G is for Green as a surname (ABCW)

“a medium light hue of greenish gray similar to asparagus, but lighter”

Captain_kangaroo
Mr. Green Jeans, Captain Kangaroo, 1960
When Green is your last name, you have heard every joke there is about it. “Mr. Green Jeans,” a character from the Captain Kangaroo children’s show, played by Hugh “Lumpy” Brannum, when I was growing up. Green tambourine, a song by the Lemon Pipers, a #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for one week in early February, 1968. “Green, green jelly bean,” whatever THAT is, and others too mundane to repeat.

Kermit the Frog was right: it’s not that easy bein’ Green. “It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.”

So when my wife and I were thinking about first names for our now-teenager, among the MANY rules I had was that it could NOT be a SHADE of Green. And there are quite a few of them.

Hunter Green – “a color that is a representation of the color worn by hunters in the 19th century” – terribly out of date, though in fact that there are at least three prominent people named Hunter Greene

Kelly Green – “the name derives from the fact that the surname Kelly, as well as the color green, are both popular in Ireland” – Besides being gender non-specific, my hangup at the time, the Kelly Song from the TV show Cheers was rattling around in my head

Laurel Green -“a medium light hue of greenish gray similar to asparagus, but lighter” – I’m not that fond of asparagus.

Olive Green – “the shade of dark yellow-green found on green olives. It has been commonly used by militaries around the world as a color for uniforms and equipment.” Give peace a chance. Moreover, Olive Oyl is Popeye’s lanky girlfriend.

Paris Green – ranges from pale and vivid blue green to deeper true green. It comes from the inorganic compound copper (II) acetoarsenite and was once a popular pigment in artists’ paints”

For ABC Wednesday

I hate the feeling of breaking glass

The symptoms may or may not be traceable to a physical cause

One of my colleagues called recently and tried to lay a new word on me. He was explaining how when he sees mosquito or another bug in the room, he gets the feeling of itching , as though he had been bitten.

I know exactly how he feels, except my sensation involves the sight of breaking glass in my line of vision, even if I’m halfway across the room. Soon, I “feel” the shards of glass on my skin.

What is the name of this phenomenon, if indeed it is a “thing”? He offered up dermaform, which has a great prefix but ultimately didn’t pan out. I’m not buying hypochondria, which is “a condition in which a person is excessively and unduly worried about having a serious illness.”

I considered paresthesia, which is “an abnormal sensation such as tingling, tickling, pricking, numbness or burning of a person’s skin with no apparent physical cause. The manifestation of a paresthesia may be transient or chronic, and may have any of dozens of possible underlying causes.” Well, maybe.

I suppose it is one of those somatoform symptom disorder, or SSD; when it’s known by its initials, you KNOW it’s serious.

It is “a form of mental illness that causes one or more bodily symptoms, including pain. The symptoms may or may not be traceable to a physical cause including general medical conditions, other mental illnesses, or substance abuse. But regardless, they cause excessive and disproportionate levels of distress.”

It’s not DISTRESS that I experience, more like discomfort. “Before vowels somat-, word-forming element meaning ‘the body of an organism,’ from comb. form of Greek soma (genitive somatos) ‘the body, a human body dead or living, body as opposed to spirit; material substance; mass; a person, human being; the whole body or mass of anything,’ of uncertain origin. somato- in Medicine.”

So it’s a bit ironic that when I went to the local Altamont Fair recently, and somehow I got bitten on the upper lip by some bug. I didn’t even feel it until it swelled up. I used ice and some Benadryl to tend to it.

Hey, have any of YOU ever experienced this, phantom bug bites when seeing insects, or faux cuts when seeing glass breaking? Whether or not you have, what would you call it?

“Crazy”, nuts”, and “have you seen anyone about this?” are not really the type of answers we’re looking for.

“Religious Liberty Task Force”: dangerous

“They are not people of faith but the exact opposite. “

religious liberty task forceI attended church of my choice last Sunday. No one barred the doors or stationed armed militia to block my path. So I’m trying to see what this Religious Liberty Task Force is all about.

ITEM: New Regime Directive Lets Federal Contractors Discriminate Against LGBT People – For Jesus

ITEM: A nominee for a U.S. House of Representatives seat (R-NC) is an ordained pastor who was recorded just three years ago longing for the days when “homosexuality was once criminalized.” “Mark Harris, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but lost the nomination, also insisted that being Christian in America is illegal.”

ITEM: Evangelical U.S. Air Force General Has Secretly Been Running a Christian Online Ministry in Possible Violation of Rules. “AF brigadier general newly in charge of one of the nation’s most celebrated and elite Air Force wings has been running an online evangelical Christian ministry for the last five years—in violation of Air Force and Defense Department rules about religious proselytizing, according to a formal letter of complaint sent to Defense Secretary James Mattis…

[Brigadier General E. John] “Teichert, who flew combat missions over Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, according to his official bio, runs a website called Prayers at Lunchtime for the United States (PLUS). The website doesn’t mention Edwards Air Force Base, but Teichert recently posted a picture of his newly acquired general’s epaulet star, alongside a note about his new rank on the PLUS site.”

ITEM: Florida Gov. Rick Scott earlier this year signed into law a bill that provides $7000 a year in state funding to public school students who are being bullied, enabling them to switch to private, often Christian schools.

Why these are terrible situations! We definitely need a task force to protect us from these religious zealots! Say, what? Religious Liberty Task Force is only protecting what is still the majority religion in the United States?

So this cartoon, or this one aren’t as far-fetched as it would seem.

Stealing from my former presbyter: “I am proud to be part of a Christian tradition that doesn’t peddle in this theological heresy. Let’s be clear, everything these people are advancing from a policy perspective is against the most important religious/theological tenants of all three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

“They are not people of faith but the exact opposite. People of faith do not separate families or desecrate the Creation or engage in militarism or discriminate or abuse women or harm the poor. And people who take sick, perverse joy in this are most certainly not people of faith and don’t need protecting.”

Singer Robert Plant turns 70 (August 20)

Record of the Year award at the 2009 Grammy Awards

Robert PlantIn February 2018, I came across an article about Robert Plant and his current group, the Sensational Space Shifters, who’ve been together since 2012! My, I’m behind in tracking his post-Led Zeppelin career trajectory.

I’ve written at some length about my love/hate affair with Led Zeppelin, who were innovative thieves. I have more than half of their albums in one format or another, as well as the boxed set. FWIW, ten folks answered this Quora question: Why did Plant and Jimmy Page treat John Paul Jones like dirt after Led Zeppelin disbanded?

I own at least four of the first six solo albums of Robert Plant. I have the Honeydrippers one-off from 1984, with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, on cassette, if I can find it. I also bought a Page/Plant CD.

My wife is a big fan of bluegrass star Alison Krauss, who we saw play live in 2003. So I got her the Raising Sand CD with Plant and Krauss for Christmas in 2007. She thought it was too loud – I disagree – so I stole it back.

My fascination with his group Band of Joy from 2010/2011 is that there’s a cover of a song my father used to sing.

Plant said in that newspaper interview that he keeps in shape by falling “in love about every 18 months. I do my best to be in love with life. I like to see the sparkle that exists and the kindness and the charm of the world, as well as the mess.”

Listen to songs by Robert Plant:

Big Log (#20 in 1983)

In the Mood (#39 in 1984)

Little by Little (#35 in 1984)

Sea of Love – the Honeydrippers (#3 in 1985)

(Good) Rockin’ At Midnight – the Honeydrippers (#25 in 1985)

Tall Cool One (#25 in 1988)

Ship of Fools (#84 in 1988)

Hurting, Kind (#46 in 1990)

29 Palms (#111 in 1993)

Darkness Darkness (2002)

Rich Woman – with Alison Krauss (#118 in 2009)

Please Read The Letter – with Alison Krauss (#120 in 2009, Record of the Year award at the 2009 Grammy Awards)

Cindy I’ll Marry You One Day – Band of Joy (2010)

Carry Fire – Sensational Space Shifters (2017)

Bluebirds Over the Mountains – Sensational Space Shifters (2017)

Heaven Sent – Sensational Space Shifters (2017)

“Immigrants helped this country become what it is”

“At every point in our history, the idea of American has stretched far enough to include past waves of immigrants, while still balking at the more recent ones.”

Occasionally, reading conservative websites is a fruitful endeavor. For instance, Sarah Quinlan wrote in Red State, “Laura Ingraham’s Comments Were Wrong In Every Way.” Fox News host Ingraham “lamented ‘massive demographic changes’ that have caused the end of the “America we know and love.”

While Quinlan loves the United States, she is not blind to the “shameful events — from the savagery of our early history, to slavery, to extrajudicial lynchings and implementing legal discrimination, to women being treated as second-class citizens.” She goes on at length about this.

“During Ingraham’s lifetime” – Laura was born in 1963 – “Americans of color have been repeatedly denied justice and forced to fight to receive the rights they were due. During Ingraham’s lifetime, women have had to demand to be treated as human beings in their own right…

“Is that the America that Ingraham wishes still existed? I find it utterly baffling that people express nostalgia for a pleasant, untroubled past in American history, because that has never truly existed…

“Ronald Reagan once promoted the belief that anyone can come to this country and become an American — which is possible here because America is an idea, not an ethnicity, and no American is more American than another based on birth, wealth, religion, political party, or race.”

It’s noteworthy that Ingraham criticizes “legal immigration and disparagingly refers to it as something that ‘of course progressives love.’ Since when did Republicans turn against legal immigration? Since when are Republicans against the idea of people legally coming to America in pursuit of a better life and the American Dream?

“Immigrants helped this country become what it is. And America endures because of the core American values that guide us, not because of what her people look like.”

“According to Pew [Research], 58% of Americans consistently say increasing diversity makes America a better place to live…Alex Nowrasteh, Senior Immigration Policy Analyst at Cato Institute says that “recent immigrants’ assimilation to American culture and values is doing ‘as well as or [on] a better pace of assimilation than previous immigrant waves….’

“Laura Ingraham’s comments…were despicable, and it is not virtue-signaling for me to point that out but rather simply standing up for what I believe is right; such comments should not be treated as normal or acceptable. When former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke is cheering on Ingraham’s comments, that’s a side that I do not want to be on.”

Unsurprisingly, other Red State contributors supported Ingraham. But as the Weekly Sift noted: Anti-immigrant rhetoric is an insult to your ancestors.

The timelessness of xenophobia. But there’s a strange thing about that rhetoric: It’s been part of American discourse forever. And most of us here today — including most of the white supremacists — are descended from those darker immigrants who supposedly would never assimilate…

The elasticity of Americanism. At every point in our history, the idea of American has stretched far enough to include past waves of immigrants, while still balking at the more recent ones. At every point, there has been a clear line between Them and Us, and every time the issues seemed totally different than what we had seen before.

Of course, it is White House adviser Stephen Miller who is the hand behind the regime’s current offensive policy “to make it impossible for many legal immigrants to become citizens or lawful permanent residents (green-card holders).”

Their offenses? Using public benefits to which they are entitled: Enrolling in Obamacare or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or using food stamps or other social welfare programs.

David S. Glosser wrote Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle. “If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out.”

Ironically, The regime has denounced what he calls “chain migration.” His in-laws just became U.S. citizens by taking advantage of that program.

Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.

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