Month: May 2012

Embracing the blogging technology

To this day, I still write my blog in Blogger, then copy and paste in WordPress, because I’m too tired/lazy/dense to figure out how to size pictures in WP.

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 of 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. (And if it did, I hadn’t figured it out yet.)

It also took me weeks to figure out how to put graphics in my blog. I had READ the manual, but I just didn’t get it, until I finally did. Now, to this day, I still write my blog in Blogger, then copy and paste in WordPress, because I’m too tired/lazy/dense to figure out how to size pictures in WP, and it also serves as a backup to my primary blog. The reason I work ahead in my blog is that if/when Blogger breaks down, as it did last year around this time, it doesn’t totally screw me up.

When I started my blog in the Times Union a few years later, I remember wanting to use a picture of Dudley Do-Right and compare it with then NYS Governor Eliot Spitzer. The cartoon graphic was HUGE, larger than the page I was writing on. I had to get the administrator to fix it. Now I just write THOSE pieces in Blogger as well.

I write all of that to say that there may be some low-content days this month. This is not because I can’t think of anything to write; it’s because I don’t have time to write it. On the other hand, I DO have some significant revelation this month.

Unforgivable QUESTION

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?

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?

Wall of Death

“You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive”

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 well have been speaking Klingon, so little I understood. But as I became savvier 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. I missed going to his funeral and the shiva, though I did learn about the best kosher supermarket.

In the same Sunday obituary section was news of the death of the adult daughter of a friend of mine. A sad story.

A couple of years ago, an old buddy of mine from the FantaCo days died at the age of 47 after a stroke. I posted his obituary, which I didn’t write, online. A few days ago, his sister wrote to me. She hadn’t seen him in 30 years, did not know he died until she saw my reposted document, and wanted to know more. I got her in touch with a former employer of his who wrote to her. She wrote back with a three-page thank you.

A woman on my floor who I would see regularly had been missing for a week and a half. She mentioned that her mom just died.

Yet with all of that, or maybe because of all of that, the song running through my head is Wall of Death by Richard and Linda Thompson, from their last album together, Shoot Out the Lights.

The lyrics:
Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Oh let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive

Here’s a live version much in the style of the record.

From this article: “They approach the song’s declaration, joyfully or not, as a philosophy for living. Ideal for a pub setting, their vocals are stout. The same goes for the attitude Thompson has conjured. A world of risk and intrigue is favored over one with the comforts and predictability of an orderly life.

“A life of mystery and a hope of fortune occur when breaking from the ordinary. Thompson declares riding ‘The Wall of Death is the nearest to being free.’ He takes a dim view toward the rides (and a lifestyle) that offer a familiar outcome.”

So perhaps the lesson I’ve absorbed is to live your life to the fullest, for you just don’t know how much time you have.

Free Comic Book Day is like visiting my hometown

Binghamton and comic books, parts of “my ever present past.”

I always go to Free Comic Book Day, sometimes with my daughter, sometimes alone. This year, it will be on Saturday, May 5 at a comic book store near you (I hope). I go because I like seeing a busy comic book store, and I’m always treated like visiting royalty at a local proprietor’s shop. For those of you who don’t know, I worked a FantaCo, Albany’s first direct market comic book shop; the store was open from 1978-1998, and I worked there from 1980-1988. And I like getting something for free, although I ALWAYS buy something as well.

But it’s also a little sad. While there are good books out there, so much of it is…not. Even a comic nerd such as Alan David Doane recently noted: “My trouble with comics right now is that so very few appeal to me.”

This reminded me of my treks to my hometown of Binghamton, NY, some 150 miles away from Albany. When I was growing up, I rather loved it. It was a decent place to grow up. The population was about 75,000, with a vibrant downtown. Now it has about 47,000 people, with a downtown that seems to be hanging by a thread. I WANT it to do well, a lot, but it’s just not, for the most part.

When I went to college, they tore down a bunch of houses near my grandmother’s home to build “new” Route 17, which will eventually become Interstate 86. The road has made it easier to get THROUGH the city, but has hardly been a boon for having people stay IN the city. I go there for a family reunion, on my mother-in-law’s side, and I’ll see little signs of life, but it’s mostly moribund.

Binghamton and comic books, parts of, to quote Paul McCartney, “my ever-present past.”

Blogoversary Number Seven

I doubt I ever mentioned this here, but I loved Russell Baker.

I was reading the comments for Ken Levine’s sixth blogoversary about five months ago when I came across this:

“Russell Baker, in my opinion, the best columnist ever to adorn a newspaper, once said that he became a columnist with the thought that now he had the freedom to disgorge the contents of his brain. After three weeks of columns, he realized that he had already disgorged the entire contents of his brain.”

I doubt I ever mentioned this here, but I loved Russell Baker. I used to follow his column in the New York Times religiously. I’ve read at least three of his books; Growing Up, one of his autobiographies, was one of my favorite tomes for a long time. I still own it, so I probably should reread it, but probably won’t.

Anyway, I disgorged the contents of my brain six years and 49 weeks ago, and yet I’m STILL writing this blog. Some people just don’t know when to quit. As a buddy of mine, who’s been blogging about as long as I, but not quite as proficiently, stated recently, “Yeah, but you’re a tad, shall we say OCD on the whole blog thing, Rog.” Well, maybe. I’ve been known to be writing three weeks ahead, when the muse strikes, to make up for those weeks when I write almost nothing. At least I stopped multiple blog posts per day.

The one thing I did this year that made sense was to get this blog on Networked Blogs, which allows automatic tweets, and (I think) Facebook posts to be generated. I think social media is fine – just don’t sign me up for Farmville or the like, because I WILL block it – but I just don’t have the time to actively use them much. Writing the blog every day is a lot easier/more interesting to me than promoting it.

Happy blogoversary to moi.

And because I always need a song to celebrate just about everything, here is 7 and 7 Is by Love, featuring Arthur Lee.

Expect more navel-gazing throughout the month.

 

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