Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing Demands the Truth!

comic book conventions

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!

This week’s meme was inspired by FOMA. He shared 10 random true statements. Let’s see if they’re true of you, too. You can answer with just true or false, or give a more elaborate answer if you’re so inspired.

TRUE OR FALSE: Sunday Stealing Demands the Truth!

1. I’m married.

Yes, for 27 years

2. I’m raising a teenager.

No. A couple of years ago, I was.

3. I recently vacationed in California.

Not recently. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve been to California since Rebecca and Rico’s wedding in 2005. No, that’s not correct; I went to tend to sister Leslie when she had an accident in 2018. Regardless, it’s the state I’ve visited most often outside the Eastern Time Zone. I’ve been to San Diego Padres games six times, the Oakland A’s, California Angels, and San Diego Chargers once each.

4. I have traveled to Asia.

No, alas. I’d probably go to Japan.

5. I have a dog.

I haven’t had a dog since I was a child.

Not a lot of money

6. I received money from a class action settlement.

I’ve received several really tiny payments. Last year, maybe a half dozen, totaling less than $250.

7. I’ve been in the waiting room when a family member had surgery.

Yes. My wife had foot surgery in 2017, and my daughter had an adenoidectomy in 2007; the latter was somewhat traumatic for parents and child. I swear my wife had oral surgery, but I don’t seem to have written about it.

8. I have attended a convention.

Several comic book conventions, including some local ones. Also FantaCon, in 1979-1981, 1983, 1988, 1989, and 2013. San Diego Comic-Con in 1987 and 1988. Undoubtedly others.

9. I subscribe to my local newspaper (either print or online).

Yes: the Times Union, plus the New York Times, the Guardian, and a couple of others.

10. I recently had work done to the exterior of my home.

Well, technically. We got a new fence connected to our back porch.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Hot Country Hits of 1986?

Tom Petty!

Were there any country hot country hits of 1986? The year had 51 songs that went to number one. The only reason there weren’t 52 was that the charts remained “frozen” for the last week of the year.

This occurrence was a manipulation by record labels, radio stations, and others to have as many #1 hits as possible. But when you have a #1 every single week, what is really hot? It’s quite an embarrassment in retrospect.

For the listener, it’s very difficult to really know most of these well. The last #1 song that year, for two weeks, was Mind Your Own Business by Hank Williams Jr. It was written and recorded by Hank Williams Sr. in the late 1940s. This recording features Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Tom Petty, and Rev. Ike! It likely would have topped the charts for a longer period.

Here are the others in chronological order:

Morning Desire – Kenny Rogers, written by Dave Loggins, second cousin to Kenny Loggins

Bop – Dan Seals

Never Be You– Roseanne Cash, written by Benmont Tench and Tom Petty of the Heartbreakers

Just In Case – Forrester Sisters; I have a 1990 album of theirs, Come Hold Me

Hurt – Juice Newton

Makin’ Up for Lost Time (the Dallas Lovers’ song) – Crystal Gayle and Gary Morris, written by Dave Loggins and Morris

There’s No Stopping Your Heart – Marie Osmond

Still The One

You Can Dream Of Me – Steve Wariner, written by John Hall (formerly of Orleans) and Wariner

Thinking About Love – Dolly Parton

I Could Get Used To You – Exile

What’s A Memory Like You (doing in a love like this) – John Schneider. The guy from The Dukes of Hazzard.

Don’t Underestimate My Love For You – Lee Greenwood, co-written by Dave Loggins

100% Chance of Rain– Gary Morris

She and I – Alabama

Cajun Moon – Ricky Skaggs

Now and Forever (You and Me) – Anne Murray

Once In A Blue Moon – Earl Thomas Conley

Grandpa Tell Me About The Good Old Days – The Judds

Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Hank Williams, Jr. The Fats Waller song; his given name was Thomas.

Tomb of the Unknown Love – Kenny Rogers

Whoever’s In New England – Reba McEntire

Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby– Ronnie Milsap. It is a 1957 song originally performed by the Tune Weavers

Life’s Highway – Steve Wariner

Mama’s Never Seen Those Eyes – The Forester Sisters

Livin’ In the Promiseland – Willie Nelson. A true patriotic song

I’ll do the next half of the year soon

9/11 plus 25

Day of Remembrance

It’s 9/11 plus 25 years, and my thoughts are all over the place. I recently received an email for a Day of Remembrance blood drive from the American Red Cross. “We invite you to honor the heroes and victims we lost with a simple act of kindness, a blood donation. Our community is strongest when we come together to support one another. The patients who receive your blood may never know your name, but they will always cherish your generosity.”

I’m always in favor of blood drives. Back in 2001, I had a donation scheduled for a couple of days after the awful event. The ARC called me NOT to donate because so many people were already doing something, such as donating blood, ostensibly to give to the survivors. Except that there were relatively few of them in NYC after the buildings collapsed; for instance, about 20 were pulled from the Twin Towers rubble. The Red Cross knew that I was a “regular” and that I would come back.

Forgetting?

2008: I wrote, Even three or four years after September 11, 2001, there was this public conversation that people were “forgetting” 9/11. Or more precisely, had “forgotten the lessons of 9/11.”

If you watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center, you didn’t forget 9/11. Seeing the two towers practically evaporate, you didn’t forget. Nearly three thousand sad stories, and actually, exponentially many more. The anniversary memories I am hearing now are poignant; one I heard recently involved a then two-year-old who doesn’t remember her mother except for a recording, for her mom was a first responder who was killed trying to save others.

My family and I went to the 9/11 Memorial in November 2013. “In honor of the 25th anniversary, 9/11 Memorial & Museum Chairman Mike Bloomberg will match every gift to The Never Forget Fund.”

As horrifically sad as the day was, there was a sense of community, collective grief, and, dare I say, camaraderie. People suddenly didn’t hate the elite New York City folks. Everything You NEED to Know About SNL Season 27 (2001-02) shows how the Saturday Night Live writers and actors pivoted in their approach to comedy.

My wife and I finally got to see Come From Away in 2025, and it is very much in the 9/12 spirit.

Forgotten?

But what were the “forgotten” lessons of 9/11? Newsweek has been running a series, The Road to 9/11, which requires a subscription. Here’s the intro – August 7, 2001: “The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published a secret report on ‘Iraq‘s Reemerging Nuclear Weapon Program,’ part of a raging debate within U.S. intelligence community agencies as to the state of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program. United Nations inspectors had been banned from inside the country since November 1998, leaving U.S. intelligence to largely speculate as to what was going on.”

September 1, 2001: In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance detected a build-up of Taliban forces on September 1, evidently in preparation for an upcoming offensive. The intelligence portended something much larger, but at the time, the CIA failed to see the gathering pieces.

Iraq?

2011: I crashed Albany Pro Musica to sing the Mozart Requiem on a very windy 11 September 2002; that was the only day ever that I wore a tuxedo to work. Exactly two weeks later, I began my weekly vigil, with a number of people who had been there weeks and months before, in my opposition to the war in Iraq. What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Took a bit of grief over that. And it would have been one thing if it were only “regular people” who jumped all over France for failing to support the curiously illogical war in Iraq; it was the US Congress that opted for the jingoistic ‘freedom fries’. How embarrassing.

Indeed, we are still learning from the event. Just this week, from the NYT: After 9/11, Documents Suggest New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality. New York City officials are making public more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What lesson?

So if the “lesson” was that we should adopt the so-called USA PATRIOT ACT, or that a new and unwieldy Department of Homeland Security is necessary, or that Islamophobia is acceptable, then I feel we totally missed the point.

From journalist and former Carter White House speechwriter James Fallows, thoughts on the legacy of 9/11, 25 years after the terrorist attacks: 9/11 changed the U.S.; can we change back?

But if we’ve decided that we can – to quote the cliché – disagree without being disagreeable, and look out for each other, that’s the lesson I can get behind.

There was a U.S. mint in Charlotte, NC?

now TWO museums

In something called the Epoch Times, their Today in History for July 27 was “1844: A fire destroys the U.S. Mint in Charlotte, North Carolina. There was a U.S. mint in Charlotte, NC?

Wikipedia confirms that the Charlotte Mint was the first United States branch mint that specialized in gold coinage.” On March 3, 1835, the United States Congress approved legislation to establish several branch mints; the Mint Act of 1835 stated, “…one branch [to be established] at the town of Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, in the state of North Carolina, for the coinage of gold only…And for the purpose of purchasing sites, erecting suitable buildings, and completing the necessary combinations of machinery…for the branch at Charlotte, fifty thousand dollars”

The Charlotte Mint operated after the 1844 hiatus on a more limited basis. But it suffered a more serious blow when “the discovery of massive gold deposits in California sent the local miners packing. They figured they could get rich quicker over there. A lot of the ‘49ers were formerly North Carolina miners!”

Niece Alex clued me in. North Carolina was technically the first gold rush (at least, according to her 8th grade social studies teacher) before California and was the leading gold producer.

Yup. Following the first documented discovery of gold in the United States, the country’s first gold mine was established in North Carolina at the Reed Gold Mine. Other gold was dug from up to 600 mines in Mecklenburg County, with the primary city source being the Rudisill Gold Mine near downtown.

Alex noted, “The Reed Family (we live near Reedy Creek) used a 17-pound nugget as a doorstop and eventually sold it for about three dollars!”

Segue

She noted, “It’s also my favorite Charlotte lore that allegedly there are gold stores still hidden underneath Uptown Charlotte (there’s gold in them thar foothills!”) The rebuilt version is now her favorite art museum.

“With two locations — Mint Museum Randolph in the heart of Eastover and Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts —the Mint boasts one of the largest collections in the Southeast and is committed to engaging and inspiring members of the global community.

Should Singers Pack It In?

Six Iconic Singers Who Should Call It a Day

Periodically, I see articles asking whether specific singers should pack it in, whether their vocal cords are too shot to keep performing in public. I’ve long been of the school that the market should decide whether the performer should hang it up.

It’s often difficult for players in many endeavors to know when to hang up the cleats. Willie Mays, the best baseball player in my lifetime, cringed as he noted he batted only .211 in 1973, his final season. (It’s not very good.)

I recall that Mick Jagger didn’t think he’d still be singing in his fifties. Yet, he’s still at it in his eighties, even though he was on more than one of those lists of “he should stop” more than a decade ago.

When Pete Seeger would perform in his later years, his voice was largely shot, but he could still play the banjo and tell stories; Pete was being inspirational Pete, whom I saw dozens of times and met once.

The 85-year-old Martha Reeves blamed her backup singers for her national anthem performance.

I saw a PBS event, America Made In Virginia: 250 Years Together on July 4. One of the performers was Judy Collins, whose voice I adore; I saw her live in 1980. In the presentation, she was a bit shaky early on, but she got better over time. Still, the 87-year-old is on her retirement tour

Several people had newsworthy physical ailments that have sidelined them for a time recently, such as Frankie Valli, Rod Stewart, and Barry Manilow.

Call it a day?

Rand Bishop’s piece on Medium recommends Six Iconic Singers Who Should Call It a Day and Pack It In. “The human voice is a machine. And machines break down.”

He praised the incomparable Tony Bennett, who still could produce at 95. I watched his special that featured Lady Gaga. He might not have remembered the performance the next day, but he delivered musically when it mattered.

Conversely, Stevie Nicks, Jon Bon Jovi, and Ann Wilson make the list of should-be retirees. I have no specific info on them. Neil Diamond is noted, but the very few times he’s performed in recent years, his fans don’t mind carrying the load.

This leaves two Pauls. Bishop notes, correctly, “McCartney’s guest appearance on a recent Saturday Night Live revealed severely compromised vocal chops.” He has put together a decent album recently, however. One commenter said that he hasn’t been any good in 30 years, which is nonsense. The show I saw in 2014 was great!

There goes Rhymin’ Simon

As for Simon, he was quite open about his hearing loss in this November 2024 interview. He’s been able to perform by changing mic placement and creating different arrangements for some songs. I watched a show from his A Quiet Celebration tour online, and it sounded much like his Stanford show in early June.

“Simon and company closed the second set with the always-fun ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,’ with [Edie] Brickell reappearing to handle the famed whistle solo that her husband originally did on the 1972 studio recording. The whole crew then returned for a four-song encore — highlighted by the gorgeous take on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” to close — before taking their bows in front of the highly appreciative audience.

“Yet, Simon still had one more in him and remained on the stage after the other musicians departed. What came next was the moment that everyone in attendance will likely remember for years to come as he glided into a precious, humbling and completely raw solo take on Simon and Garfunkel’s classic ‘The Sound of Silence.’

“It was one of those perfect concert moments, as Simon turned to the only song that could really bring this Quiet Celebration to a close in such a fitting and heartfelt manner.”

A buddy saw one of the two nights he was at Tanglewood in late June. This review was of the other night but is just as complimentary as my pal reported. Paul Simon needed a workaround and found it. Bravo for him; let him keep plucking away.