My friend Dan has more than once labeled Ramblin’ with Roger as a “breakfast blog.” I still don’t know what that means, precisely. But I think the following post is more in keeping with what he’s talking about.
It was weird: the death toll in the Moore, OK tornado went from 37 to 51 to 91 to…24? I was watching a live feed on the Tuesday morning after the event from the OKC NBC-TV affiliate – the magic of the Internet – and they gave the 91 number, based on info they had gotten from the medical examiner’s office. Saw a lot of comments on Facebook about how the media was ghoulishly upping the numbers. I’ve often criticized them. but I don’t think that happened here, just a lot of multiple recordings of the same decedents by someone – the M.E.’s office perhaps. Then I get to see, Thank goodness, “ONLY 24 dead;” THAT is weird to read.
It’s interesting, too, that I actually worried a bit about people I don’t even know, such as Cheri and Dustbury, who are both fine.
***
The forecast in Albany Tuesday was for severe weather. I was at Corporate (frickin’) Woods at the northwest edge of Albany and saw nothing. But people downtown were chatting about downpours and hail; we’re talking a distance of three miles away. I HAVE seen that before, where it’s dry at the Albany airport, but evidently had been pouring at my house. They had canceled my daughter’s soccer 5:30 pm practice, probably because of a severe weather watch from 1:40 pm to, I think, around 10 pm.
10 pm, practically on the dot, I heard rumbles of thunder, heavy-duty rain. The lightning and thunder at 1 a.m. woke me from a dead sleep, but happily, the Daughter can sleep through almost anything.
Wednesday, got to work late because I had my monthly allergy shot. The power was mostly out until after 11 a.m. No computer, no Internet, no phones. Nasty weather in the midday, but amazingly nice to and from work.
We are preparing our living room to be painted by my father-in-law starting on Thursday, with help from my wife on Friday, and eventually me on the weekend. The key now is moving all the stuff, a job in itself, and something I prefer to paint, which I hate because I just can’t see the difference while I’m working between, say, an off-white and a pale yellow.
My wife and her father painted the dining room three years ago. The three splotches of test colors have been on our living room wall ever since. I’ll miss them, almost.
If I had my druthers, we’d move out for four days while painting; the smell of even the newer paints bug me at night. Oh, well.
***
My niece Rebecca Jade (pictured) is doing the Kickstarter thing for her new album. You can read all about it here. If I were to tell you she was really good, I would sound biased. But she is! Check out this review of a recent live performance of hers.
I don’t think the media was necessarily inflating the death toll, but I do blame 24/7 rolling news for the misinformation. The media demands to know immediately even though it is patently clear that authorities can have no idea.
I had similar misgivings over the Boston Marathon bombing when the airwaves were full of speculation about who had done it and why while the criminals were still on the run.
It seems to me that ‘news’ is mostly guesswork by supposed experts and that the reality takes a day or two to catch up.
You have a screwed-up hyperlink there, sir.
Greg- thanks. A function of the slash key on my keyboard not working properly.
When I hear news reports, sometimes my mind goes to “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley. Seems very true.
Lisa- so does mine, unfortunately. “It’s interesting when people die.”
Heh. A Breakfast Blog is one where the blogger tells us exclusively about his or her daily activities (“Let me tell you what I had for breakfast this morning! I had the same thing as yesterday but today I had a big glass of orange juice! Let me tell you how that came about!” etc.)
The problem with Breakfast Blogs is that at least 999 people out of 1000 have such boring lives AND are so unobservant that their blogs reflect this lack of living. But maybe one out of a thousand blog are like the one written by Roger Green, no matter how mundane his daily existence he is looking around and thinking about what he sees and he manages to convey his interest in life. And somehow his mundane existence becomes fascinating reading. It’s really an accomplishment.