Ramblin' with Roger

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

In April and May of 1972, the Nixon administration kindled a major controversy “when the president ordered the renewal of bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong (April 16) and the mining of Haiphong Harbor as well as other harbors and inland waterways in North Vietnam” [announced the evening of Monday, May 8]. This latter act kindled student protests all across the country, and certainly at my college, the State University College at New Paltz, NY, as we felt this had escalated the VietNam conflict.

The chronology on some of this is a bit fuzzy, but I know there was a demonstration in the village. Some folks drove Read the rest of this entry »

Back on April 27, the Albany, NY area had a WIND advisory. I’m stubborn, though, since it was ostensibly warm enough to ride my bike to a certain point (by the school on Northern Boulevard for you locals). I needed the exercise, though I required gloves and a knit cap, because, as Jaquandor wrote about the winter: “Wind can pretty much render any set of weather circumstances unpleasant.” That piece came to mind during the sojourn.

How was it possible that I was ALWAYS riding into a headwind?
Read the rest of this entry »

Because it’s been 60 years since she ascended to the throne in the United Kingdom, there have been a number of commemorative coins and stamps issued with the image of Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. But long before that, QEII’s image has been showing up around the world.

I came across The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, as they appear on World Banknotes, which is an interesting evolution of the Queen, now in her ninth decade.

Her portrait was first featured on coins in 1953 issued in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Fiji, Jamaica, Malaya & British Borneo, Mauritius, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Whether or not she is wearing her crown depended on the monarchy’s relationship with the country. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a current subscription to TIME magazine because it was so cheap, I couldn’t help myself. I alternate between buying TIME and Newsweek because, invariably, one or the other will make a deal so enticing – “Come back, Roger!” – that, even if I read only one or two articles a week, it’s worth it.

It’s particularly valuable because one can also access articles online. I go to the TIME’s log-in menu, and do what I’m asked to do, then try to get to the online article Read the rest of this entry »

One of the dumbest things I ever did regarding this blog was starting it in May. That’s because there are three multi-day meetings I have to attend during the year, and two of them are in May. One is my work staff training, which in 2005 was in Lake Placid. It’s only a couple hours from my house, but it’s in the mountains.

The reason I remember this so well was that I would rush from a work session to the public library to post a blog post. If memory serves – and, increasingly, it does not – Blogger didn’t have a mechanism in 2005 whereby one could schedule a post for the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

When I wrote about the death of Mike Wallace of CBS News’ 60 Minutes, I was moved by a comment by Arthur@AmeriNZ: “I have a troubled reaction to Mike Wallace…I did enjoy many of his interviews, and I grew up with his version of Biography. However, he also did CBS Reports: The Homosexuals for which I have a really tough time forgiving him. Noted activist Wayne Besen called that broadcast ‘the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nation’s history.’ And it was.”

Seems to me that in order to have such feelings, it has to be from someone you liked and respected. If Congressman (R-FL) Allen West says that about 80 members of the Democratic Party are members of the Communist Party, it doesn’t matter much to me, because West has been, and is increasingly moreso, a doofus. But when someone you admire lets you down, it’s another issue entirely.

I’m sure I have lots of examples in my personal life, but the one in the public arena involved the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He was running for President in the 1984 campaign, and I was inclined to at least consider supporting him. But when news of the ethnic slur against Jews came out early in 1984, it was all over for me. The initial denial by Jackson, followed by his conspiracy theory, did not help matters at all. Though I did love him on Saturday Night Live.

What public figure have you admired who said or did something so egregiously wrong in your view that you still haven’t quite forgiven him or her?

Someone I knew personally died last week; he’s the third one in 2012, and the year is only a third over. He was a guy named Nate. I knew him because he represented his agency, the state Department of Transportation, in the same way I represent mine within the New York State Data Center Affiliate program. Early on, he would speak in such technical terms that he might has well have been speaking Klingon, so little I understood. But as I became more savvy with the data and the terminology, he became more comprehensible. He became a great resource for me. About 15 months ago, he discovered he had lung cancer, which had been treated until the last few days, when he went into hospice. He died at the age of 61. Read the rest of this entry »