November 2020 - Page 4 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Thoreau as a finder of things

Beck

Thoreau This, or a variation of it, happens to me all of the time.

I bought a new phone. It’s an Apple 8 or whatnot, my first iPhone ever. I open it up and start trying to figure out whatever needs to be done. Invariably, I get interrupted. A couple days later, I’m back trying to set it up. But the iPhone apparently wants some settings on my old Android phone. And, of course, I can’t find it anymore.

Then my wife comes home. She’s been to the farmer’s market. She doesn’t have enough cash, and the vendor doesn’t take credit cards or checks, But he does take Venmo. She doesn’t have Venmo, but I do, on my old phone, naturally. After she tells me she needs to make this payment, I redouble my efforts. Not in the backpack or in any drawers or in some clothing in the hamper. After an hour, I give up.

The Albany Public Library had a book sale the previous weekend, which I worked at. I bought a few items, one of which was a CD called Best of Beck. This is by Jeff Beck, not the other guy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t open it, because the plastic encasement was locked. Alas, a dollar wasted.

Wait, I’m going to try to liberate the disc without destroying it. Using a couple of pairs of scissors, I succeed. I need to put the CD in a new case. Fortunately, I have a bunch of empties. I go to that drawer. Sitting right next to that dresser, in the bay window, is my damn Android phone.

It always happens

This happens a LOT to me. When I stop looking for something – total surrender – I often find it. There is a saying attributed to Henry David Thoreau that goes, “Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you.” But why is it always inanimate objects for me? it’s most often keys because I have an irrational disdain for them.

But it is also true that “if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” Though the woods are never the same. Or wherever.

Favorites: Prince (2018-2020)

I blame SE and RJ

Prince Certainly, I started listening to Prince anew after he died in April 2016. But he launched into my favorite songs from my favorite band territory because of Sheila E. and the niece Rebecca Jade. Surely, I don’t have to worry about J. Eric Smith’s band requirement. Prince led, for a time, the Revolution, and other times he’s playing 27 instruments.

Sheila sang at a club in New York City in August 2017. Rebecca was one of the background singers. They performed a half dozen Prince songs, including an RJ solo on Raspberry Beret. Then I saw them at the New York State Fair in Syracuse in early September 2019. More Prince tunes.

Let’s Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince was filmed at the Los Angeles Convention Center on January 28, 2020, two days after The 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards. The all-star lineup of artists performed songs from the catalog of “the 38-time GRAMMY® nominee and seven-time GRAMMY winner.” Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Sheila E. were pegged to be the musical directors. Rebecca Jade was a last-minute replacement for another back-up singer.

The tribute concert, originally aired Tuesday, April 21, the four-year anniversary of the superstar’s passing, and was rebroadcast on Saturday, April 25 on CBS. Rebecca Jade was singing with about half of the artists, including Earth, Wind, and Fire; Foo Fighters; Gary Clark Jr.; St. Vincent; Miguel; Juanes; and of course, Sheila E.

Songs

I own all of the Prince albums from the 1980s on vinyl or CD. 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O’ the Times are my favorites. Making YouTube links prior to 2016 was… a challenge. Song list is vaguely leading to my favorite.

Starfish and Coffee – it’s a song I saw on The Muppets
It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night – live, and it does that Wizard of Oz thing
Kiss
Uptown

The Cross
Raspberry Beret
Controversy
Purple Rain

Delirious
Little Red Corvette
When Doves Cry
I Would Die 4 U/Baby I’m a Star -I always hear these together

Nothing Compares 2 U, featuring Rosie Gaines
1999
Sign o’ the Times
Let’s Go Crazy. I have the 12″ of this, too.

Minor parties in the 2020 Prez race

Princess Khadijah M. Pres Jacob-Fambro

Saturday afternoon, after the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of the race, I came to a realization. When I voted eight days before Election Day, I never even looked at who the other choices were.

In New York, it was the two major party guys, but each was also on a second line. The Democrat received 51%, but on the Working Families line got an additional 4.41%. The Republican netted 38.71% on that line but an additional 3.35% under the Conservative banner.

51

Jo Jorgensen was the Libertarian candidate, the only other person to appear on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In New York, she got only 0.72% of the vote but reached 1.2% nationally. Part of her plan “is to turn America into one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral.” She ran with Spike Cohen.

“On Day One of a Jorgensen administration, I will pardon all 80,000 non-violent people imprisoned on federal drug charges. The War on Drugs has been a disaster and has been used to target the poor and people of color, and to ruin lives that could have been salvaged… I will also use my pardon power to free whistleblowers who risked their liberty to expose corruption and abuse by government agencies.” Actually, I’m good with that part.

At this writing, Jo Jorgenson’s vote count percentage is greater than the Dem/GOP difference in AZ (11 Electoral Votes, 1.5 v 0.7), GA (16 EV, 1.2 v 0.2), PA (20 EV 1.1 v 0.6), and WI (10 EV, 1.2 v 0.7), all in Biden’s favor.

Georgia hasn’t been called, but assuming 290 Biden votes, the loss of those three other states would have brought him down to 249. His chief opponent would go up to 255, with NC’s 15 EV likely to go to the GOP. That’s 270 and re-election.

So is Jo Jorgensen a “spoiler”?

Being Green

Howie Hawkins was on the ballot as the Green Party candidate. He received 0.35% of the vote in New York and about 2% of the vote nationally, running in 30 states. I have actually voted for Howie in the past. In 2010, 2014, and 2018, he ran for governor of my state. The latter two times I supported him against Andrew Cuomo and a Republican who frankly was sure to lose. His running mate in 2020 was Angela Nicole Walker.

Incidentally, the Green Party candidate in Alaska was former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, running with Cynthia McKinney. They got 0.8% of the votes in that state.

Roque De La Fuente got on the ballot for The Alliance Party in 16 states – not NY – but did not get more than 0.3% of the vote in any state, and that in California. In 2018, he was a 2018 Republican candidate who sought election to the U.S. Senate from nine different states! He had multiple running mates.

Gloria La Riva also had different running mates in her quest running on the Party for Socialism and Liberation. You thought Joe Biden was a socialist? Like De La Fuente, her highest percentage on the 15 ballots she appeared on was in California, with 0.3% of the vote. Not on the NY ballot.

Oh, yeah, THOSE guys

Independent Kanye West was running in a dozen states, but not mine. He got as much as 0.4% of the vote in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah. The theory was that he might take votes away from Biden, but that did not materialize. He ran with Wyoming preacher Michelle Tidball.

Don Blankenship of the Constitution Party is one of my least favorite people. He “was the chief executive of Massey Energy Co., the leading producer of coal in Appalachia, from 2000 to 2010. He resigned following the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 miners.” Blankenship “was convicted of conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and served one year in prison for the misdemeanor,” and should have served longer.

He made it onto 20 state ballots, not NY, and got 0.4% of the vote in Alaska and Utah. His running mate was William Mohr. All the people listed so far got at least 50,000 votes nationally.

The last name on the New York State ballot was Brock Pierce. The Blockchain technology and digital currency guy got over 40,000 votes. He appeared on 15 state ballots and got 0.3% of the vote in Idaho and New York, 0.4% in Alaska, and a staggering 0.8% of the vote in Wyoming.

From his campaign website: “Sustainability is essential at every level, starting with each of us as individuals and growing to encompass the whole that is our collective social organism, whether in the form of our country, our species, or our planet.” His running mate was Karla Ballard.

Literally, the also-rans

Brian T. Carroll/Amar Patel (American Solidarity Party) received over 20,000 in eight states, 0.2% in Illinois and Wisconsin. Then there’s a huge dropoff. Alyson Kennedy/Malcolm Jarrett (Socialist Workers Party) at over 6,000 in six states, never exceeding 0.1%. Now we’re talking about the minor parties.

Fun names. Dawn Neptune Adams for VP on the Progressive Party line. Phil Collins for prez on the Prohibition Party; no, not THAT guy. The Grumpy Old Patriots party got over 1000 votes.

Genealogy Know Your Family History Party received over 550. The independent ticket of Princess Khadijah M. Pres Jacob-Fambro and Khadijah Maryam Jacob Sr.snagged 450 ballots. The Boiling Frog party won 135 supporters.

See the data dump on the topic I posted here and the chart (it slides on the bottom) I created here.

Kübler-Ross and IMPOTUS defeat

Remembering RBG

Fraud — **My daughter keeps track of GOP tropes. This design is available on sweatshirts.**

You know, this political season has made me exhausted. I hoped the election would settle things, though I had my doubts.

Sure enough, Attorney General Barr is acting like IMPOTUS’ personal attorney. The future ex-President removes the scientist from overseeing a key climate assessment report. The grift continues. He seems to be engaged in a scorched earth policy. If he doesn’t concede, the GSA head won’t release the mechanism for Joe Biden to be a part of an orderly transition.

But it’s more than that. The vitriol is still strong. And, as people saw on my Facebook feed that Saturday, some guy came around to attack me personally for being pleased that Biden had won. It wasn’t some random guy either, but a fellow who had been my next-door neighbor when I was growing up in Binghamton, NY. Let’s call him Greg because that’s his name.

Greg had been around trolling me in the past. But I had found him useful. It’s important, I think, to understand how others think. This time, he was hyper-critical and fairly nasty at that. He said that I didn’t vote for the man because IMPOTUS had hurt my feelings?

Well, no, I objected to him trying to wreck the very fabric of the country: the postal service, the Census, the CDC, the Justice Department (see above), the EPA, etc, etc, etc.

Greg also seemed to be offended because I was a fool not to recognize that I’m financially better off under the regime. He never used the term directly. But I sensed that he was suggesting that since black people’s unemployment was down, pre-pandemic, I was oblivious to the regime’s “greatness.”

cf RBG’s death

Here’s the thing. I don’t agree with the premise. The tax cut helped the rich far more than regular folks. But even if I had concurred, I still thought his policies, toward COVID, immigration, the environment, and so much more, plus his constant lying, were disqualifying attributes. But why pick on me? There were plenty of people who are happy that the reign of error was over.

Then I saw Remembering RBG: A Nation Ugly Cries with Desi Lydic. It was a special program from The Daily Show folks. Desi was going through the five stages of grief as described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Although, instead of acceptance, the fifth stage is action. Not incidentally, Elizabeth Warren, as usual, offered wise counsel.

So Greg, I recognize, was grieving. He dumped on me because he sort of knew me, though I haven’t seen him in a half-century. I get it.

In my recollection, when Hillary lost in 2016, the reaction was mostly utter shock and depression, not rage. As my teenage daughter noted, in 2016, we were saying, “That can’t be true!” even as we grudgingly knew, unfortunately, it was. The losing side in 2020 has been fed the notion “It IS NOT TRUE!” (See John Oliver.) That’s a harder bridge to cross.

BTW, I remain infuriated by the continued voter suppression, particularly in Florida. The GOP won the state by about 340,000. More than twice as many released felons were disenfranchised. Maybe the Sunshine State COULD have gone the other way…

Classical music to end all wars

Ralph Vaughn Williams

From a Zoom discussion meeting of the choir folk on a recent Thursday night, I discovered that quite a bit of classical music was written to commemorate the Great World War.

I knew about a number of pop tunes for “the war to end all wars.” It’s A Long, Long Way to Tipperary; I Didn’t Raise My Son to Be A Soldier; Keep the Home Fires Burning; and of course, Over There, were all #1 charters in the United States. The latter was a #1 hit by three different artists in a row, American Quartet, Peerless Quartet, and Nora Bayes in the fourth quarter of 1917.

Here are nine classical compositions, with music links. I was familiar with Britten’s War Requiem. I have a recording of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, but I did not know of its WWI connection. Perhaps I should have. “In the opening section of the suite, ‘Mars, The Bringer of War,’ there’s a truly visceral sense of horror; what must have seemed like the end of the world to those who experienced The Great War.”

Ralph, pronounced Raif

This article from the British Library notes the number of young composers killed in the conflict. One noted composer who physically survived the conflict was Ralph Vaughn Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958).

“He enlisted as a Private in the Royal Army Medical Corps… on New Year’s Eve 1914. At 42 he was old enough to have been excused service, but the medical corps were often chosen by older… men who wanted to serve.

“Maurice Ravel, who had tutored Vaughan Williams in orchestration in 1907-8 also became an ambulance driver. Becoming a medical orderly was not an easy posting, however.

Many of Vaughan Williams’ friends died. “Ralph wrote to Holst in 1916 about the loss of his contemporaries and his fear of returning to civilian life. ‘I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps…out of those 7 who joined up together in August 1914 only 3 are left.'”

Listen:

Symphony No. 3, “A Pastoral Symphony” (June 1921) Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Dona Nobis Pacem cantata (1936) London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Conductor: Richard Hickox – Soloists: Bryn Terfel (baritone), Yvonne Kenny (soprano), Philip Langridge (tenor)