Ramblin' with Roger

Collections

FantaCo?

Recently, Chuck Miller wrote: “I’m sure you have unique collections of objects in your own personal life.

“I’d like to hear what those are. That’s why I have a comments section.

“Let me know what your collections include and why those objects bring you joy.”

As I contemplate the question, I wonder what constitutes a “collection.” And of course, I’ll post it here, because, you know, I need content.

In rough chronological order:

Stamps – my great-aunt Deana gave me a book of stamps from around the world, which I still have. For a time at FantaCo in the 1980s, I’d tear off the interesting stamps we received. But I never committed to it.

Coins – back in 2009, I wrote about why I hadn’t collected the state quarters released from 1999 to 2009, because my childhood collection had been stolen. Yet eventually, I DID collect not only the state coins but also the Presidential dollars.

Still, I lost interest in the America the Beautiful coins, in part because I couldn’t feel the rhythm. The states were in the order in which they entered the Union. Presidents were, of course, by their time in office.

Not incidentally, there wasn’t a Jimmy Carter presidential coin in that series because 39 still alive. (The notion that we have a $250 bill with FOTUS on the face was absurd, and Scott Bessent’s defense of same was disingenuous.)

Baseball cards – I had a collection that was stolen from my grandmother’s house in the 1970s. I dabbled subsequently, but I had no heart in it.

Yugoslavia

Maps – my grandfather Mac had a subscription to National Geographic, and they usually contained maps, which he would give to me. This stopped shortly after I went to college, but I STILL have them. Maps are like automobiles: they go from being out of date to being antiques.

LPs – that I still have, except for the ones stolen from grandma’s place, but I haven’t added to it.

Books – is it a collection, or do I just acquire them? And what does that mean? I will note that within the collection is a shelf of hymnals, possibly not enough to be a “collection” as such.

Comic books – I definitely had a collection from 1972 to 1994, when I sold it for about $1000 because I had no real income. The comic material I still have is books of Marvel comics, Swamp Thing, and the like.

Compact discs – I make an effort to play all of them at least once a year.

Hess trucks – I’m still getting them.

Ultimately

If I have anything approaching a collection, I suppose it’s from FantaCo, the comic book/convention/mail-order/publishing place I worked at from 1980 to 1988. I have all of the publications that came out. But I also kept the newspaper clippings, T-shirts, even my little Rolodex. That thing had names of comic book distributors, writers, and artists; it practically tells a story.

Moreover, I have hundreds of photos from that time: everyone from the staff to customers to artist/writer signings to our UPS guy and merchants on our street, including World’s Records when it was at 22 Central Avenue.

The Young Rascals – Collections – Full album – 1967. Playlist. The second Rascals album and the second one I owned, after Groovin’, the third album. My favorite song on the album: Love Is A Beautiful Thing.

The poetry of phlegm

guaifenesin

I’ve been thinking so much about it in the past two weeks that I figured there must be a poetry of phlegm. Just look at the word. If it were spelled flem, it would not be worthy. But the ph! The silent g!

Yeah, I know that those features come from its etymology: “late 14c., fleem, fleume, ‘viscid mucus, discharge from a mucous membrane of the body,’ also the name of one of the four bodily humors, from Old French fleume (13c., Modern French flegme), from Late Latin phlegma, one of the four humors of the body, from Greek phlegma ‘morbid, clammy bodily humor caused by heat;’ literally ‘inflammation, flame, fire, heat,’ from phlegein ‘to burn,’ related to phlox (genitive phlogos) ‘lame, blaze,’ from PIE bhleg- ‘to shine, flash,’ from root bhel- (1) ‘to shine, flash, burn.'”

Here are a few poems. My favorite is the first, by David Fisher, titled Ahem This Phlegm, which begins:

Ahem this phlegm

In snotty body

Needs and pleads

A hotty-toddy.

Suffice to say, the stuffy head/sore throat/coughing jags thing I have – oh, and my daughter has- experienced is still lingering, although neither of us has a fever. Sleeping is difficult for me because mucus lodges in my throat or chest, and I need a coughing jag to dislodge it. Meanwhile, my wife has a similar ailment, manifesting mostly as fatigue and laryngitis

Viva la difference

BTW, since you didn’t ask, the difference between phlegm and mucus: All phlegm is mucus, but not all mucus is phlegm. The phlegm is clear, BTW, which is a good thing, but no less exhausting to deal with.

Last week, I bought a friend an OTC labeled DM, which contains dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant, and guaifenesin, an expectorant, per their doctor’s suggestion. Since they have trouble swallowing pills, I opted for the liquid concoction. For my daughter and me, I got the pills, which were sizable.

I ran out of the pills. The package seemed as though it’d hold 30-60 pills, but it only had 14. So I had to go back to the CVS and get a different liquid, which was locked up. (Some guy had gone to a clerk and said, “I need shampoo, but it’s locked up.” The clerk replied, “It’s supposed to be.” That would be a weird reply in 20th-century America.)

My wife and I went to a celebration of life in Hartford, CT, for the ex-husband of one of my wife’s best friends since college. The only way I could sleep at all was by sitting up, which was frequently interrupted.

I’m so exhausted that it took me three tries to write 450 words, evben though I knew whayt I wanted to say. ZZZZZZ. Wait, what?

June rambling: Tony Stark and Elon Musk

250 to 250 Project videos (Heather Cox Richardson)

An essay on A. R. Moxon’s blog, The Reframe, connects how our system works to the stories we tell in our mass media. Make a hero out of Tony Stark, he claims, and you’ll wind up with an Elon Musk.

Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid

In Gaza, Fathers Can’t Promise Their Children Food, Safety, or Even Survival

Medicare Advantage Organizations Overturned Nearly All Appealed Prior Authorization Denials for Skilled Nursing Facility Admission, Raising Concerns About Initial Denials

JD Vance says Nixon’s Watergate scandal would be ‘12-hour news story’ today

Feral Hogs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

American Zoo – a frightening documentary on the Catskill Game Farm

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine calls on lawmakers to get rid of the state’s death penalty

Tell Publishers: Don’t Block the Wayback Machine!

Videos from the 250 to 250 Project that Heather Cox Richardson and others are producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. “We designed the videos to emphasize the agency of Americans—mostly everyday Americans—to change the country. Each falls into a category that defines what it means to be an American, including community, democracy, innovation, mobility, civil rights, education, conservation, and creativity.”

The Knicks Just Gave Us a Teaching Moment. Let’s Not Waste It

Amer

Amer Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil: NYC, July 3, 1981

Cheers creator James Burrows dies at 85. He also directed episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, and Frasier, all of which I watched religiously, plus Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Will and Grace, Rhoda, Phyllis, and Laverne & Shirley, which I saw occasionally.

Archaeologists Unearth Hundreds of Artifacts at Fort Ticonderoga, the Site of America’s First Offensive Victory of the Revolutionary War

Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman Through Prosperity and Crisis, Dies at 100: The pre-eminent economic policymaker of his time and a skilled political operator, he favored market-friendly stances that would later come to be associated with destructive financial forces.

Where does punctuation come from?!

Why Is a Basketball Team Named After Pants, and Why Cops Stereotypically Eat Donuts, and A Random Quack of Kindness, and The Island the U.S. and Canada Both Want

Older, not better

Disenfranchisement machine is besieging the courts; he demands control of state elections—or else; Steve Bannon calls for ICE and others to be at “every precinct” for the midterms: “If you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.” These 19 election deniers and vote suppressors are on the ballot in the midterms.

Court allows regime to end removal protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals. Know that, per the Kagan dissent, the decision was racially motivated based on comments such as suggestions that Haitians in Ohio were “eating the dogs . . . [and] cats.” Yes, immigration is about race.

Overruling Wary Intel Officials Who Withheld Kushner’s Top Secret Clearance

Seeking to Use “Domestic Terrorism” to Target Nonprofits and Activists

Moving forward with a State Department plan to strip the CDC of its oversight on global health programs.

American emergency podcast: The movement to kill FEMA

Raving about vandalism even though he’s responsible for the pool’s issues.

Did we finally learn something about his health

MUSIC

Blackbird -New York Vocal Collective

Ode to Birds and Rainbow by Takashi Yoshimatsu

Mother Nature – Angélique Kidjo

Beginnings – Chicago

Rebel – Songs in the Key Of Resistance

Whiter Shade of Pale – Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds

Human Mind – Mavis Staples

Resurrection – Robbie Robertson

Coverville 1583: The Alison Moyet/Yaz/Yazoo Cover Story

Sweet Dreams – Eurythmics

The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi

The Royal Scam – Steely Dan

Criminal — Fiona Apple

Vertigo – Billy Eckstine

Peter Sprague Plays Valse Warm and Hanalei Town

Let’s Stay Together – Al Green

Marnie – Nat King Cole

Rubberband Man – Spinners

I’m A Man – Chicago

Mississippi Queen – Mountain

Bohemian Rhapsody – The Muppets

On My Own – Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald

Old Lady Grey: Dee Palmer (1937-2026)

TED Recommends for Black Music Month: How Black girls can reclaim their voice in music by Kyra Gaunt

Clive Davis, Hitmaking Titan of the Music Industry, Dies at 94

Book review: Mona’s Eyes

“Schlesser’s passion for art is evident.”

My wife gave me the novel Mona’s Eyes by the French art historian Thomas Schlesser for Christmas 2025. A few months later, I asked her why. She thought it sounded interesting; I had not heard of it, honestly. Then, I was obliged to do a book review.

Mona, a ten-year-old schoolgirl – yes, she was named for the da Vinci piece – suddenly experiences a bout of inexplicable blindness. While the episode was temporary, her terrified parents took her to a physician.

The doctor’s examination found no physical cause of the event, so he recommended that Mona see a psychiatrist. Mona’s maternal grandfather, Henry, volunteered for the task. However, the art lover and expert eshewed taking her to the shrink. Instead, Henry takes Mona to various Parisian museums, hoping to help her appreciate the beauty of art, especially if she should become permanently blind.

Every Wednesday for a year, the pair visit a single masterpiece in one of three famed Parisian museums. Mona learns how each artist’s work shaped the world around them, with grandfather and grandchild engaging in what I’d considered a Socratic dialogue.

My initial difficulty with the book was figuring out how to approach the text. After the 20-page introduction, each six-to-eight-page chapter was a, for lack of a better word, a triptych. Part one is a narrative about Mona’s day, usually at school, at her dad’s shop, at the doctor’s office, or at home. The second part is, more or less, a page describing the artwork visited. Finally, the duologue between Mona and Henry.

Seeking an approach

I wondered: should I stop reading and look at the artwork to see how well the description matched? After contemplating looking at the pieces, I opted against it because I thought it would interfere with the flow.

I was very interested in the critical response to “Les Yeux de Mona”/ “Mona’s Eyes.” While it was a #1 bestseller on many lists, I found a lot of backlash against it.

One reviewer called it “an art history book that plays dress up as a novel… It’s too didactic to be entertaining as a story, and the art and discussions around the art are overpowering the plot, flimsy as it is.

“I feel that the plot was an excuse for Schlesser to showcase his knowledge about art… ending with an anticlimactic conclusion.” The ending was a bit predictable.

“What I liked. The concept of the book was enjoyable – short chapters, each focused on a specific piece of art, with Mona and her grandfather analyzing and drawing life lessons from them. Schlesser’s passion for art is evident. The way he describes the paintings and sculptures is vivid and really makes one see, with the mind’s eyes, what most of them look like in real life. The book also includes photographs of the artworks, allowing readers to reference and study them in (more or less) detail after reading the descriptions.

“The art and history lover in me also rejoiced at the trivia that Henry inserts into the conversations – bits and pieces about various artistic movements, about the lives of the artists, and connections between the various artworks in the novel.”

I totally agreed with the positive elements described.

OTOH

The complaints, and there were many, include “the plot felt forced and filled with insignificant details that did nothing to move the story along.” I was less bothered by this than some. Sure, there are threads in Mona’s school life that weren’t resolved. Nor was I bothered by Mona’s preternatural wisdom, if only because I bought into the mystical reason why.

The fact that Henry and Mona were lying to Mona’s parents for nearly a year was addressed, albeit obliquely.

I did have problems, though Mona’s dad was almost certainly an alcoholic, which he seemed to almost magically overcome when some tchotchkes he found at the curiosity shop sold; there’s a backstory about those pieces. And his new project suddenly brightened his outlook. In many ways, Mona’s parents were ciphers.

Here’s a piece from a Reddit feed titled, “Mona’s Eyes” is an outrageously repetitive art history book disguised as fiction (my manifesto).” A key paragraph: “Chapter after chapter after chapter. Don’t believe me? Read it. I can’t take it anymore. The fact that I’m expected to recommend this art history textbook disguised in clumsy fiction drag to innocent customers is crazy. Every time I do, I feel like I’m spitting in their food and picking their pocket.” Barnes & Noble selected the tome as Book of the Year.

Split decision

I’ve never seen so many one-star reviews with DNF (did not finish). I usually think that a one-star review without finishing the book is unfair, but I get it in this case.

Ultimately, I’m glad I read the book for the discussion of the art, which helped me see it in a fresh way. Incidentally, there is The Mona’s Eyes Reader’s Companion: Week by Week Guide to All 52 Artworks, Life Lessons & Discussion Questions by Claire Beaumont

But Mona’s Eyes is probably not a great NOVEL.

This is the basis of my oral book review at the Albany Public Library on Tuesday, April 14.

Sunday Stealing: Meme Schmeme – Part 2

friends

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Cheri is a blogger from the beautiful state of Georgia who didn’t often participate in memes but stole this one because “for whatever crazy reason” it appealed to her. We did Part 1 back in October. Now let’s do Part 2.

Meme Schmeme – Part 2

Complete the thought:

I LOVE TO have enough time in a day to do a little of this, a little of that. It is usually tied to playing CDs. I’ll write a blog post for one album, then wash the dishes and straighten up for another, then work on library stuff and bill paying for another. I might take a nap, or watch recorded television. As my late buddy Dustbury used to say, we are magpies, attracted to the next shiny thing.

Some recent albums played: Wildflowers – Tom Petty (Honey Bee); Robbie Robertson, eponymous (Somewhere Down The Crazy River); Guero – Beck (E-Pro); Surf’s Up – Beach Boys (Feel Flows)

I SOMETIMES will read three or four newspapers in a row because I get behind. There are usually stories, especially local ones, that I had missed online. And I like to read the funnies; yes, I could read them online, but that’s less fun.

I FEAR the loss of balance of power at the federal level of the United States. Congress took steps to push back against the executive branch’s unfettered war powers, then folded. “The high court’s decision to strip Haitians and Syrians of their protections from deportation had immediate ripple effects for immigrants and their employers.” And know that the Haitian aspect is racist – “they’re eating their cats.”

So far away

I MISS having friends around to talk with regularly. My besties are in Austin, Boston, and the Mid-Hudson. Or deceased. There is the telephone, I suppose.

I CRAVE a Porterhouse steak. It’s been years. Decades?

I CHERISH quality time with the kid, who’s all grown up. Every once in a while, she’ll let on that I didn’t totally wreck her growing up, including when we went out to dinner this past Wednesday.

I AM IMPATIENT WHEN I muck up something. I made an appointment to meet someone from a national library at my local library at 10 a.m. But because of my ongoing allergies/cold/flu, I went back to bed after breakfast and didn’t wake up again until 10:45. I am really annoyed with myself.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.