why he would question his impact.

But it triggered an evaluation of how I want to use my time. I retired five years ago and assumed that after a half-decade, I would have reached certain mileposts, goals, or whatever. This has simply not happened.

I decided to sign up to have a therapist. It was online, one of those Zoomy-like things, and it simply didn’t take. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten therapy or the first time it hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped. However, perhaps by pursuing the process, I reached some conclusions anyway.

Just say no

One of them was not to work on a book project. It was a text that the adult child of a very famous person had written, and it was referred to me.  I realized that working on it was making me frickin’ nuts, but I felt obliged to work on it because I had said I would until I realized it was not worth my sanity. The author never understood this. In fact, about a week later, he texted me and said, “How much money would it take for you to finish it?” The answer to the question was that there was no amount of money in the world that would have had me continue to work on this project. Not only did it not bring me joy, but it brought me despair.

I also quit participating on a board I had a great deal of emotional attachment to. This was very difficult, but for reasons that are way more complicated and boring to recite here, it became a necessity as well. I took some mild solace in that three or four others departed the board after I left. I feel bad that the board is in such disarray, but I can’t make that my issue, he said.

Genealogy

One of my to-do lists has been my genealogy, which has gone virtually nowhere in 2024. My sister Leslie has talked to the family on both sides of the tree, our third cousin on my mother’s side, and my father’s first cousin so that the needle might move in 2025.

Since someone asked, the blog still serves a function for me. It is, among other things, a history of events that I frankly can’t remember when they happened. It’s a public diary, and I suppose I could write a private one, but I would never bother to.

As I’ve said, I failed miserably when I planned to write about my daughter’s early days. The public diary has forced me to think about things in a way I need to process the world.

Starting the quiz

Here’s an annual Year’s End Quiz, which I continue to purloin from Kelly.

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Every year, I keep saying that I don’t make resolutions, but I think that’s probably incorrect. I think I made resolutions about doing genealogy, which, as I’ve noted, I failed to fulfill. I offered resolutions about straightening up some work areas that are largely undone and reading more books, which is only marginally better than the year before.

As for 2025, I am going to make the same resolutions. But I’m also going to work on a project, a specific, measurable project, and I ain’t gonna tell you what it is here until I get to a certain point in the process. It might be July or maybe even late August, but I will mention it. And I will work on it because… oh, if you knew what it was, you would know why, but you don’t, so there it is.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t believe so

Did anyone close to you die?

NancyAl, and Barry. Oh, and Midnight.

What countries did you visit?

None in 2024. I’m toying with going someplace in 2025, and I’ll probably return to the States, won’t I?

Future

What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?

Inner peace? Democracy?

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I don’t know; sometimes, I think just showing up is an achievement. I’d say writing on this blog daily, but I did that last year and the year before…

What was your biggest failure?

I could not recognize earlier how much the aforementioned book editing and the committee work were making me – how did I put it? -frickin’ nuts.

What was the best thing you bought?

Nothing substantial comes to mind. Some music. Bellflower. Oh wait, I know what it is. I bought a new iPhone case, a certain green shade. According to Charli XCX, the color is brat, whatever that means.  More importantly, my phone case is much easier to distinguish than a black or gray one, making it simpler to find when I inevitably misplace it in my house.

This is TOO MUCH. I’ll finish it next year, which is to say, tomorrow. 

a valuable life lesson learned in 2023

How does a weary world rejoice?

One more question: 

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023:

Repeating what I’ve said before, The trouble with normal is it always gets worse. After the UNLV shooting, in which three people died, an NBC reporter interviewed a witness. The reporter said, “Incredibly,” the witness was also present at the 2017 Vegas shooting at which five dozen were killed and hundreds wounded. There was nothing “incredible” about it. It’s just guns in America.

Someone fired a shot around a Jewish temple in Albany, NY, on December 7, the first night of Hanukkah, which led the NBC Nightly News. No one was hurt, and the shooter was quickly apprehended. But the Israel/Hamas/Palestinian war has stirred long-simmering anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim,  anti-Palestinian bigotry, which we’ve seen everywhere from college campus to the streets of bucolic Burlington, VT, where three Palestinian college kids were staying because it was perceived as safer than being in the occupied West Bank. They were shot, and one likely will never walk again.

People can’t keep saying, “It can’t happen here.” I searched Wikipedia for Maine shootings, and I had choices: the one in 1993, the one in 2006, or the two in 2023.

orange

Then there’s the political turmoil. djt will be the Republican nominee, even if he’s convicted of one or more cases against him. The Atlantic is so terrified it had a whole issue dedicated to it.

Even if he’s not in office, his minions dominate the House, starting with the Speaker, Mike Johnson. And trumpism is baked in – book bans being the most on-the-nose example – and we can’t even count on the courts, certainly not SCOTUS, to stop it.

Add to this the ecological precipice we’re on and refugee crises worldwide, and you can call me Debbie Downer.

What is the remedy?

Still, I have hope because hopelessness is too hard. No hope means not getting out of bed in the morning. You do what you can. If that’s irrational, so be it.

How do I get there? And I see this as an ongoing process, not that I’ve arrived. For me, and it wasn’t initially a conscious decision, I’ve been embracing a series of sermons our pastors have been presenting during Advent and Christmastide collectively titled: “How does a weary world rejoice?”

“We acknowledge our weariness.” I’m very good at THAT. The first two sections of this post are precisely why I am weary. And I left a few things out.

“We find joy in connection.” Like many people, the real difficulty with COVID was the feeling of community. I’ve been embracing these opportunities. Thrice this year, I participated in trivia contests, as much for the collegiality as the competition; I’d only done trivia twice before, and one was in 2022. Participating in the Ironweed reading, a potluck, and a carol sing were other examples.

“We allow ourselves to be amazed.” My daughter interviewed me for a class project, which she says she’ll allow me to use in this blog early in 2024. I learned things about her but also about myself.

Awesome

“We make room.” Our friends gave us their tickets to the Albany Symphony Orchestra on December 10. I particularly loved watching the joy that one of the cellists was experiencing. At some moment in Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4, which I was unfamiliar with, there is a dead silence. It was awesome and unexpected.

It was raining very hard that day. My wife pointed out that I mentioned the wonder of a brief silence twice. It was pouring out. I get JOY when we drive below an overpass, and the sound of the deluge is stilled for 1.5 seconds.  This has been true for a very long time.

“We sing stories of hope.” On Christmas Eve 2020, my church service was online. The pastors were present, but few others. The music was provided by recordings of our choir singing from previous years. Watching me sing brought me to tears, and they were not happy tears but weeping of despair. I don’t take singing on Christmas Eve, Maundy, Easter Sunday, or even a regular weekly service for granted.

“We root ourselves in ritual.” I have Thursday choir rehearsal, Sunday service, and Tuesday book talk at the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library (moving, BTW, from noon to 2 p.m. this year). Many years ago, a friend complained when I refused to pass on choir rehearsal to do something else. Rehearsing means knowing the music better on Sunday and experiencing the choir gestalt.  

The annual quiz: musical section

Rebecca Jade, Olivia Rodrigo, Jason Isbell, QoS

I usually do that annual quiz that Kelly foisted upon me years ago, on January 1. And I usually do music on Saturday. So I’ve decided to do the musical section today and the rest tomorrow and/or the next day.

What was your greatest musical discovery? 

When you have about 2000 albums, it’s entirely possible to rediscover music that you already own. This happens almost every week.

Then there is the music that I did not think that I wouldn’t buy, then purchased in 2021, such as:
Odessey and Oracle – The Zombies. Care of Cell 44
Stop Making Sense (1984 Film) – Talking Heads. Even though I saw the SPAC show of the tour, I never bought the soundtrack. And I STILL haven’t seen the film. Life During Wartime 
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You – Aretha Franklin. Drown In My Own Tears 
The Allen Toussaiant Collection. Southern Nights.
The Beatles (The White Album) [6 CD] Ob-La-Di, Ob-la-Da  (Esher Demo)
Rough and Rowdy Ways – Bob Dylan. I bought this in part because I missed this reference watching some quiz show. I Contain Multitudes 
folklore – Taylor Swift. My first Swifty album. Cardigan 
Good Souls Better Angels – Lucinda Williams. Good Souls 
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition conducted by Ormandy

I also recently bought
Love For Sale – Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. I was so touched by the 60 Minutes interviewLove For Sale 
Georgia Blue – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Recorded because Georgia went blue in 2020. Honeysuckle Blue 

Of all of the artists my daughter likes, the only one that has actually stuck in the brain in 2021 was Olivia Rodrigo. Part of that is a function that she was the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning segment. It mentioned her participation in the White House’s push for the COVID vaccine.

What kept you sane?

Assuming facts not in evidence, listening to music. Since I wasn’t MAKING music for most of the year – choir finally started rehearsing in October- LISTENING became even more vital. That would include J. Eric Smith’s  Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists, which will spread into 2022; of course, Coverville; plus Kelly’s mostly semiweekly pieces.

And the niece. In 2021, I got to see the fabulous Rebecca Jade, remotely.
Homemade: Part 10 and Part 11 
Peter Sprague: Wichita Lineman and Are You Going With Me and Spring Ain’t Here and It’s For You and Farmers Trust 
Melody League Session with The Sully Band 
Music For The Soul
Jas Miller: Toes In The Sand 

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year

Frankly, part of it is tied to Congress’s failure to pass an infrastructure bill earlier, which, given the vagaries of politics, threw away whatever advantage Biden had when the troubles – Afghanistan, e.g. inevitably took place. If it’d been up to me, the Democrats would have taken the bipartisan victory in May/June, and then work on the larger bill afterward.

The last verse of Slip Slidin’ Away:

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip-slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip-slidin’ away

-Paul Simon

Silly political quiz and process

NYS presidential primary April 28

voting.booth The New York Times had an online quiz that I filled out a couple weeks ago. It asks you how you stand on certain issues. It then supposedly tells you who your ideal candidate would be, picking from among those still in the Democratic race.

Strictly by the criteria, Bernie Sanders was my #1 pick (10/10), followed by Elizabeth Warren (8/10), Michael R. Bloomberg (5/10), Tom Steyer (4/10), Pete Buttigieg (3/10), and Joseph R. Biden Jr., Amy Klobuchar, and Andrew Yang (2/10 each).

Except, as Mark Evanier noted: “Here’s the problem with a quiz like this. I have to answer each question Yes or No and I don’t think either choice correctly describes my position on most of these questions.” Quite true.

Do you view President Trump’s election as an anomaly? My answer isn’t Yes or No. It’s more like, “I’m not surprised that a lot of Americans wanted what he was offering. I think it’s an anomaly that so many people became convinced he was presidential material and could or would deliver on those promises.”

Moreover, one could find 10, or 100 more questions, meaningful questions, that would totally skew the results.

In the Wall Street Journal, Sheila Barr made The Republican Case for Elizabeth Warren. “She has independence and integrity and is no socialist. She just wants the market to work for everyone.”

Will my vote matter?


But the New York State Democratic primary isn’t until April 28. There’s no way to know who’ll even be in the race by then, besides Mike Bloomberg, who’s self-funding his campaign. My choices will be made by who’s left after the wacky Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire, which, unlike in closed primary New York, allows non-Democrats to vote in the Democratic primary.

Certainly, my options will be determined by Super Tuesday on March 3, when California, Massachusetts, Virginia and other states vote. I feel for supporters of those fallen candidates, such as Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, and Jay Inslee, whose supporters never even got to cast a ballot at all.

The Democrats, because they’re Democrats, will continue to snipe about whoever is the candidate as too liberal or too corporate or too whatever. The incumbent gets four more years, and the recriminations will continue. Incidentally, I think it was brilliant political theater that DJT held rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire in conjunction with the Democrats’ selection process.

I also think that the concentration on Ukraine in the impeachment process ended up hurting Joe Biden in Iowa. It’s likely that some Democrats were scared off by the sniff of scandal and preferred a candidate that wouldn’t have to defend against it in the general election.

Yes, I’m voting on April 28. But unlike some folks, I’m not promising to pick a certain candidate in the primary this far out. I’ve long thought primary voting is “from the heart”. Whereas the general election in November, I’ve already made up my mind.

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