February rambling: One of Us

Vote for Rebecca Jade in the San Diego Music Awards!

It Always Could Have Been One of Us— Crises are often invisible until they reach communities insulated from consequence
Fact Check of FOTUS’s SOTU
Prison-Style Free Speech Censorship Is Coming for the Rest of Us
Marine Detained in Minneapolis Says Feds Copied His Phone Without a Warrant
Twitter and ICE & DHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Measles Hits an ICE Facility: What Happens Next.— When infectious disease and incarceration collide, the outcome is predictable
The EPA Just Made Our Air Less Safe to Breathe— Repealing the Endangerment Finding will shape our clinical reality for years to come
In South Korea, ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty of carrying out an insurrection in his country when he declared martial law in 2024 to try to seize control from the opposing political party.
Kremlin officials used the February 23 Defender of the Fatherland Day holiday to set conditions to mitigate any domestic backlash that may result from limited rolling reserve involuntary callups in the future.
Chinese New Year 2026 and the Fire Horse
Obits and more
Jesse Jackson Witnessed Martin Luther King Jr.’s Assassination. Here’s How He Carried the Torch for the Civil Rights Movement Into the Future. ‘I am somebody.’ The Common Ground speech.
Robert Duvall, a Chameleon of an Actor Onscreen and Onstage, Dies at 95. I saw him in To Kill A Mockingbird, The Godfather, The Conversation, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and a bunch of other projects.
Eric Dane Dead at 53, 10 Months After Announcing ALS Diagnosis. In the final year of his life, the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Euphoria’ actor was a leading advocate for ALS research.
What Happened Was… (in memoriam, Tom Noonan)
The Tariff Decision. Gorsuch takes aim at fellow Supreme Court justices in the tariff decision
The Clock May Be Ticking on ‘60 Minutes’ as We Know It
Honoring Lincoln: Character Matters
Stephen Colbert’s interview with one of the Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, James Talarico. Talarico is a Matthew 25 Christian, which I espouse. 
The Soul in the Creases (photography)
Voice actor Brian Hull wandering around Disneyland, doing Disney voices for the characters he imitates.
Want to Reach Nirvana? Try a Colonoscopy.
“Civilization”
Under Destruction: Munich Security Report 2026
Heather Cox Richardson, February 15, 2026: “At the Munich Security Conference last year…Vice President J.D. Vance announced the U.S. was switching sides in global affairs. Henceforth, it would work to destroy the values of representative democracy and the global systems of trade and security that the U.S. and partners constructed after World War II.

 

“In their place, officials in the [regime]  and their media allies have embraced the Great Replacement theory that says Brown and Black migration to Europe and the U.S. is destroying ‘western civilization.’ Such migration must be stopped, they argue, and Brown and Black people purged from the U.S. and Europe. The end of equal rights for migrants will enable white Christian men to dominate society and pass laws that reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal hierarchies…”

“In his speech to the conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was less confrontational than Vance was last year, but the message was the same. He attacked all three of the pillars on which the U.S. has previously stood in foreign affairs. Global trade has ruined the U.S. economy, he said, while international institutions have undermined sovereignty, and ‘a climate cult’ has imposed energy policies that are ‘impoverishing our people.’

Newsweek: “On the surface, the applause for… Rubio’s weekend speech at the Munich Security Conference suggested he had assuaged European concerns. In reality, the speech underlined the immense division between Europe and America. It may have deepened it.”

MUSIC

VOTE for this year’s San Diego Music Awards! Rebecca Jade (the first niece) is up for Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Song –  Not Me No Way, and for Artist of the Year. You may vote once per day.

Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds
I Love To Tell The Story – Emmylou Harris, Robert Duvall, from my favorite Duvall movie, The Apostle (1997)
Sarah McLachlan: Tiny Desk Concert – February 12, 2026
Here Comes The Sun – Richie Havens
New York, New York – Tim Waurick four-party harmony
Walking On Sunshine  – Katrina & The Waves
She’s Leaving Home – Peter Sprague
I’m Just A Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band)  – The Moody Blues
Blackbird – Dionne Farris
Coverville 1569: The Ed Sheeran Cover Story and 1570: Cover Stories for Otis Blackwell and MGMT
Hey Jude – Wilson Pickett

Genre Delve #12: Funk vs. Soul

And I Love Him – Esther Phillips

Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay – Danny And The Juniors

Michelle – Luther Vandross

K-Chuck Radio: The Romantic Pop of Nino Tempo and April Stevens

Eleanor Rigby –  Wes Montgomery

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown – The Ed Sullivan Show for November 17, 1968

Kate Smith, Irving Berlin, and God Bless America

Lydster: fixing up the house

Washington County, 2:30 a.m.

landingMuch to our astonishment, our daughter decided to start fixing up the house. One notorious area involved the second-floor landing.  There was a whole bunch of miscellaneous crap, and iterations of it have been there for years.

My wife and I decided someday we ought to do something about it. Well,  our daughter decided that “someday” had arrived in January. But she wasn’t going to do it alone. While my wife was at a work training event on a Saturday, my daughter and I went through everything, item by item, and sorted, shredded, and tossed. 

Within about an hour, we got it down to one big container, which turned out to be her books and other childhood items. It was so heavy that even she couldn’t carry it up the stairs – and she is quite strong. So she got three boxes, separated the items, and we carried them up to the attic.

There’s a space that was designated for her stuff. Of course, we had to rearrange the attic well enough to GET to the space. The Christmas stuff had not been put away from Christmas 2024, so we had to tackle those items first.

The landing is not empty, though. It has a basket full of reusable bags I utilize for trash, a small bookcase for my oversized books, the vacuum cleaner, and a spot for Stormy to hang out. But it’s tidy. 

My office

I had started cleaning my office in September, and, actually, it was a whole lot better than it had been, but not up to her standards. We spent an extraordinary amount of time sorting things into various bins. I was exhausted by the end of it, but not only did it look a whole lot better, but I also found things that I had been missing.

Moreover, she decided to hang the pictures that had been sitting in our living room downstairs. There was a stack of framed items against the wall near the television.  It was really boring to see them because they’d been there seemingly forever.

A couple items we got for our wedding 26 years ago. Back in 2012, my wife said we should paint the living room walls, then put up some pictures. The painting happened, but the pictures never got put up then.

The daughter decided to rectify this, and not just in the living room, but also in the hallways, and notably in my office. One of them was a picture I bought: Chuck Miller’s 2020 photograph, Washington County, 2:30 a.m., still in its packaging. It’s up with my Lennon photo c. 1972, and a Beach Boys photo that I received when I retired in 2019. 

The painting, The Bookworm, I got from my late father-in-law’s belongings. I didn’t realize the joy of having stuff on my walls.

Internment camps of Germans in the US

German American Internee Coalition

At the book review for These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore at the Albany Public Library, Jim Collins made a passing reference to the WWII internment camps that held people of Japanese heritage. I made a comment that there were internment camps of Germans in the US as well. A few people had never heard that fact. 

Indeed, there is a German American Internee Coalition (“GAIC”), “formed in 2005 by and for German American and Latin American citizens and legal residents who were interned by the United States during World War II.” 

From the section Civil Liberties Violations: “German Americans constitute the largest ethnic group in the US. Approximately 60 million Americans claimed German ancestry in the 2000 US Census, more than any other nationality… 

“Nevertheless, during World War II, the US government and many Americans viewed ethnic Germans and others of ‘enemy ancestry’ as potentially dangerous, particularly recent immigrants. The Japanese American World War II experience is well known. Few, however, know of the European American World War II experience, particularly that of the German Americans and Latin Americans.” Many ethnic Germans had moved to Brazil and Argentina.

Pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (50 USC 21-24), which remains in effect today, the US may apprehend, intern and otherwise restrict the freedom of ‘alien enemies’ upon declaration of war or actual, attempted or threatened invasion by a foreign nation. During World War II, the US Government interned at least 11,000 persons of German ancestry. By law, only ‘enemy aliens’ could be interned. However, with governmental approval, their family members frequently joined them in the camps. Many such “voluntarily” interned spouses and children were American citizens.

Started in WWI

War History Online notes: “The precedent was set during the First World War when laws dating back to the 18th Century were used to authorize the detention of anyone considered to be an ‘enemy alien’ and therefore a possible threat to security and the war effort.

“The Government set up four camps. The main ones were located in Hot Springs, CA and at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. These camps were referred to as DOJ (Department of Justice) Camps.” But there were others, mapped here.

“By 1940, Germans made up a large percentage of the ‘non-American’ population in the United States. There were approximately 1.2 million German nationals as well as another 11 million US citizens who had at least one German-born parent.

“As the war in Europe continued, America was laying the groundwork. The 1940 census introduced a new question. It now required that all respondents included their ethnicity. This would make them easier to identify after America entered the war.” As a Census enumerator in 1990 and 2020, I was especially appaled that information that was supposedly used only in the aggregate was  manipulated in this way. 

Wikipedia addresses the internment of Germans and German-Americans during World War I, which was fairly well-known, and WWII.  About 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were interned during the Second World War, as were about 1,800 people of Italian descent.

A poem by Sharp Little Pencil about the Japanese-American WWII experience: Concentration.

Redesigned the flag

the red, black, and green flag

This past week, someone asked my wife about the red, black, and green flag that represents Pan-Africanism/African Americans. From here: “African Americans have long reimagined the American flag. Marcus Garvey famously redesigned the flag with three symbolic colors: red for the blood of Black people, black for their skin color and racial identity, and green for the verdant lands of Africa.”

So, who was Marcus Garvey? I was asked this. From PBS:  “As the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and progenitor of the modern ‘black is beautiful’ ideal, Garvey is now best remembered as a champion of the back-to-Africa movement. In his own time, he was hailed as a redeemer, a ‘Black Moses.’ Though he failed to realize all his objectives, his movement still represents a liberation from the psychological bondage of racial inferiority.”

I’m surprised – OK, not THAT surprised – that more folks don’t know who Garvey was. I probably read about him in Ebony and/or JET magazines when I was a kid.

“Garvey was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. He left school at 14, worked as a printer, joined Jamaican nationalist organizations, toured Central America, and spent time in London. Content at first with accommodation, on his return to Jamaica, he aspired to open a Tuskegee-type industrial training school. In 1916, he came to America at Booker T. Washington’s invitation, but arrived just after Washington died.” That last piece, I did not know.

UNIA in the US

“Garvey arrived in America at the dawn of the ‘New Negro’ era. Black discontent, punctuated by East St. Louis’s bloody race riots in 1917 and intensified by postwar disillusionment, peaked in 1919’s Red Summer. Shortly after arriving, Garvey embarked upon a period of travel and lecturing.

“When he settled in New York City, he organized a chapter of the  U.N.I.A. [Universal Negro Improvement Association], which he had earlier founded in Jamaica as a fraternal organization. Drawing on a gift for oratory, he melded Jamaican peasant aspirations for economic and cultural independence with the American gospel of success to create a new gospel of racial pride. ‘Garveyism’ eventually evolved into a religion of success, inspiring millions of black people worldwide who sought relief from racism and colonialism.”

Garvey was a leading intellectual of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. 

Other flags

I became curious about how similar the Pan-African flag is to the current national flags. It looks most like the Libyan flag, except that on that latter one, the black is wider and there’s a star and crescent.  Here are the red, black, and green flags.  

In 1990, David Hammons (b. 1943) created African-American Flag. From MoMA: “Hammons created this version—one in an edition of ten—for an exhibition at Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City.” I saw it at the  National Museum of African American History and Culture in August 2024.

Mail delivery still sucks

Book reviews for March 2026 at the APL on Washington Avenue

Yes, my mail delivery still sucks. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I saw a mail truck on our street. She started to feel elated. I said there was little correlation between seeing the vehicle and our receiving mail; sure enough, nothing in our mailbox. A couple of days earlier, I saw a mail truck on my block, actually three doors down, and a package was delivered there. Indeed, I received a package recently, on a day when we received no other mail.

My wife recently spoke to a postal worker who knows about this problem, and the worker feels terrible about it. They are not allowed to work sufficient overtime to rectify the problem. So it is not a problem just in my neighborhood, but in several locations.

I received mail on Thursday, Feb 12, then on Thursday, the 19th, and, shockingly, on Saturday, the 21st.

A Facebook buddy of mine writes: Join me, if you wish, in raising the alarm. When someone asks, “Is anyone getting mail?” respond with the following:

+++ They’re trying to break the Postal Service and sell it off to private corporations.

I also believe they are making it harder to have mail ballots counted in elections.

Here’s a complaint letter that you can copy and send to the Postmaster. Postal carriers (mailmen) are asking us to raise the issue so they can continue delivering mail! +++ https://tinyurl.com/where-is-my-mail

Oh, and here’s a piece from WNYT, Channel 13, from Tuesday, February 17, on the topic, featuring, er, me. 

FFAPL

The Tuesday book reviews are at the 161 Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library at 2 pm in the large auditorium.

March 3 | Book Review | Emmy Noether — Mathematician Extraordinaire, a biography by David E. Rowe.  Reviewer:  Jonathan Skinner, PhD, amateur classicist & mathematician.
March 10 |Book Review | Coney Island:  The People’s Playground by Michael Immerso.  Reviewer:  Donald “The Soul Man” Hyman, teacher, actor, singer. writer, TV host/producer, & veteran.
March 17 | Book Review | The Sisters, a novel by Jonas Hassen Khemiri.  Reviewer:  Elissa Kane, a seeker, an organizer, a teacher, & an artist, who has worked in libraries & our state & city governments.
March 24 | Book Review | The Four Agreements:  A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz.  Reviewer:  Ezra Scott, Jr., MA, MBE, is a native of Niagara Falls, NY, a public servant, an educator, & the proud father of Khari C. Scott & Ezra P. Scott III.  (Rescheduled from December because of a snowstorm.) 
March 31 | Book Review | Why Weren’t We Told?  A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History by Henry Reynolds, a prize-winning Australian historian.  Reviewer:  Tom Ellis, educator & activist.
Ramblin' with Roger
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