Changing up the morning ritual

Quordle

Daily Quordle #51
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I’ve been changing up the morning ritual in the past, lessee, two years. Formerly, I would get up, check the email, and perhaps work on the blog, But at 7 a.m., my wife and I would go downstairs and watch CBS This Morning, now CBS Mornings, to watch “your world in ninety seconds.”

When the headlines were unrelentingly about COVID – the spread of COVID, the death toll of COVID – I sometimes passed on the opportunity to start my day with misery. Presently, I’ve been feeling similarly about Ukraine. I guess I’m more equipped to deal with distress in the evening. Besides, I tend to get enough news from various news outlets during the day.

Instead, I do the daily Wordle. I should note that my wife is MUCH better at this than I am, just as she’s better at Boggle. My daughter is better, too. Wordle has become an odd family bonding experience.

I’ve repeatedly told my wife she’d rule on Wheel of Fortune. We actually have the home game, a consolation prize from when on JEOPARDY! and our comparative scores prove my point. But at least we all still have our Wordle streaks going, unlike some people.

FOUR words

Then I attempt Quordle. The first several times I never got the four words in the nine tries. My mistake was to work it like I played Wordle. I know now to try to expose as many letters by finding three or even four words that hit most of the consonants. I’ve been much more successful.

After wishing my wife goodbye, I go back into the office. The cats want to be fed. I HAD been giving them nourishment at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. But with the stupid time change, if I attend them at 7 and 7, when we “fall back”, they’d be caterwauling to get food at 6 and 6.

This is just one reason that I’m OK with the idea of changing to permanent Daylight Saving Time, even though it’ll be dark on December mornings. I’ve made my feelings about changing the clocks quite clear here. (I’m essentially agreeing with  Marco Rubio; this pains me.)

After finally feeding the felines, I take my blood pressure and my pulse to make sure I’m not dead. THEN I eat. The rest is the usual alternating of email/blogging to music, riding the stationary bike while watching TV (JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, Finding Your Roots, Trevor Noah, et al), washing the dishes/reading the newspaper to music. This may be altered by a medical appointment, Bible study, grocery shopping, or the eternal “something else,” that unexpected task that sucks up hours in the day.

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

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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

November Ramblin’

This is almost as funny in Old Elizabethan as it is in contemporary English.

I’m watching this brief video Jaquandor posted, and it suddenly reminded me of an incident from when I was a teenager. Our next-door neighbors were taking down a tree on their property. I witnessed my father going over and telling the adult male, “Hey, the way you’re chopping that, the tree is going to hit your house.” The guy said to my dad, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” So, naturally, next thing you know, the tree topples into the house, with large branches penetrating the roof. I can’t help but think that if he’d just hired someone who knew what he/she was doing – or actually LISTENED to my father – he could have saved himself a lot of money and grief.

(I blame Mike Sterling for getting the song Zoot Suit Riot stuck in my head.)


You may have heard about the woman on the game show Wheel of Fortune who solved a puzzle with only one letter revealed – see HERE. But I found it even more entertaining the way I initially viewed it,  out of synch.


Actor and Author Steve Martin Will Be at a SOLD OUT Event at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City, Sunday, Dec. 5 at 11:30 a.m. I’m hoping it will be subsequently broadcast. Meanwhile, a couple of his recent musical performances, of Atheists Don’t Have No Songs and the classic King Tut.


A wonderful putdown by George Takei.


What the 2010 elections meant; a mandate, indeed.


Shared from somebody who ordered something on Amazon.

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This is almost as funny in Old Elizabethan as it is in contemporary English:
Who’s on First works, especially after the first minute of setup. Of course, it maketh no sense unless you’re familiar with the original Abbott and Costello routine; I think the radio version works better than any of the video versions I found on YouTube, such as this one.

“Neil Young” and Bruce Springsteen

Harry Nillson on the Ghost and Mrs. Muir, a 1960s sitcom. A snippet of another 1960s TV show F Troop featuring future members of the band Little Feat.


The essence of Time magazine

Roger Ebert on loneliness. And, since he has an Eleanor Rigby video, how about, for no other discernable reason, its B-side, Yellow Submarine.

Death won’t stop this Democrat
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Beautiful and haunting music and video of a piece by Henryk Gorecki, who died this month.

A couple seasons ago, there was this nighttime soap opera called Dirty Sexy Money. It…wasn’t great, but I watched it for the cast, which included Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause. But most of all, I watched it for Jill Clayburgh (pictured), who I loved seeing in Semi-Tough, An Unmarried Woman, and Starting Over in the late 1970s, but not much after that – Ally McBeal’s mom, a couple of episodes of The Practice – before DSM. I was surprisingly sad to note her passing at the age of 66 from cancer.
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Ken Levine did a couple of great obits this month, one for George “Sparky” Anderson, baseball’s first manager to lead teams from both the National and American leagues to World Series titles. When Sparky Anderson was 30 he looked 75. And now that he’s passed away at 76 I still think of him as 30.

Levine’s sometimes partner announcing Seattle Mariners games, Dave Niehaus: He became the second most treasured icon in Seattle, right behind Mt. Rainier… Dave had something that so few announcers have today – SHOWMANSHIP. You were not just getting play-by-play, you were being told a tale by a master storyteller. Name me a better way of spending a warm summer night sitting out on the front porch.

An Open Letter to Andrew Carnegie from Ted Sorensen about libraries. Sorensen, JFK adviser, died this fall.

Publisher of Classique magazine Albany Annette DeLavallade died suddenly this month, a loss to the community.
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DO NOT LEAVE ALCOHOL NEAR PUMPKINS!

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