death Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The Juice

get it out of my head

It was oddly unsettling. When I was traveling across New York State, anticipating the April 8 eclipse with my best friend from college, the subject of O J Simpson, The Juice, came up.

I could not remember why, but MAK noted that he had seen a boxy white vehicle that perhaps reminded him of a Ford Bronco involved in the slow-speed highway chase after Simpson was supposed to surrender to police.

So he asked if Simpson was out of jail. I was fairly sure that he was, which proved to be accurate. He was “released from prison in 2017 after serving about nine years of a 33-year sentence for a kidnapping and armed robbery in Las Vegas.”

As I noted, in 2016, I watched O.J.: Made in America, “a sprawling five-part documentary on the cable sports network ESPN,” which I still recommend. It’s still on ESPN and available on other platforms as well.

After I watched the series, I wrote: ” I concluded that 1) O.J. likely did the murders but that 2) the prosecution did not make its case due to the tremendous efforts of the defense team and some of the rulings of Judge Lance Ito.” The most angry I ever saw a mild-manned work colleague was when the not guilty verdict, watched by an estimated 95 million people, was announced.

So it was weird that a person whom I hadn’t even thought about in over six years until that trip died four days later of prostate cancer, the same disease that killed my father and which basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is currently fighting.

Who are we?

On the trip, I said that the murder trial told a lot about America in terms of race, celebrity, media, and the justice system. Interestingly, Med Page Today touched on some of those in its story: “The public was mesmerized by his ‘trial of the century’ on live TV. His case sparked debates on race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice, and police misconduct.”

Of course, there were countless comments after Simpson’s death. Caitlyn Jenner, “who married Kris Jenner shortly after the Kardashian matriarch’s divorce from Robert Kardashian, who was Simpson’s defense attorney during the murder trial, was among the first to react on social media. ‘Good Riddance #OJSimpson,’ she tweeted.”

I was more interested in the response by Ron Goldman’s family. They called Simpson’s death “a mixed bag of complicated emotions” tied to the civil case Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman’s families filed in part to direct the proceeds of Simpson’s sort of confessional, If I Did It. They did not receive all they were due in the judgment. And the executor of Simpson’s willl says he’ll ‘do everything’ to ensure Goldman family gets ‘zero’ from the estate.

I’ve now purged the topic from my head. Probably.

Our mom knew stuff

1 Corinthians 12

In the ZOOM conversations I have with my sisters about 45 times yearly, I keep learning things about my parents.

Now, we realized early on that our mom knew stuff about finance. She was a bookkeeper in two Binghamton institutions, McLean’s Department Store and Columbia Gas and Electric. Later, she was a teller in Charlotte, NC.

I didn’t know until recently why she did not impart her wisdom to her children. She thought we were more intelligent than she was and that we would “figure it out.”

This sounds utterly Trudy. And it bugs me because we could have used her wisdom in this area. I know I had accumulated credit card debt for a time, which only got wiped out by my wife’s much better handle on finances, a topic that would make MEGO. It was also aided by winning money on a game show a quarter of a century ago.

But I’m also sad because it was her diminishing her gifts, her talents. She saw her husband as gifted in singing, painting, organizing, writing, schmoozing, etc. By comparison, she didn’t feel she had nearly as much to offer. And to suggest that her children know more than she did was incorrect.

Even though she went to church since before I was born, she never embraced the message of 1 Corinthians 12.

The Good Book

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

^“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines….

^”Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many… God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked itso that there should be no division in the body but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

My mom had many gifts, including understanding, compassion, and a fantastic mind for math, which meant the ability to stretch a dollar. I wish she knew how to share the latter. Some of my friends suggest her reluctance was just a generational thing, but I think it was more that she was squeezed emotionally by her husband and her mother. My mom died on 2 February 2011.

Día de los Muertos

All Souls Day

Día de los Muertos is Part Two of 70 who have passed, which began yesterday.

Please come to hear a special choir concert on November 3 at 6 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 362 State Street, Albany, NY. The choir will sing Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna, a 30-minute work with orchestra.

Margaret Lia: The den mother of my Cub Scout troop and mom of one of my best friends in elementary school and junior high.

Darby Penney: She wanted to save the world. Very occasionally, I tried to help.

Bonnie Deschane: She would clean our house some weekends. She was less good at the cleaning thing and better at the friend thing.

Robert Yates: My mother’s youngest first cousin; he was only seven years older than I was. Though we saw him only twice a year when I was growing up – I was in Binghamton, he was in Queens, NYC – he was the closest thing to an older sibling I had.

Paul Peca: Our sixth-grade teacher let us, even encouraged us to disagree with him. He supported Barry Goldwater for President and agreed with the US dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.

Comic books

Phil Seuling: Seagate was FantaCo’s primary comic book distributor, and he and Jonni Levas were Seagate. I went to a couple of his lavish parties in Brooklyn. Phil lived large.

Freda Gardner: I didn’t know that the nice older lady at church was a legend in the Presbyterian Church USA. Her wise counsel was invaluable when she and I were on pastor Glenn’s congregational team to aid him in his doctoral quest.

Tim Ryan-Pepper: Music was our bond

Sinon O’Neil: Every time I saw him, he always cheered us with questions about current events joyfully. And he was a crafty card player.

Helen Foley: The Binghamton Central High School public speaking and drama teacher and Rod Serling’s mentor was also involved with theater with my father.

Stan Moore: When I was church shopping in 1982, he gave the sermon at Trinity UMC on June 13 that got me to come back. But I avoided his vicelike handshake.

Paul Crowder: The choir director when I joined the Trinity UMC choir after not singing for over a decade.

Samuel Walker: When items were discovered in the possession of my father’s mother’s father that a good Christian man presumably should not own, it rocked my mother’s theological underpinning.

Charlie Kite: a First Pres church member and a physician. He was particularly effusive when he knew he was dying,

Donna George: She tried to do good things but often wasn’t taken seriously. Beleaguered would be the term I’d used. We bonded over this.

Margaret Hannay was the epitome of hospitality and grace. She was also brilliant.

A force

Ken Screven: A great local journalist and a fellow Times Union blogger for a time.

Lillian Johnson: Before my time there, she was the associate pastor at Trinity UMC. We fought the good fight, getting the then-current pastor to change his ways.

Fred Goodall: the youth choir director at Trinity AME Zion for many years.

Arnold Berman: my mother’s Charlotte’s brother, genealogist of the Berman/Barosin tribe.

Ida Berman: Charlotte’s sister, who used to take me to New York City art galleries and museums. She was a fine photographer.

Alice Schrade: an older member of First Pres. We adored each other. We’d have great philosophical conversations about race, justice, and other topics.

Arlene Mahigian: When I joined the Trinity UMC choir, she adopted me. She would take my robe home to wash, though I didn’t ask her. She had a tremendous soprano voice.

Keith Barber: We kept crossing paths on CDTA buses for which he was a ride evaluator, in Bible study, where he was the purveyor of a specific text, and as a raconteur.

Richard Powell: my father-in-law. I loved going to minor league baseball games with him. His love for jazz and country music I didn’t appreciate until after he died when I inherited part of his CD collection.

Robert Pennock: a baritone in the Trinity UMC choir, he was wise regarding Methodist polity.

Keyboards

Marcheta Hamlin: the organist at Trinity AME Zion who tried to teach me piano. My wife met her and commented on how warm and wonderful she was.

Agatha Green: My paternal grandmother died when i was 11. I’ve since learned so much about her courage and character.

Fran Allee: She was an educator and cook at Trinity UMC. Several of us traveled to her cottage, about an hour away each summer.

Mike Attwell: My racquetball competitor long before I joined him in the First Pres choir.

Adenia Yates: my mother’s maternal aunt, a buffer between me and her sister. She and I watched JEOPARDY, played cards and SCRABBLE.

Pat Wilson: A friend of my father, with whom I talked theology extensively.

Gertrude Williams: My maternal grandmother was a superstitious and controlling person who attempted to pass it along to her grandchildren; my sister and Leslie bought into it, but baby sister Marcia rightly ignored her.

Charlotte Yates: the mother of four of my mother’s first cousins. She had a strong sense of politics and art.

Jim Kalas: I knew from both work and Trinity UMC.

McKinley Green: Thanks to Pop, I got on TV a lot as a kid.

FantaCo

Raoul Vezina: Ever since I became the de facto keeper of the FantaCo flame, Raou never goes away, even though he died in 1983.

Gladys Crowder: We were in two choirs together at Trinity UMC and First Pres.

Trudy Green: Increasingly, I suspect there was more there than my mom showed. She’s mentioned a lot on February 2 (the anniversary of her death), November 17 (her birthday), Mother’s Day.

Norman Nissen: racquetball partner, book suggestion-maker, best man at my last wedding.

Les Green: My dad was a really complicated guy. He shows up on Father’s Day, August 10 (the anniversary of his death), and September 25 (the day before his birthday).

I can quickly think of a dozen more, but I will let it be.

Unanswerable questions to my dad

flights of fancy

Les Green.tree sweater I want to ask my dad, Les Green, some things. Of course, they are unanswerable questions since he died 23 years ago today.

I want to know if he knew the name of his biological father, Raymond Cone? What, if anything, did he know about him? And how was it growing up without a father? He WAS living in the abode of his grandfather, Samuel Walker.

What was his relationship with McKinley Green, the person I knew pretty early on – from my mother, not my father – was not my biological grandfather? Mac, or Pop, married Agatha Walker in 1931, but they were estranged by 1936. Yet Mac adopted Dad in 1944, three weeks before Les turned 18.

Where did my father serve in the military at the end of World War II? I know he was in the European Theater of Operations, but I don’t know specifically where. Does his picture appear in the October 1946 issue of Ebony magazine, and if so, which pic? Is there any truth to those apocryphal tales of living in Belgium for a time?

Why was he seemingly at arm’s length from the Walker family, most of whom lived in Binghamton blocks from our house? I saw my mother’s cousins and aunt Charlotte, who lived in Queens, NYC more often than most of his local cousins, aunts, and uncles. Specifically, why did he have a poorly veiled disdain for Aunt Jessie, his mother’s sister?

Could we have asked?

There was a point in the few years before his death that my sister Leslie thought to ask him some of these questions, though other parts we learned well after he died.

I was never comfortable telling him that his wife and, occasionally, his mother-in-law were telling his children stories about him that he himself never managed to share with us.

Thus, the frustration. Maybe he had some papers we haven’t encountered in nearly a half-century. I’m not holding my breath.

I believe that our work on genealogy has partially been the thing that has rekindled these musings. Did he know what his grandfather Walker did for a living? Did he know Samuel Walker’s parents’ names? Might they have been enslaved people?

What was his relationship with his grandmother Walker, Mary Eugenia, who died in 1944, long before I was born?

I suppose the musing is an idle exercise. But on the 23rd anniversary of Les Green’s death, I’m allowing myself a bit of permission to indulge in these flights of fancy.

The Great Dying in the Americas after 1492

Unbound

I had heard of the Great Dying in the Americas after 1492. Still, it was a shocking headline in my newsfeed. 56 MILLION. This is the “estimated number of Indigenous Americans killed by violence, famine, and disease due to European colonization from 1492 to 1600. That’s a 90% drop in the Indigenous population – a decline so rapid it caused the earth’s temperature to cool.”.

“We know the story. Or, at least, we think we do: In 1621, a shared feast between Pilgrims and Indigenous Americans in Massachusetts to give thanks for the harvest and survival of Plymouth colonists created a 400-year tradition Americans mark annually.

“Most of us know that tale is, in large measure, a lie…

“That story exists in part to obfuscate the quite bloody reality of how the nation was actually claimed by the colonists who arrived here,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, a journalist, activist, and advisory board member for The Emancipator.”

When facts such as these are shared, I hear so many non-Indigenous people complain, “Why are they ruining the best holiday?” I understand. Hey, I grew up with the myth as well. It was such an affirming, positive story that one wanted it to be true.

Instead

“So how do Indigenous people in America mark Thanksgiving? The ways are as diverse and complex as the communities themselves. They do mourn the atrocities their ancestors suffered. But Indigenous culture is also firmly rooted in the tradition of giving thanks. They find a way to do both.

“One of NoiseCat’s traditions is attending Sunrise Ceremonies at Alcatraz Island, the Indigenous land that became the now-shuttered prison, to commemorate a 19-month occupation that began in 1969. Bay Area Native American activists sought to reclaim the island under the terms of a 19th-century treaty.”

The article is from Unbound, a newsletter from The Emancipator, published by the Boston Globe. In each issue, “Kimberly Atkins Stohr, senior columnist for The Emancipator and The Boston Globe, explores past to present-day themes centered on antiracism and democracy.” She examines “some of the most urgent conversations on racial justice infused with context, news, and perspective.

The statistical citation is from Quarternary Science Reviews’ 2019 study Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 by Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark M. Maslin and Simon L. Lewis. You can hear Koch on the Last Born In The Wilderness podcast.