Sunday Stealing Archives - Page 4 of 28

Sunday Stealing: blueberry muffins

Bonnie, Neil, Diana, and Mac

Here’s another installment of Sunday Stealing, which is reason enough to have a picture of blueberry muffins. The first question is, What’s your guilty pleasure?

I’ll list foods I should not eat but crave for this exercise. These tend to involve pastry with fruit, such as banana bread, blueberry muffins, and apple pastry.

Which meal is your favorite: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Dinner, because it tends to be the most varied. Breakfast is almost always oatmeal. Lunch is whatever leftovers might be kicking around. Dinner tends to be the most interesting.

What do you do when you want to chill out after a long day?

It tends to be watching television, specifically the Evening News, which we record and fast-forward through the commercials. So, I’ve managed to miss the bulk of the political ads running. Then, my wife and I play the New York Times Connections together.

How would you spend your ideal weekend?

On Saturday, we usually attend some event: a concert, play, musical, movie, or social gathering. Sunday involves going to church and then talking to my sisters on Zoom.

MUSIC, of course

Do you listen to podcasts, or mostly just music? What’s your favorite podcast?

I listen to a lot of music, usually seven CDs per day. Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Dr. John, and Neil Young are currently heavily in the rotation. But not many podcasts because I can’t multitask. I have to listen intently. It’s the same reason I can’t listen to audiobooks and do something else, as some people, notably my wife, can. I am utterly incapable. I have to concentrate on the item. So, besides Arthur’s occasional AmeriNZ item, the only podcast I listen to regularly is Coverville, which is mostly music.

Brian Ibbott usually picks covers of artists whose birthdays are divisible by five. So in November, he might select Chris Difford (Squeeze), 70, on the 4th; Bryan Adams, 65, on the 5th; Corey Glover (Living Colour), 60, on the 6th; Rickkie Lee Jones, 70, on the 7th; Bonnie Raitt, 75 on the 7th, etc.

Do you prefer to go to the movies or watch movies at home?

Cinema, always. I saw many movies at home during COVID-19, but it wasn’t the same. I remember going to the Spectrum Theatre when the vaccine was available, but social distancing and masks were the norm, and it was such a treat to see the films on the big screen.

TeeVee

What was your favorite TV show growing up?

The Dick Van Dyke Show. Mark Evanier has linked to his ten favorite episodes. (His #2 may be my #1)

What’s your favorite TV show now?

CBS Sunday Morning, a magazine on the air since 1979.

How would you spend your birthday if money was no object?

I’d rather throw a surprise party for Kelly with a few dozen of his closest friends and family in Washington, DC.

What’s your favorite season? What do you love most about it?

Spring. It could have snow or 86°F/30°C, but ultimately, it will have new life.

Do you prefer camping or going to the beach?

I don’t like either. If I had to choose, I’d say go to the beach, but I’d need a huge umbrella to protect me from the sun.

Which phone app do you think you use the most?

I probably use Noom because it can track all my food consumption. After that, I’ll probably use Venmo to send money to my daughter and the CDTA navigator so I can get around on the bus in Albany.

Steppin’ Out

Would you instead cook, order delivery, or go out to eat?

I would eat out almost every meal, every day. There’s something about other people preparing your food for you and then cleaning up afterward. It’d be different restaurants with a variety of levels of fanciness.

How do you drink your coffee?

I don’t drink coffee. I know it’s unAmerican.

If you could have any animal as a pet, what would you choose?

I don’t want another pet. We had two cats this year; one of them died. It’s much easier to go away when you don’t have a creature depending on you. I liked having them and love our remaining cat, but I reckon we won’t have another one.

Sunday Stealing: email

if I had two million dollars

This week’s Sunday Stealing continues to purloin queries from 200 Questions, so I dubbed it 200.06. It includes email.

1. What do you hope your last words will be?

It will probably be some intentional malaprop such as refrigagator instead of refrigerator or ipitical allasion for optical illusion. People will wonder what I was trying when I merely found them fun to say.

2. What do you spend the most time thinking about?

The never-ending To-Do List.

3. What is something you can never seem to finish?

It is getting rid of my emails. I have, seriously, over 10,000 emails. Some I want to use for a blog or for a project. But a good chunk of them could easily—well, not easily, because I haven’t done it—be systematically purged, and I need to do that because my Gmail is over half full.

4. What mistake do you keep making again and again?

Taking on more than I can handle. I thought that would become easier when I retired, but that proved to be a total lie. I feel like I’ve I’m failing retirement.

5. What’s the best thing you got from your parents?

From my father, it was a love of music, a love of listening to and singing it. From my mother, it was kindness and patience, though I’m not always sure the patience has stuck in my case.

6. What’s the best and worst thing about getting older?

The best thing about getting older is that I have a wide swath of knowledge about many things. The worst thing about getting older is that there’s all this new stuff I can’t keep up with.

Myth

7. What do you wish your brain was better at doing?

I’m convinced that the notion of multitasking is a fiction. In any case, my brain can’t do it.

8. If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?

Lilac, specifically the lilac tree or lilac bush, more correctly. It sat right next to our house when I was growing up in Binghamton, NY.

9. What have you created that you are most proud of?

At some level, it may be this blog because I’ve been doing it every day for almost 19 1/2 years. There are very few things that I’ve done as long continuously. This gives me a chance to plug things I want to plug, like the Underground Railroad Educational Center’s Interpretive Center or church concerts or library events. Maybe I brag about my daughter or my nieces. It has helped me remember stuff that I would have otherwise forgotten.

10. What were some of the turning points in your life?

There are too many to count, but certainly, I have had relationships, romantic and otherwise, that didn’t work, or relationships I didn’t have that could have happened. This is very vague and intentionally so.

No guilty pleasures

11. What song or artist do you like but rarely admit to liking?

This is not an issue. If I like it, I say I like it. If you just don’t think I should like it, I don’t care. I’ve said more than once that I’m very fond of Could It Be Magic by Barry Manilow because I love the Chopin upon which it’s built.

I was thinking a lot about a guy named Dustbury, given the name Charles Hill, who died five years ago last month. We would talk online about music a lot. I remember telling him that every time I’m feeding the cats, I start singing the song “Cat Food” by the band King Crimson. He thought that was very funny.

12. What small impact from a stranger made a big impact on you?

I don’t know if there’s a specific stranger. When I’m riding on the train or a Greyhound/Trailways bus and I have conversations with people, I find that there’s always some interesting and odd piece of information or understanding that I take from that.

Disinformation

13. As you get older, what are you becoming more and more afraid of?

Global warming. Clearly the ferocity of some of the hurricanes that have hit in the US Southeast this year are result of it. The other thing is the constant… misrepresentation of what’s been happening in the world. The administration is doing nothing to help the people suffering and/or they created the hurricanes.

14. What are some of the events in your life that made you who you are?

Substantially, it was moving to Schenectady in December 1977. I subsequently moved to nearby Albany, where I’ve lived for 45 years. It’s not too big or small and has decent mass transit. But I think there are multitudes of events that would qualify.

15. What could you do with $2 million to impact the most amount of people?

I don’t know. I’ve been fond of nonprofit groups such as R.I.P. Medical Debt, which have relieved Americans of billions in hospital bills. They pay a fraction of the money due, which has a real multiplier effect. However, a study found that it did not improve their mental health or their credit score. It is a puzzlement.

Sunday Stealing 200.05: Beetle Beat

Innocence Project

This week’s Sunday Stealing continues to purloin queries from 200 Questions, so I dubbed it 200.05. The last question is about the Beetle Beat.

1. What gets you fired up?

Lots of things, but injustice is high on the list. There are lots of stories of folks spending dozens of years incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. When they are finally exonerated, they’ve already missed out on so much of their lives. When the state of Missouri decided to execute a person on death row, despite pleas from the prosecution and the victim’s family concerning his likely innocence, I was utterly outraged. So, I support the Innocence Project periodically.

2. What makes a good life?

I could overthink this, but I’ll go with FDR’s Four Freedoms speech: the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.

3. What risks are worth taking?

Saving a life, starting a business, and getting arrested for a good cause. Life is filled with risk and whether that risk is worth taking is quite individualistic.

4. Who inspires you to be better?

There are lots and lots of people—folks doing great things in the world. People are also doing really bad things, and I say, “We are better than that.” A recent Vlogbrothers post from John Green points out that we humans have done great things, but we need to do far greater ones.

I doubt it

5. What do you have doubts about?

This blog is filled with things that make me doubt whether we can survive as a species without destroying our planet, whether democracy will survive in the United States and other parts of the world, and whether we can find an equitable distribution of food worldwide. Oh, the list goes on and on and on and on and on…

6. What fact are you resigned to?

I’m never going to win the Super Bowl, the World Series, or Wimbledon.

7. What book impacted you the most?

The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology by Barry Commoner (1971). David Wineberg wrote in Good Reads: “The insane argument over the environment seems to stem from the thought this is somehow a new fad and not established science. The timely reissue of [the book] puts the lie to that nonsense. Reading it today is stunning. Commoner carefully proves his cases in meticulous scientific fashion. He researches for facts, working around obstacles. His analyses are prescient. His worries have borne fruit. Very little has changed in the intervening 50 years. Mostly, he was right and it has gotten far worse.”

8. What irrational fear do you have?

That I’m not doing “enough.”

9. What is the hardest lesson you’ve learned?

That I can’t do everything I believe needs to be done.

Hmm…

10. What is something you’re self-conscious about?

I’m not particularly fond of, uh, speaking extemporaneously because people will be parsing every bloody, er, break that you take in the conversation. I noticed this because I was interviewed for a book once, and the author used my quotes, including every break and interruption I put in my interview with him; he had recorded it on a cassette tape. I was mortified even though nobody knew who I was in the book; I was also somewhat irritated by it.

11. What are one or two of your favorite smells?

Lilacs. Steak on a grill.

12. Have you given to charities?

Many, and often. But I am very suspicious of any entity that suddenly appears after a disaster, whether 9/11 or the flooding from former Hurricane Helene. I’m unlikely to give money to any GoFundMe or a new charity.

13. What is the best compliment you have received?

I believe it was the fact that I had been working on this blog for almost 19 1/2 years. Someone said, “How do you come up with stuff?” and I said, “I just look around.”

14. What chance encounter changed your life forever?

As I’ve noted, my mother worked outside the home when I was a child in the bookkeeping department of McLeans department store in Binghamton NY. I went to Daniel S Dickinson School in kindergarten rather than Oak Street School. We would go to my grandmother’s house at lunch and after school. If I hadn’t gone to Dickinson in kindergarten, I wouldn’t have met Carol, Karen, Bill, Lois then, and, subsequently, people like Ray and Jim until 7th grade. It has had a huge impact on my life.

Finally

15. What was the most memorable gift you’ve received?

I was likely this Beetle Beat album my father bought us, an ersatz Beatles record. Subsequently, I got a paper route, joined the Capitol Record Club, and bought my own albums. I can remember the first Beatles album I purchased that I did not get from the CRC, Yesterday and Today, which I purchased at the Rexall drug store for $2.97. Since then, I’ve bought a lot of LPs, CDs, and even a few cassettes.

Sunday Stealing 200.04: Solitary

1, 1.414, 1.732, 2, 2.236…

This week’s Sunday Stealing is part of the 200 questions that Bev used the past three weeks. Here are 15 more from the same source, so I dubbed it 200.04. These were particularly intriguing, especially the question about solitary.

1. What do you want to be remembered for?

Let’s lean into the things I’m already known for: being my daughter’s father, being on Jeopardy, working at FantaCo comic book store, being a librarian for the New York Small Business Development Center, being smart, being kind (well, usually)

2. If you were put in solitary confinement for a year, what would you do to stay sane?

I would think of all the British Beatles albums, singles, and a selected EP and try to figure out which tracks showed up on which Beatles US albums. Remembering the books of the Bible, which I used to know; I’m now weak on the minor prophets. Figuring out square roots. Trying to remember the musical artists I have in my collection and to think of as many songs by each of them as possible, starting with ABBA (Waterloo) would be the first off; Paula Abdul – what do I know of hers besides Straight Up? Remembering all the presidents of the United States and trying to remember their vice presidents and members of their cabinets.

If I had paper and pencil, I’d write my thoughts. A deck of cards could be entertaining. If I had books, I’d read them.

Where’s the video?

3. If you could have a video of any one event in your life, what event would you choose?

It was a performance of the Green Family Singers; my father Les, my sister Leslie, and I sang at an American Legion Hall near Binghamton in 1970. It was a particularly rowdy audience for us, but we went with it. Somebody asked me recently if I had a recording of my father singing, and I don’t, so that would be really cool.

4. What are the top 3 things you want to accomplish before you die? Have you accomplished them?

One is to get our daughter through college; we’re in the process of that. One is to get further in genealogy. As I’ve mentioned before, there are two nuts to crack: my father’s mother’s father’s parents and the parents of my mother’s father’s mother, Margaret Collins. It would be satisfactory to get to that level in all branches. I’m talking to somebody from the Smithsonian this week about Samuel Walker, so I’m hopeful on that line. The third thing is something I’m working on, but I’m not willing to announce at this point. So, I have not accomplished any of them yet.

5. If you were forced to live one 10-minute block of your life again and again, what 10 minutes of your life would you choose.

I can think of a lot of things that I won’t share here. If pressed, I’d say the Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy rounds of the first show I was on.

6. Have you ever saved someone’s life?

Possibly. Twice, I’ve yanked kids out of traffic. Once I performed the Heimlich.

Is this a surprise?

7. What are you addicted to?

Music. I have a very difficult time doing most things without music. When I’m cleaning, or when I used to work at FantaCo or the NYS SBDC, I usually had music on, even if it’s with headphones. If I write, the music is on. Right now, it’s Traveling Wilburys Volume 3, which ends with a great song, The Wilbury Twist; it always makes me laugh.

8. What keeps you up at night?

This is a pretty regular occurrence: conversations I should have had, conversations I should not have had, things that could have said better, and things that I haven’t accomplished. A coterie of things.

9. What do you regret not doing?

Often, I play through scenarios whereby what would it have meant if I had done X versus Y? But the truth is that because I did Y, other things resulted. So I can’t dwell on it too much. I mean, I DO, but I shouldn’t because it’s not particularly useful.

10. What gives your life meaning?

The usual: friends, family, music, being useful

11. What are you most insecure about?

Body image

Busted?

12. What’s the most illegal thing you’ve done?

Back in the 1980s, a friend’s uncle was going through chemo, and he wanted to get some marijuana so that the uncle could stop feeling so nauseous. Somebody I used to work with almost certainly could get me some pot. So I bought it and sold it to my friend at cost. Now, marijuana is legal in many places, at least for medical purposes, but at the time, I could have been busted.

13. What’s the most surprising self-realization you’ve had?

I’m a bit sad that I haven’t traveled to many places: 32 U.S. states and four countries other than the United States. I was doing this project with my daughter, and I realized that it made me insist that she get her passport, which had expired at least seven years before, and I’m hoping that she travels abroad a lot more than I did

14. If you could make one rule that everyone had to follow, what would it be?

Try to make places safe for yourself and others. Two examples. When we were driving to church last Sunday, this woman, probably in her 20s, was on her phone, and she walked right in front of a car, surprised that it was there. She stopped before getting hit. Look around, people, and get out of your darn phone. Also, I was on a bus coming home from the drugstore. A person came in with two heavy bags. When I wanted to get off the bus, I noticed they had placed the two heavy bags at the exit of the bus instead of on a seat – the bus wasn’t very crowded – so they created an obstruction for someone like me to get off the bus. I had to squeeze past the bags, which didn’t make me feel safe and secure.

15. In what situation or place would you feel most out of place?

A room full of strangers with whom I am expected to interact.

Sunday Stealing, 200.03: Oscar

lights out

This week’s Sunday Stealing is part of the 200 questions that Bev used the past two weeks. Here are 15 more from the same source, so I dubbed it 200.03. Next week, it will likely be 200.04.

1. What popular TV show do you refuse to watch?

There are so many current TV shows that I can’t even keep track of. So there’s no sense of “refusing to watch.” I suspect there would be if I were keeping up with more of them. In the past, I started watching a program called 24. The first 13 episodes of the first season had a taut dramatic arc, and then it limped along for the rest of the season. I watched the first episode of season 2, in which the lead character, Jack Bauer, murders somebody so he can literally steal their face and infiltrate the other side. I said I’ve had enough of this, and I didn’t watch it anymore.

2. What pets did you have while growing up?

We mostly had cats. There was a time when my sisters and I had three cats: Tiger, Taffy, and Tony. Tiger was mine, and he got hit and killed by a car; I was devastated. Earlier, we had a cat named Peter, who was so smart that when he wanted to come in, he would get up on the stoop and rattle the doorknob. We also had a dog named Lucky Stubbs, an Alaskan Husky, and he nipped at me. I was not a big fan of this dog, but my father liked him, and we kept the dog until Lucky also nipped both of our pastor’s daughters. Then Lucky Stubbs was off to some farm in rural Broome County.

Rabbit’s foot

3. What is the luckiest thing that has happened to you?

As I noted here, I was lucky that when I moved to the Capital District of New York State, my old pal Pam, who I knew from my New Paltz college days, also moved north. Her boyfriend at the time, Paul, was running a program with the Schenectady Arts Council, and I was able to get a job there, one of my two favorite jobs of all time.

4. What are some small things that make your day better?

Playing Wordle – I have a 636-game winning streak, playing Quordle, posting my blog to Facebook, and saying good morning to my stuffed monkey, Oscar.

5. What’s your favorite piece of clothing you own/owned?

When my sister Leslie went to Mexico in 1972, she brought me back two shirts, a Guatemalan work shirt, and a dress shirt, and I love them. I think I wore one of them the first time I got married, that year, actually.

6. What’s the most annoying habit other people have?

Arguing with people online for long periods as though they were going to change their opinion. I came across one recently about whether God was in favor of or against abortion, which led to a conversation about how God in the Old Testament encouraged the slaughter of certain enemies. I said this is a fruitless discussion.

Black and white

7. What game or movie universe would you most like to live in?

I was taken by the movie Pleasantville (1998), in which everything was simple and black and white until it wasn’t.

8. What’s the most impressive thing you know how to do?

Figuring out square roots with pen and paper and keeping score with bowling. All sorts of totally useless skills that technology does for you instead

9. What was the best book or series you’ve read?

Every time I get a question like this, I always think about the last time, and I try to answer it differently. Today, I’m going with Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben. I have a collection in this very room.

10. What state or country do you never want to go back to?

I’ve been to 32 states and four other countries, and I don’t think there’s a real answer. It was hot and muggy when my daughter and I were in Indiana in 2019. I wouldn’t write off the state over that one experience, but it did suck.

11. Where do you usually go when you have time off?

Into my imagination

Secret

12. What amazing thing did you do that no one was around to see?

“Amazing” would not be the term I’d use. When I was a kid and cars were left unlocked, I would open the doors and turn off the lights. On a rainy or overcast day, I might do this a dozen times on my way home from high school. Now, I remove obstructions – tree branches, tipped-over empty garbage cans – from the sidewalk.

13. What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

I’ve never been all that prescriptive, so I’m not one to suggest that one ought to do anything. I suppose I could say something mundane like do something that gets you out of your comfort zone, but what the heck does that even mean?

14. What’s something you’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to it?

Writing a book

15. What is something most people consider a luxury but you don’t think you could live without?

Takeout. I don’t much enjoy cooking; I do make the morning oatmeal or occasionally eggs or pancakes. It’s unreasonable that my wife should come home from work and then have to cook afterward, though she’s good at cooking meals for two or even three nights. There’s a Tuesday farmers market she frequents for about half the year. Around the corner from our house, there’s an Indian restaurant, a pizza place where we often get lamb or chicken on rice, a burger place where we can also get pizza, etc. When I was single, I used to buy frozen meals and heat them, but my wife is not a big fan.