February 2019 - Page 3 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Presidents Day 2019: Second Bill of Rights

“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.”

Abraham Lincoln 1836 — Abraham Lincoln, Congressman-elect from Illinois. icholas H. Shepherd, photographer. Springfield, Ill., 1846 or 1847

Some Presidential trivia:

From Summer Bowl 9 (Chuck Miller)

Donald Trump has 24, Ronald Reagan has 10, and John Tyler has the most at 30. The most what?

Who was the last U.S. President who did not nominate a judge for the U.S. Supreme Court?

JEOPARDY! game #7807 aired 2018-07-17

CITING THE PRESIDENT $400: In the 1970s: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $800: In the 1970s: “Our long national nightmare is over”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $1200: “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved–I do not expect the house to fall–but I do expect it will cease to be divided”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2000: In an early 20th c. message to Congress: “We have stood apart, studiously neutral”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2,000 (Daily Double): In the early 20th c.: “I took the canal zone, & let Congress debate, & while the debate goes on the canal does also”

JEOPARDY! game #7806 aired 2018-07-16

4, 4 (two words, each with four letters) $1000: In 1848 Martin Van Buren was the presidential candidate of this party that opposed slavery in western territories

JEOPARDY! game #7868 aired 2018-11-21

PRESIDENTIAL IRONY, Final Jeopardy! 1 of the 2 Presidents who offered Daniel Webster the VP slot; he declined both, thinking the job went nowhere.

Answers below.

Why Thomas Jefferson Owned a Qur’an

Why James Madison would say our real problem is not misinformation

“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.” Rutherford B. Hayes

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union Message to Congress, January 11, 1944, including the Second Bill of Rights:
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence… People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race, or creed.”

“I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s Hell.” – Harry S Truman, 1948

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956

The Eisenhower Matrix

When the President and His Chef Feuded Over Cold Beans

Thursday, August 8, 1974: the night that Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency (three hours)

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter pass up riches to live modest, giving and truthful lives

George HW Bush was a complex man who somehow perfectly embodied a simpler time: both a blue-blood and, to quote Nixon, a ‘nut-cutter’ who knew how to carry out the dirty work of politics

When New York Tried to Take Away a W

What Obama secretly did at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Pastor: When White Folks Say Obama Was an ‘Embarrassment’, Here’s What You Say

One Last Time (44 Remix) – Christopher Jackson, Barack Obama, Bebe Winans #Hamildrop

Answers to quizzes:

Summer Bowl 9:
The number of the age difference between the President and his First Lady
Jimmy Carter

JEOPARDY!
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt
Free Soil
William Henry Harrison or Zachary Taylor

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and John Kennedy talking at their wedding reception, Newport, Rhode Island / Toni Frissell. 1907-1988, photographer, 12 September 1953

Photos from the Library of Congress. No known copyright restrictions.

Movie review: Cold War (2018- Zimna wojna)

Pawel Pawlikowski, who was justifiably been nominated for a best director Oscar for Cold War, won at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cold War Zimna wojna If you don’t like everything about Cold War, the Best Foreign Film nominee from Poland, you may enjoy the nearly continually wave of music. It starts with a guy playing something that sounds, but doesn’t look, like bagpipes, and another fellow playing a fiddle. They alternately play and sing some folk song.

The viewer sees a couple traveling the countryside of Poland just after World War II, looking for authentic folk singers from the countryside. I imagine it was like how ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax recorded musicians from the southern US and elsewhere.

Then the singers and dancers are culled in some Lawrence Welkian American Idol cattle call, with the best ones trained at a boarding school. They tour and become an unexpected hit.

But an apparatchik wants more songs touting Lenin and Stalin. It is cold war Poland in the early 1950s by then.

All of this is backdrop for an intense, “fatefully mismatched” love story between the singer Zula (Joanna Kulig) and the music director Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) which drives the story. Can one be more free in Communist Poland than in Paris? The movie’s tagline: “Love has no borders.”

The cinematography by Lukasz Zal is often gorgeous. His Oscar nomination is well-deserved. He has already won an award from the American Society of Cinematographers, USA. There is an early scene in the black-and-white film where even a mud path looks like beautiful marble.

Pawel Pawlikowski, who was justifiably been nominated for a best director Oscar, won at the Cannes Film Festival. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Piotr Borkowski.

Cold War is in Polish and French, subtitled. It’s rated R “for some sexual content, nudity and language.” It contains one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema, seriously, done with mirrors.

My wife and I saw it, naturally, at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. I’ve asked for the soundtrack for my birthday.

Posting every day

Evidently, for many people, one comes to this blog and it loads to the previous time they visited. So even though I post every day, you can’t tell. I’ve contacted the tech support with my carrier; alas, no solution yet. I welcome your suggestions.

Meanwhile, the easiest way to see if I’ve posted is to go to the calendar on the right bar; if the date is BOLD, I’ve posted. Click on the date and see what’s new from Ramblin’ with Roger.

30-Day Music Prompt: colors, numbers

At first, I thought to cheat and pick Fancy Colours by Chicago

green 7 One of the things I’m really bad are those daily challenges on social media. I don’t remember to do them each day, and and I tend not to read other people’s.

For instance, Chuck Miller is doing one on Facebook for Black History Month, but I don’t read anybody except my sisters every day on any social media platform. Well, other than some other blogs. Fortunately for me, he consolidated a few of them into a blog post.

Jaquandor accepted the 30-Day Music Prompt, but instead of doing it daily on Facebook, he’s doing it weekly on his blog.

I decided months ago that was a swell idea, but then I kept finding other musical topics to write about.

A song you like with a color in the title. (Why would I write about songs I didn’t like?)

At first, I thought to cheat and pick Fancy Colours by Chicago.

But no, I guess I’ll go with the other obvious choice, Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers, a “psychedelic/bubblegum band,” which Jaquandor also picked. The song, BTW, went to #1 in early 1968.

What makes green? Yellow and blue. I suppose I should select Mellow Yellow by Donovan (#2 for 3 weeks in 1966) and Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells (ALSO #2 for 3 weeks, but in 1969).

And what’s on the wheel opposite of green? Red, of course. Red Rubber Ball by the Cyrkle, which went to #2 in 1966, but for only one week. Paul Simon wrote it, and it shows up on some Simon & Garfunkel live album.

Oh, what the heck:

Name a song you like with a number in the title:

So my birthday is in March, the 3rd month. I’ll Go with Three Little Birds by Bob Marley, which appeared on some children’s program my daughter used to watch.

For the 7th, it has to be 7 and 7 Is by Love. Only got to #33 in 1966.

Year 19XX – 19 by Paul Hardcastle – #15 in 1985.

Alas, no songs with 53 in it. Or is there? 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone went to #4 in 1982.

Next week, I’ll continue on this, unless something else catches my fancy.

The black funeral home in history

In this case, you’re Chester Miller, a funeral director, and a family is in need of your services.

Indianapolis-Recorder-November-5-1938-Hoosier-State-Chronicles — Indianapolis IN Recorder-November 5, 1938

In response to a reference question, I discovered that 10% of undertakers/morticians/funeral directors were African-American in 2016. But that fact doesn’t get to the historic import of the black funeral home.

US Funerals notes: “In the United States there is a rich cultural heritage of black-owned and operated funeral homes. Indeed black funeral parlors were some of the first businesses to be set up by African-Americans after the abolition of slavery.”

Funeralwise agrees: “Since few white undertakers would serve the African American community, black undertakers created independent businesses to fill the need. During the Civil War black soldiers were often assigned to burial details, recovering and burying the dead, but also assisting with keeping death records and finding ways to preserve remains to be sent home to other parts of the country for interment…

“These experiences prepared many soldiers for work in the burial industry, not only allowing them to serve their brothers and sisters in their time of grief but also allowing them to preserve numerous funeral customs associated with their African heritage.”

Edwin Jackson, a licensed black funeral director, and embalmer, shares a more recent history: “The local sheriff is on the other end and says he needs you to pick up a body… You’re used to putting your evenings and sleep on hold. In this case, you’re Chester Miller, a funeral director, and a family is in need of your services. Today you have been called to pick up a body that was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. You arrive on the scene and immediately you see the battered, broken, and decomposed body of a young boy…

“I use this story surrounding Emmett Till’s death to show how death has been used as a catalyst within the civil right movement and emphasize the role black funeral directors have played in such movements. Sixty years later, we see the maturity of a new movement that now flies under the banner of Black Lives Matter. We also see a new generation of black funeral directors… looking to support our community in the undertaking of such movements.”

While cultural changes are hitting black funeral homes, the institution has long been a business of loyalty, especially in the South. When they died, both my parents were tended to by the nearby African-American mortician in Charlotte, NC.

There is a group, the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, founded in 1924. Though by 1957 it had taken on the new name, its history makes clear that it is geared to the black funeral director.