Month: October 2008

The Lydster, Part 55: Politics and Race


Carol and I have never talked to Lydia about the Presidential campaign. Yet, because she’s been exposed to it from TV or her friends or whatnot, she knows that John McCain and Barack Obama are running for President. (She thinks that Hillary Clinton is still running, and I haven’t been able to dissuade her of that fact; I KNEW the primary season ran too long.)

Not only does she know this, but she can identify the three of them by sight, although she does sometimes confuse McCain with other gentlemen near his vintage, including Joe Biden.

She doesn’t know Sarah Palin, but I’ve heard her say to her stuffed animals/sisters, “I’m going to be governor of Alaska.” I have no idea what THAT’S about.

But there is one big disappointment: she supports McCain. I don’t know if it’s his avuncular look or what, but she’s glommed onto the GOP candidate. Just one more reason not to lower the age of voting to four years old.

I realize that we haven’t really talked to her about race. It was important for us to go to a mixed race church and for her to attend a mixed race day care, but we never talked about it overtly. I realized this when she referred to a woman in our church as a lady with “brown hair and brown skin.” (Which is why I’ve always had a difficult time believing that people don’t see race; it may not be important to them, but if a four-and-a-half year old picks up on it, as a matter of fact, then I suspect a universality to it.)

ROG

ROG

BeckyRebecca is 30

One of the things I came across in my sojourn through old journals was how much I adored my eldest niece, Becky, practically from the moment I saw her. I wrote about her ad nauseum. She was the first person I could just love without the complications that being the child or sibling or lover tend to engender.

Becky was born five days shy of her parents’ third anniversary, which was our first linkage since I was born five days shy of MY parents’ third anniversary. She and her family were living in NYC and I in the Albany area at the time, so I recall seeing her about a month after she was born and being entranced. I made it to her first and second birthdays before her parents moved south.

But Becky and I always had a bond. I came across pictures of my grandmother’s funeral in 1982 and I’m the one tending to her while she’s coloring or needing to go for a walk. Other pictures show me always carrying her around. In some way, she helped train me to be a good uncle for four more nieces and maybe even a good dad to Lydia.

Much more recently, she got married on my birthday, as it turns out, to a decent guy named Rico.


Becky is in the center. This is one of a number of the bands she sings with, the one she performed with last December 31. Her birthday’s actually tomorrow.

Happy 30th birthday, Rebecca. I love you.

Uncle ROG

ROG

QUESTION: Political endorsements

As you probably know, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President. In his conversation with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press, he noted that if he had just wanted to endorse the black candidate he could have endorsed Obama months ago. Powell’s a Republican and would have endorsed McCain but for his unfocused and nasty campaign and his choice of Sarah Palin. Naturally, commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan suggested that Powell endorsed Obama because they’re both black; my favorite resdponse to that.

1. Do political endorsements matter to you? If so, from whom?
It’s much more likely to matter to me in a local race where I don’t have enough of the facts.
2. Do you think political endorsements matter to the population at large?
I was struck by the number of newspapers that endorsed Bush in 2004 who are endorsing Obama in 2008.
3. Can this election be stolen?
Probably.
But I’m much less worried by ACORN than I am by polling stations with long lines (as has already happened in early voting in Florida) and/or with machines that don’t act as they should. This recent New Yorker column speaks to my concern:
“The idea that Democrats try to win elections by arranging for hordes of nonexistent people with improbable names to vote for them has long been a favorite theme of Rove-era Republicans. Now it’s become a desperate obsession.”
More cynical people than I believe that bringing up the Bradley effect is a screen for hiding voting machine manipulation and disenfranchisement strategies. Tell people to call their COUNTY board of election and make sure they’re registered and verify the voting location. (My voting location has changed, but it’s not reflected on the STATE Board of Elections site.)
4. Would you like to know more about the health of the four candidates for President and Vice-President on the major party ticket? This article suggests we don’t know enough about ANY of them, especially McCain and Biden, but also the status of Obama’s cessation of smoking. The mysterious circumstances around the birth of Sarah Palin’s last child is pretty much the ONLY info the press has on her health.

[Stolen from the Frog.
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STILL undecided?
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Oooh, the photo above? That’s a shot of a lovely 8 by 10 color glossy that a relative of mine, a Republican but not a McPalin supporter, received from the RNC and gave to me, knowing just how much I would appreciate it. And I do, I really do. I obliterated the name so you can photoshop in the name of your favorite liberal and make him or her nuts.

Wait, what if someone did that [GULP] to ME?! And it must be a different Roger Green…

ROG

ROG

October Ramblin’

I have no idea how or why, but someone I do not know wrote to me and asked: “Do you know why Amy Madigan was not cast as Allison French in the 2008 movie Appaloosa. She’s married to Ed Harris who co-wrote the screenplay, directed & starred in the movie?” I wrote back, “I have no idea except that Renee Zellweger is younger and more famous.”
I did also include a couple quotes:
September 13, 2006
Harris’ wife, actress Amy Madigan, informed the [SF] Chronicle that she won’t be appearing in the film because there’s no role for her in it.

October 16, 2007
Tavis Smiley: How is [Ed], by the way?
Amy Madigan: He’s wonderful. He’s directing a film right now in New Mexico called “Appaloosa” with – and he’s also acting in it – with Viggo Mortensen. He’s playing his part in that, and Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons, and they’re just riding horses, and they have guns, and it’s a very cool story, based on a Robert Parker novel, as a matter of fact.
Tavis: After 23 years of marriage…?
Amy: Twenty-four.
Tavis: Twenty-four years – you guys are used to being apart, I guess, for extensive time?
Amy: Yeah, but I still don’t like it. We’re just revisiting – we’re lucky because when we’re together we really have all that time, but it’s still difficult.
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I Am the Walrus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The song also contains the exclamation goo goo g’joob with “koo koo g’joob heard clearly in the second. Various hypotheses exist regarding the origin and meaning. One is that the phrase was derived from the similar “koo koo ka choo” in Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson, written in 1967. However, the film The Graduate, where “Mrs. Robinson” debuted, did not appear until December 1967, a month after “I Am the Walrus”, and The Graduate Original Soundtrack (which contained only fragments of the final version of “Mrs Robinson”) was not until January 1968.
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There’s a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It’s about eliminating the ‘drive-through’ Mastectomy where patients are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.
Lifetime Television has put this bill on their Web page with a petition drive to show support. Last year over half the House signed on. Sign the petition if you feel so moved; you need not give more than your name, state, and zip code.
Possibly not coincidentally, there was a story on ABC News last week about a father and daughter who both had breast cancer. I recall that Ed Brooke, former US Senator (R-MA) had breast cancer. Here are some stats. So while over 99% of people getting v=breast cancer are women, men can get it too.
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alan david doane has started a blog to promote his freelance copywriting services. I understand he works in both UPPER and lower case.
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An old friend, Elinor Brownstein im very excited that the musical she wrote is being produced: Oy Vay, the Musical
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Chicken soup for stressed-out pandas
The Wuhan Zoo in central China has been feeding its two pandas home-cooked chicken soup twice in a month to reduce stress and give them a nutritional boost, a zoo official said Friday.
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“A church squabble of ten years’ standing at Wallpack Center, NJ has developed a very singular phase. When the church was built, some ten years ago, the church people were divided on the subject of the site. Later, their choir became the center of the quarrel. A part of the congregation wanted the organist and singers of their choice, while others were opposed to them. The past few weeks the feeling has been getting more and more bitter. A few days ago there was to have been a special service, for which another organist was engaged, but on gathering at the church the congregation was amazed to find that someone had entered the building and, after daubing the organ inside and out with tar, had sprinkled on a bountiful supply of
feathers. The whole organ, cover, keyboard, stops, pedals, and all had received the double coat. This is certainly the most ridiculous display of petty vengeance on record”. From the News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, October 26, 1883. (Re-printed in The American Organist, October 2008, p. 52.)
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Condolences to my friend Mary whose brother Tim died at the age of 46 after spending the last 10 years of his life fighting a battle with adult onset myotonic dystrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy.

ROG

ROG

ABC Wednesday: N is for Newman


One of the things I just didn’t realize that I just did not see that many of Paul Newman’s films. I never saw either of the billiards pictures, The Hustler or The Color of Money, I managed to miss Hud. Though I swear I had seen Cool Hand Luke, when I was watching some PBS special about Warner Brothers pictures, WHICH SHOWED THE ENDING, I realize that I’d just seen several clips and not the whole thing.

I did absolutely see some of his films, though:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 – especially loved the knife fight
The Sting 1973 another film I enjoyed greatly
The Towering Inferno 1974 this not so much, but I went to see both shake (Earthquake) and bake (TI) in the day
The Verdict 1982 – possibly my favorite movie of his
Blaze 1989 – Paul as Huey Long
Nobody’s Fool 1994 – filmed in upstate New York; an underrated film, I think
Message in a Bottle 1999 – it was OK, but loved the scenes with Paul
It must be the presence he had in the films that I DID see that gave me the sense that I had see more of them than I had.

I read lots of things about Paul Newman after his death on September 26, 2008. Some were in obvious places such as People and Entertainment Weekly, and even Sports Illustrated. But my favorite piece actually appeared in Advertising Age, talking about the secret to marketing the Newman’s Own products. He realized that people might buy the product once because his name was on the bottle, and perhaps twice because the proceeds were going to charity. But if he wanted an ongoing relationship with his customers, he had to make sure the product was actually GOOD. A simple, perhaps obvious point, but one that many celebrity-owned businesses and other entrepreneurial ventures failed to realize.

ROG

ROG
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