Sunday Stealing Archives - Page 12 of 26

Sunday Stealing: where love comes from

Chenango River

The Sunday Stealing this week, again from Swap Bot, asks where love comes from.

1. Does love come from the brain, the heart, or elsewhere?

Just this weekend, I saw a story from late June on about the importance of compassion. In Davis, CA “is a gathering place known as the compassion bench. David Breaux often sat there and dedicated his life to studying and talking about compassion.”

Perhaps one must be intentional about being compassionate, which will change the [metaphoric] heart. Also, check out this video, which says I Hypothalamus You.

2. Have you ever given a shot?

Sure. Usually whisky. Occasionally, rum, vodka, or a liqueur. Unless this is about an injection, in which case I had to stick my daughter’s Epipen into her leg once.

3. Can you lick your elbow? (Come on, didja try?)

No, and I probably attempted it as a kid. But on the July 25, 2023, episode of the game show JEOPARDY, a contestant did, to the annoyance of some TV audience members.

Where did I come from?

4. If I was going to be talking to you for 10 minutes, what would be something really interesting you know a little bit about but would like to know more??

My ancestry. I can go back to the 15th century on one line, but can’t find my great-great-grandparents on two others.

5. What do you think of The Sopranos?

I have a Leontyne Price CD. Joan Sutherland and Renée Fleming probably appear on albums I own. Oh, wait, you mean The Sopranos TV show? Except for clips during the Emmys, I never saw it except for the last five minutes.

6. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher? How about your boss?

A high school English teacher was less than a decade older than I was; I think her name was Miss Greene. Definite crush. Boss? No.

7. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D?

One or two, probably most recently The Lorax in 2012. I don’t enjoy it much.

Migration

8. How difficult do you think it is for immigrants to enter your country?

Immigration is fraught in the United States. This 2021 article from “Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute [a libertarian think tank with which I often disagree] offers nonpartisan facts in response to common myths about immigration.”

MYTH #9: “The United States has the most open immigration policy in the world.” FACT: The annual inflow of immigrants to the United States, as a percentage of our population, is below that of most other rich countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

9. Do you have what it takes to go live in another country, maybe for years, where you don’t speak the language as your first language?

No. And I don’t learn languages easily. Though the French I took a half-century ago was surprisingly useful when I went to France in May.

Nightmare

10. Have you ever died in your dreams?

I’ve usually been in the back seat of a car falling into a river (often the Chenango River in Binghamton, NY). Water is rushing in through an open window. But dying, I don’t recall happening.

11. What book should our political leaders read and why?

I spent several minutes perusing my bookshelves and yet didn’t pick one. But my wife recommends Listening Is An Act Of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, edited and with an introduction by Dave Isay.

12. What is your favorite glass object?

My Willie Mays drinking glass that I’m pretty sure I got from McDonald’s decades ago. The Say Hey Kid is my all-time favorite baseball player.

13. Do you like to window shop?

Not especially.

14. Are you more likely to buy one really nice expensive outfit or a couple of cheap outfits?

I don’t care much about clothes.

15. If you could, would you wear everything once, throw it out and buy something new?

Why on earth would I want to do that? That would be abhorrent, societally and ecologically. I’m much more likely to join Buy Nothing.

Sunday Stealing: Either/or

kind

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

Another Sunday Stealing involving either/or.

Would you rather…

1. Live on a boat or in a treehouse?

I suppose it would depend on the size of the boat. If it were a kayak, then no. On the other hand, is there a ladder to get to the treehouse? How big is it? I need more details.

2. No computer use for a year or no sweets for a year?

I write a blog every day, so this is easy. Also, my preference for sweets has diminished with age.

3. Have $2,000 right now or be given $100 every month for the rest of your life?

Now this is a good actuarial question. It also determines the future inflation rate and the money’s value in 20 months. I’ll take the $100/month, but it’s a close call.

4. Be an astronaut or an athlete?

Will I have knee surgery first? Instinctively, I’d pick being the athlete in baseball, volleyball, or a racket sport. I was watching a piece of an interview with Peggy Whitson, who has spent over a year and a half in space; I know that, as much as I would enjoy it initially, the confinement would eventually make me bonkers.

5. Have 50 good friends or only one best friend?

Fifty good friends. I’ve long discovered that you can tell various people different things. Also, people get busy, so having others to share with makes sense.

Am I Blue?

6. Have bright blue teeth or bright blue hair?

Bright blue hair, assuming I had hair. I had an English teacher in eighth grade named Gertrude Kane. I can’t remember if her hair was blue or purple.

7. Have the power of flight or the power of invisibility?

It’s always been flight. I’ve dreamed about it within the past month.

8. Have a fun friend who is snarky or a boring friend who is kind?

Snarky gets old and exhausting pretty fast. Kind and boring.

9. Be incredibly rich but without love, or be poor but have a happy marriage?

Poor and happy. Easy call.

10. Have a freezing cold shower every day or a pleasant hot shower once a week?

Americans shower too often. Shower once a week and wash up at the sink in the interim.

11. Be an only child or have many siblings?

I have two sisters, which is fine. We’ve discovered in the past decade that we’ve learned so much as we’ve compared notes about our growing up. If I had the parents I had, I’d want siblings. If I had different parents, who knows?

12. Quit video games forever or live in a desert for a month?

I could easily give up video games, though there was a period in the late 1980s when I was somewhat obsessed with Ms. Pac-Man.

13. Go on a one-week trip to a foreign country of your choice or a month-long trip in your own country?

This is surprisingly easy. I spent a week in a foreign country – France – his year, which was WAY too short. A month-long trip in the US would probably involve going to various Major League Baseball stadiums, traveling by train if possible. I’ve only been to 30 states.

14. Celebrate your birthday every day or go on your favorite holiday once a year?

I already celebrate my birthday every day.

15. If fish could talk, what would you ask them?

What is your opinion about global warming?

Sunday Stealing: WTIT

“That’s part of your problem.”

This week’s Sunday Stealing is from WTIT: The Blog. Cheers to all of us thieves.

1. What are the 3 most important things everyone should know about you?

I’m pretty easygoing. So if you ticked me off, it was likely something egregious and/or repeated. I think in numbers; I might remember your phone number before I recall your name. I think in music, so I often quote or modify a musical phrase.

For example, my cat Midnight is a greedy eater, butting Stormy away. So I sing to him, “Midnight, don’t be a dipwad” to the tune of Billy, Don’t Be A Hero. My wife thinks this is funny because she knows I HATE Billy, Don’t Be A Hero.

2. What is the strangest thing you believed as a child?

I don’t think it’s that strange, but based on my dreams, I figured I’d figure out how to fly. No plane, just me. Sometimes, I still do.

3. Thinking of school classes, which were your favorite and least favorite?

I was very good at spelling. Math, up to trigonometry, was great. History, especially American history, I liked.

I was terrible at art. And I sucked at shop class; see question 8.

4. What is your favorite fast food?

A Friendly’s Strawberry Fribble. It’s like a milkshake.

5. What song comes closest to how you feel about your life right now?

It’s Too Darn Hot. This is Ella Fitzgerald because it’s Ella.

6. Have you ever taken martial arts classes?

Once or twice, I think, but never seriously.

Getting Better

7. Does your life tend to get better or worse, or does it just stay the same?

This is a complex question. In the main, I was probably getting better emotionally on a personal basis. Still, I fret about global warming, economic inequality, political insanity, et al., in the world my teenage daughter will inherit. Also, myopic news reporting describes triple-digit temps F in the southern and western US, often without mentioning similar European conditions (above 40 C).

8. What arts and crafts have you tried and decided you were bad at?

Any and all. I was terrible at making anything in Cub Scouts. Creating a bookcase or pottery in shop class in junior high school was disastrous. My father was incredulous that I got a B in art in 7th grade, but the teacher said I did my best. In the 1990s, the people in my book group were doing origami; I sucked at origami. You do NOT want me on your Pictionary team.

Quid est veritas?

9. What is the truest thing that you know?

Sometimes BOTH things are true.

10. Are you more of a giver or a taker?

I try VERY hard to be a giver. One has to be intentional about these things.

11. Do you make your decisions with an open heart/mind?

Ditto. I try extremely hard to make decisions with an open mind. But I’m convinced when I’ve seen so much evidence, real evidence, not just conjecture or rumor, that a path is wrong.

12. What is the most physically painful thing that has ever happened to you?

The first root canal. Oddly, the second one wasn’t so bad.

13. What is the most emotionally painful thing that has ever happened to you?

Undoubtedly, something involving affairs of the heart, fortunately not in this century.

14. What is your favorite line from a movie?

“That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” It is SO self-referential. From Grand Canyon (1991)

15. Can you eat with chopsticks?

Not well.

Sunday Stealing: Swap-Bot redux

Am I mellow?

This Sunday Stealing is Swap-Bot redux.

1. Do you trust people at restaurants who handle your food that they aren’t doing anything gross to it while you can’t see them?

What a weirdly paranoid question. Of course, because if they were to do so over time, it would likely be discovered. Incidentally, my wife, my daughter, her friend, and I went to an Italian restaurant called Tesoro in June on its last day before the owners would retire. Usually, when I have leftovers, the server will bring the empty containers to us. But this place put the food in the containers and bagged them up. That was the way it used to be, and I think it’s classy.

No hair day

2. How do you wear your hair each day?

If you’ve ever seen my hairline, you wouldn’t ask that question. The picture of the duck on my page, drawn by the late Raoul Vezina is a caricature of me that he did when I was 30 or younger It is so good that my old buddy Dan, the fuirst time he saw me on the street in 1985, after having previously seen the cartoon, KNEW it was me.

3. Have you ever worn:

A gas mask? Not to my recollection.

A blindfold? Undoubtedly, for the purpose of some game.

Is this a fashion question?

5. What is the difference between a man’s button down shirt and a woman’s button down shirt?

They’re buttoned on the opposite sides? IDK, and I don’t care. OK, I care enough to look it up afterward. Yup.

No, non, nein, nyet

Tthe answers to

4. Would you be willing to go hang gliding?

6. Have you ever taken a lock of someone else’s hair?

7. Have you ever given anyone a lock of your hair?

8. If you had a locket what would you put inside?

16. Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

are no, don’t think so, I doubt it, I’m not a locket kind of guy, and no, respectively

9. Have you ever written something on a bathroom wall?

It’s possible, though i don’t remember specifically. but it would have been one that had been severely graffitied previously.

10. When was the last time you fell down in public?

I don’t recall. I remember doing so on my way to church pre-COVID whe it was icy out.

Have I ever been mellow?

11. Are you more aggressive or mellow?

I wouldn’t use either of those terms. There are times when I will exhibit a flash of anger, usually when I, or someone else, has been wronged. I can be mellow about things that just don’t matter much to me. If a group is going out to a restaurant, and they want my preference, generally, I don’t care.

Conversely, if something is important to me – and I had made it quite clear that it was, and yet I’m not heard – I can be quite vociferous. This happened at least twice at my last job.

What is life?

12. What have you done with your self to keep your life worth living?

Being useful, broadly speaking. That was the great thing about being a librarian; I could answer questions that some wanted to know the answer to. there are things I know – CDTA bus routes, certain music trivia, news – that can be helpful.

13. What is the most incredible thing you can do?

Incredible? IDK. I do know all of the US Presidents in order, by year inaugurated. Indeed, muy brain is so full of ephemera that I can’t even remember what I remember.

So I asked my wife. She mentioned two separate things: my ability to remember the dates of many events in my life; and recalling music ties to lyrics, when I got the album or first heard the song. I see them as part of the same brain process. For instance, I first heard The Beatles white album in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Binghamton, NY shortly after Thanksgiving 1968 when friend Steve used his LRY (Liberal Religious Youth) credentials to be able to use the building.

14. Do you bury your pets, flush them, or throw them away?

I haven’t had fish since I was kid. Probably flushed them.

15. What’s your favorite thing that is yellow?

An electrical banana. Nah, probably a T-shirt.

(Thanks to Gus for the graphic.)

Sunday Stealing: The Pen Company

The Good Book

Here’s the new Sunday Stealing, The Pen Company. But before I get to that, a couple of Independence Day announcements in Albany, NY.

First, the July 4 oration will take place at the Stephen and Harriet Myers residence, 194 Livingston Avenue in Albany, NY, sponsored by the Underground Railroad Education Center (UREC). Music by Magpie, who will be joined by Kim Harris.

Second, Sheila E. will be performing at 8 pm at the Empire State Plaza. One of her singers cannot make it, so subbing will be Rebecca Jade, who is my niece. Rebecca was backing Sheila when my wife, daughter, and I saw them at the New York State Fair in Syracuse back in September 2019.

Onto the show

1. If your house was on fire, which three items would you save?

A metal box in my office that has my birth certificate, my father’s death certificate plus other important documents. A box of photos. My laptop.

2. What is the strangest or most awkward date you’ve ever been on?

Oddly, it wasn’t my date. My ex-girlfriend was going to the Washington (NY) County Fair with her new boyfriend c 1996/97. She invited a friend of ours and me to attend as well, because we were all “mature” people. It was…weird. Interestingly, they broke up, I got back together with my gf, and we’ve been married 24 years.

3. What are your biggest fears?

The loss of freedom and justice in the United States, based on the actions of several governors and state legislatures, the rhetoric of several candidates for the 2024 Presidency, and recent Supreme Court decisions.

4. How do you spend your time when you are procrastinating?

Usually playing double deck pinochle or backgammon on my phone.

5. What has been your most memorable birthday so far, and why?

Probably my 50th because I had a big party at my church. I made a mixed CD that I gave out.

6. What is your favorite snack?

Fig Newtons with milk.

7. What was your first pet?

Peter the cat. He was very smart. When he wanted to come in, he’d jump onto a piece of furniture and rattle the door knob.

I am where I am

8. What’s your favorite city in your country?

It might be Albany, NY because that’s where I decided to live. My favorite place to visit might be Galveston, TX; I’d go out to he pier at 5 a.m., watching the tide from the Gulf of Mexico come in.

9. Do you have a garden?

We have a garden. But I have little or nothing to do with it.

10. What is your favorite thing about your home town?

My hometown was Binghamton, NY. It was small enough – and my school was tiny enough – that I can to this day name most of the kids in my 9th grade class. And I’m still friends with three of them. Oh, and went to kindergarten with them too.

11. What was the last book you read?

A Century of Pop Music bt Joel Whitburn.

12. What is the best book you have ever read?

Quite possibly, The Good Book: Discovering the Bible’s Place in Our Lives by Peter J. Gomes. Here’s a reader recommendation from Thrift Books:

“Gomes takes the Bible off its pedestal and presents it to us as a tool for Christian living. This book is a must read for any Christian struggling to read and understand the Bible in modern terms. He explores many of the controversial topics of the Bible, including race, homosexuality, women’s roles, anti-Semitism, wealth, and more. [This is definitely true.]

“He challenges the reader to accept the Bible as an interpretation of fantastic religious events with historical and sociological significance. He teaches the reader to deal with contradictions within the Bible, even within individual books of the Bible… This book challenged my beliefs in positive ways and taught me to never ‘idolize’ the Bible again.”

Roger that

13. Who is your favorite author?

It might be Roger Ebert, whose movie essays I enjoyed greatly. His autobio, Life Itself, is the book I would liked to have written, if I had the skills.

14. Is there a food that you hate?

Olives. Black olives, green olives.

15. Do you get along with your neighbors?

The neighbor to one side, Al, is great. Now, the property on the other side is owned by an absentee landlord, so the quality of the tenants has varied. I’ve written about not great ones here and elsewhere, and the best ones here. But by far, the WORST thing that happened from that house was created by the landlord himself. What a schmuck.

I wrote about terrible neighbors across the street, but thankfully, they’re gone.

16. Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

Nope. And I was never seriously interested in doing so.