Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing, before summer slips away

URGENT and IMPORTANT

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!

Since it’s the Labor Day weekend, we’re going to keep this simple. On us all! The first question came courtesy of AI.

Labor Day Questions

1) What’s something you want to do before summer slips away?

Back in January, I wrote to a good friend, “The more I do, the further behind I am. How is this possible?”

He wisely replied, “The financial planner I worked for said it’s because we have two to-do lists in our heads (probably on paper, or your computer, for people like you and me): they are labeled URGENT and IMPORTANT, and new URGENTS always shove the IMPORTANT ones further and further down. Since you asked.”

So the biggest URGENT series – certain of you have some idea what that is- has utterly obliterated the IMPORTANT items on my list since June, such as:

Cleaning my office. Now worse off.

Cleaning my side of the bedroom, the Great Reorganizing. I had a brief window where I made some progress, but it stalled at the beginning of August.

Finding speakers for the FFAPL book reviews/author talks.

Calling a meeting of a genealogy group; I’m the chair, and I meant to do it in August.

What are books?

2) What book are you currently reading?

I’m not reading any books. I don’t even have time to read a daily newspaper. Eventually, I will have to tackle The Spirit of Philadelphia: A Call to Recover Founding Principles by Chris Gibson because I am reviewing it on October 27, but that’s SO far away; he lied.

3) What have you been listening to?

THAT I do because it’s necessary for the soul. Random Dolly Parton videos that pop up on YouTube, often as part of the Trio, with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, such as After the Gold Rush on David Letterman.

Two Beatles covers: the fascinating Blackbird by New York Vocal Collective and Can’t Buy Me Love by Casey Abrams, featuring Haley Reinhart, Charles Jones, and my first niece, Rebecca Jade.

September birthdays: Billy Preston – Do Want You Want To from the That’s The Way God Planned It album produced by George Harrison, which I first heard in Poughkeepsie, NY, in May 1971.

Chrissie Hynde and Martin Chambers of the Pretenders have birthdays this week. That first eponymous album had three or four singles, but the track that caught my attention in my recent play was the penultimate track, Lovers of Today.

Daniel Lanois is a record producer whose first album of his own, Acadie, features The Maker.

Time and Tide – Basia.

4) What shows or movies have you been watching?

My wife managed to get through seasons 3 through 5 of Only Murders in the Building. I watched ESPN JEOPARDY, since the regular show is on hiatus for the summer; I knew so little, yet there were things I got that none of the contestants even rung in on.

Hot Adult Contemporary #1 hits for 1986

hefty crossover with the Hot 100 pop hits

The #1 Hot Adult Contemporary Hits of 1986 had been a category called easy listening for the latter half of the 1960s and most of the 1970s. It became Adult Contemporary in the spring of 1979, then Hot Adult Contemporary in the autumn of 1984.

The roster has a hefty crossover with the Hot 100 pop hits, which I linked to last week. So I’m only linking to the songs that differ, but I’m listing them all.

Greatest Love Of All – Whitney Houston, five weeks at #1 AC, three weeks at #1 pop

Glory Of Love – Peter Cetera, five weeks at #1 AC, two weeks at #1 pop

Stuck With You – Huey Lewis & the News, three weeks at #1 AC and pop

Sara – Starship, three weeks at #1 AC, one week at #1 pop

These Dreams – Heart, three weeks at #1 AC, one week at #1 pop

Live To Tell – Madonna, three weeks at #1 AC, one week at #1 pop

Love Is Forever – Billy Ocean, three weeks at #1 AC, #16 pop

That’s What Friends Are For – Dionne & Friends, two weeks at #1 pop, four weeks at #1 pop

The Next Time I Fall- Peter Cetera with Amy Grant, two weeks at #1 AC, one week at #1 pop

The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby & The Range, two weeks at #1 AC, one week at #1 pop

Friends and Lovers – Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson, two weeks at #1 AC, #2 for two weeks pop, thanks to exposure on TV’s Days of Our Lives

Throwing It All Away – Genesis, two weeks at #1 AC, #4 pop

Words Get In The Way – Miami Sound Machine, two weeks at #1 AC, #5 pop. Featuring Gloria Estefan

Your Wildest Dreams – The Moody Blues, two weeks at #1 AC, #9 pop

Love Will Conquer All – Lionel Richie, two weeks at #1, #9 pop

I’ll Be Over You – Toto, two weeks at #1 AC, #11 pop

Overjoyed – Stevie Wonder, two weeks at #1 AC, #24 pop

#1 AC for one week

How Will I Know – Whitney Houston, two weeks at #1 pop

They’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry) – Billy Ocean, one week at #1 pop

Secret Lovers – Atlantic Starr, #3 pop for two weeks

No One Is To Blame – Howard Jones, #4 pop

The Sweetest Taboo – Sade, #5 pop

My Hometown – Bruce Springsteen, #6 pop

Go Home– Stevie Wonder, #10 pop

Designated pray-er

eulogy and benediction

My wife, daughter, and I went to dinner sponsored by the Capital District Cameroonian Association of New York (CDCA-NY) on a Saturday night a few months ago. As we sat at a table before the meal, one of the organizers, who is also a member of our church, asked if I would give the invocation. I would be the designated pray-er.

I mumbled to myself briefly before he said, “Or I could try to get somebody else.” Geez, I didn’t want him to have to do that. After all, I’m about 3% Cameroonian. For about ten minutes, I feverishly wrote something that seemed appropriate and gave the prayer.

It’s interesting that when it comes to giving public prayers, I’m not terribly comfortable doing so outside a church setting. When my in-laws would get together back in the 20-oughts and 20-teens, my MIL would often designate me to bless the food. That was no big deal.

But I was working at the NY Small Business Development Center as a librarian. We had our statewide staff training in Manhattan in the spring of 2002, so our first collective gathering after 9/11. The local center had arranged for clergy to deliver the opening invocation, but they didn’t show up. At the last minute, either someone from the center arranging the event or maybe our state director asked me to do it. Er, ah… sure, and I did.

Some folks actually called me Pastor Green

For some weeks thereafter, there was a rumor within the NY SBDC that I WAS a pastor. Nah, though, if you had asked me when I was about 11 to 15 years old what I would be when I grew up, I might have said a minister.

A few years ago, I was searching for myself on Newspapers.com and found three pieces, all in the first third of 1970. There was the famous Green Family Singers article. I found a notice about a Negro History Week commemoration at which several people, including me, were reading Langston Hughes’ poems, and my sister Leslie played guitar and sang.

Then there’s the event mentioned above, the second anniversary of MLK’s death. Please note who was giving the eulogy and benediction. BTW, I don’t recall doing this.

Anyway, I’m apparently blessed with a particular skill set.

Book review: Big Jim and the White Boy

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reimagined

Even before illustrator Marcus Kwame Anderson gave a talk at the Albany Public Library on June 9, I was inclined to purchase his book Big Jim and the White Boy, written by David F. Walker. The 270+ page graphic novel is “an American classic reimagined.” Radically reimagined, to be sure. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is the book in question.

After the introductory page about Samuel Clemens, there are four pages that would lead one to believe they were illustrations from the Twain book. That is, until an old black man from 1932 Kansas says that that wasn’t the way it happened.

The story mostly bounces between the 1850s/1860s and the 1930s. Jim is searching for his kidnapped wife and children, accompanied by Huck. Their travels send them to the South and Midwest. The protagonists become multidimensional characters. Occasionally, the narrative detours into the 1980s and a professor/descendent of Jim fills in some of the connective tissue.

a marvel

Women Write About Comics notes: “Big Jim and the White Boy is a marvel of the graphic novel format. Not only does the creative team expertly wrangle four different timelines, but they’ve given the book several narrators who use the power of oral storytelling to share stories through the generations until it reaches us, the reader.”

Further: “In the original book, Jim was known only in relation to Huck. But in this book, through the eyes of Jim and his descendants, we see him as a strong man with a great deal of love for his mother, sister, wife, and children. We also see him as a man who opposes the subjugation to which he and his loved ones have been forced to live. This is a politically charged retelling that doesn’t hold back from the horrors of slavery—be it the physical violence, sexual abuse, lynchings, or family separations. The parts of slavery that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn glossed over drive much of the story here.

In 2024, Walker and Anderson were interviewed by NPR’s Scott Simon. They discuss the novel, including “how they turned Jim into a multidimensional character… and whether Huck and Jim were ever really friends.”

The N-word appears, though it is struck through in every case except one, but it is still readable. The author’s note describes this more: “I do not like the word, but it is important to the authenticity of the historical period in question, not to avoid it, offensive though it may be.”

I know Marcus through his work at the Underground Railroad Education Center.

What’s your favorite TV theme song?

Greg Burgas, AGAIN

Greg Burgas is at it again, this time asking, What’s your favorite TV theme song?

This is TOUGH for me. I have seven CDs called Television’s Greatest Hits. Each disc has 65 TV themes, starting with kids’ shows and then sitcoms, dramas, and the like. Plus I have show-specific albums for The Drew Carey Show (which had THREE different themes), Friends, The Simpsons, and others. I LOVE TV themes, at least the ones from the 20th century; I’m not really up on 1hemes from this century.

I was very fond of the Peter Gunn theme, written by Henry Mancini. But I only learned about it after the fact. It was so iconic that in 2023, CBS Sunday Morning captured his old mates such as Quincy Jones and John Williams rerecording it. Mancini, BTW, also wrote the theme for Newhart, the Vermont-themed show.

My all-time favorite theme song composer is Mike Post, who created, among others, Law & Order, The Rockford Files, and my favorite, Hill Street Blues, which has a certain melancholy that suits the program.

There are a lot of themes that include lyrics. Greg picked Cheers as his favorite, and it’s a very worthy choice. But I must admit being a sucker for the ones from an earlier era, such as Gilligan’s Island and the Hooterville Trilogy. My favorite from this era was Mr. Ed; I still remember most of the words.

Then there were the cartoons, almost all of which had lyrics. My favorite was Top Cat. I could make the case for George of the Jungle, though, because Weird Al Yankovic did a straight, non-parody version.

Fishin’ Hole

Earle Hagen wrote two of my favorite themes growing up, the shows of Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke. But I appreciated the themes of two of my dad’s favorite shows as well, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.

I liked the themes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In The Family, MASH, and Sanford and Son, which I heard on the radio recently.

But if I had to pick just two songs, one with lyrics and one without:

The Jeffersons – Movin’ On Up, sung by Ja’Net DuBois, “to that deee-luxe apartment in the sky”

Perry Mason – and the outro is really orchestral. I swear the Nylons’ beginning of Town Without Pity borrowed from the Mason theme.