August 2025 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Part 2 of the 1975 Easy Listening #1s

as seen on TV

Here’s part 2 of the 1975 Easy Listening #1s. Songs in the mid-1970s didn’t seem to command the week-after-week success that songs in earlier and later periods did. These songs all led the charts for merely one week each.

My Boy – Elvis Presley.

The Last Farewell – Roger Whittaker. I recall this individual quite well, as he promoted his albums on television through mail order. ” This song was released internationally in 1971, and it charted in 11 countries. But it wasn’t released in the United States until four years later. He grew up in British-controlled Kenya and died only in 2023.

He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You) Tony Orlando and Dawn. #1 pop

It’s A Miracle – Barry Manilow

Only Yesterday – Carpenters

From “there”

The Immigrant – Neil Sedaka. Lyrics – After an overly optimistic first verse:

Now he arrives with his hopes and his heart set on miraclesCome to marry his fortune with a handful of promisesTo find they’ve closed the door, they don’t want him anymoreIsn’t any more to go aroundTurning away, he remembers he once heardA legend that spoke of a mystical, magical land called America

Rainy Day People – Gordon Lightfoot

99 Miles From L.A. – Albert Hammond

Wonderful Baby – Don McLean

Love Will Keep Us Together – Captain and Tennille. Written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. #1 pop

Wildfire – Michael Murphy, now billed as Michael Martin Murphy

Every Time You Touch Me (I Get High) – Charlie Rich

Rhinestone Cowboy – Glen Campbell, #1 pop

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) – James Taylor. The Marvin Gaye version went to #3 RB and #6 pop in 1965

Fallin’ In Love – Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds, #1 pop

Solitaire – Carpenters

The Proud Ones – The Osmonds

Ain’t No Way To Treat A Lady – Helen Reddy

I Only Have Eyes For You – Art Garfunkel. The version of this song by the Flamingos in 1959 is one of my top 20 songs of all time.

Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To – Diana Ross

Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In L.A.) – Glen Campbell

I didn’t know several of these songs, including Elvis, and one each by Carpenters and Glen Campbell, and I own music by all of them.

Black wheelchair-bound veteran shot

GoFundMe

This week, I saw on Steve Bissette’s Facebook feed a story about a Black wheelchair-bound veteran shot in broad daylight on Seattle, WA’s waterfront on July 31. Harold Powell, Sr., was shot in the chest in front of dozens of witnesses. Gregory Timm, 32, is a white man who accused Powell, a 14-year Navy vet, of “stolen valour” and demanded the veteran “show his ID” to prove his veteran status. (The Sun City song, Let Me See Your I.D., about apartheid South Africa, immediately came to mind.)

Powell is recovering, and his family has started a GoFundMe campaign. It notes: “His injuries are serious, and the cost of emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, and long-term recovery is overwhelming.”

It would be easy to dismiss this as an act of one knucklehead. But my brain goes back to history.

The first thing to pop up was the Red Summer of 1919. Black people, especially the black veterans who were proud to wear the uniform when they got back to the States, were targeted for assault and murder. Going back to the Revolutionary War, Black people in the US were eager to prove themselves ‘worthy” of full citizenship by going to battle.

Other black veterans have been killed, not in battle, but in the fight for democracy and human rights.

Ignorance is NOT bliss.

So, I’ve been distressed by the federal so-called DEI cuts, which are based on the theory that the institutions targeted are too “woke.” Under the microscope, per Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, is the Smithsonian, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The museums are now to “celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” Just this week, FOTUS groused, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

I should note that I was a charter member of the African American History and Culture Museum and contributed monetarily to it before it was even built, though I did not get there until August 2024, when I spent two days there. The FOTUS assessment is incorrect. There is plenty about success and joy, but he misses the facility’s point. History should be an honest, warts-and-all portrayal.

As a librarian, I was upset by the firing of Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. The rationale was BS. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” Except that the Library of Congress is a research library, and books are used only on the premises by members of the public. Anyone age 16 and older may use the collections. She was fired for being a black woman, just as General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was canned for being a black guy.

Add to this the attacks on universities, media outlets, etc., not to mention the seemingly random and cruel ICE raids, and I become increasingly distressed. Let’s not Make America More Stupid Again (MEMSA).

Movie review: The Last Class

Robert Reich

My wife suggested we see a documentary film called The Last Class. I did not know this movie, but it fit into her desire to learn more about how to fight for justice. “Robert Reich teaches his final ‘Wealth and Poverty’ class to 1,000 students at UC Berkeley, ending a 40-year career that reached 40,000 students.” (Incidentally, Reich has a Wealthy & Poverty section on his YouTube page, featuring his entertaining drawings.)

The film includes a bit in which the former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration is having a difficult time trying to get rid of the actual oversized chair from his time in the office.

Teaching is his true passion, although he’s better known in political circles. He wants to ensure that the students don’t just parrot what he’s thinking but show the ability to think for themselves.

It’s a short film—71 minutes—that is frank and, in the end credits, hysterically funny. I think my wife, knowing less about him, got more from the film than I did.

Freedom Summer

Still, he tells a particular story about Michael Schwerner, one I had heard before, but surprisingly, it was still moving. Michael was Robert’s protector in his neighborhood growing up because Robert was, and is, short of stature and was bullied. He lost track of Michael until he heard that Michael was part of the campaign attempting to register black citizens in Mississippi to vote. Shortly thereafter, Robert learned that his old protector, whom he knew as Mickey, along with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in June 1964. This instilled in Robert a sense of the need to fight for justice.

As somebody who likes to go to the movies, I’m not sure this is a film one needs to see in the theater, but I think it’s very worthwhile. My wife and I went to a weekday matinee at the Spectrum Theatre. The only other people in the viewing were a man and his son, who had just turned 21 and wanted to know how to be a better citizen. THAT was inspiring!

Thank You Art

like the rainbow door

thank you gift bag I consider Thank You Art to be the artistic collision of random things that happen in nature and/or within a structure, creating art/beauty/curiosity where you least expect it. One example is the nifty little rainbows I find on our house steps and hallway when the sun shines through the refracted view of the glass on our front door.

This one involves this bag that sits on my dresser, though unfortunately, you can’t view it. One morning around 6:30, my wife asks, “Do you see that on the bag?” And I do. It can’t be easily replicated because both of us are visually impaired enough that we can’t read the words ‘Thank You’ on the bag, which is only four or five feet away.

However, we can see a peculiar gold field that is disrupted by some flickering light. The dresser is to our left. On the ceiling above our heads is the ceiling fan, which creates an effect as the light from outside comes in with the new day.

It was wonderful, in large part because it was a random convergence of events that I wish I could have taped or photographed, but I couldn’t even replicate it. Nor should I want to, I think.

That said, what I do like about the photo is the uneven distribution of the light on the gold lettering and the shadow of the handle on the bag.

By the way, the bag itself was a giveaway at my niece, Markia’s, and her husband, Brandon’s, wedding on April 12th. It’s a nice bag and features some interesting writings to read.

Jaquandor

Kelly would understand. He noted, actually after I wrote the above, though I hadn’t posted it, “it was like the car in front of me was driving on rainbows.” He opined, “Light doesn’t just shine. It dances and bobs and weaves and flits and does all that kind of Carl Sandburg stuff.”

Sunday Stealing — 2×4

office space

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Dr. Medusa is an associate professor who stole this meme from her friend Clare. Since Clare no longer blogs, it’s unknown whether she originated it or stole it. But that doesn’t matter. What’s important now is how you answer these questions.

The 2×4 Meme

TWO foods you can’t stand

Peanut butter: What’s odd is that, as a kid, I LOVED peanut butter. But I must have ODed on it because the smell now makes me nauseous.

2. Black olives

FOUR foods you love

Lasanga, possibly the only thing I make using the oven

2. Strawberry ice cream

3. Carrot cake

4. Deviled eggs

Location

TWO places you never want to see again

A truly awful motel in Ashtabula, OH, where we stayed for the 2016 Olin Family reunion.

2. A cockroach-infested apartment I lived in Kingston, NY for two months in late 1972.

FOUR places you’d like to revisit

Toronto, ON, Canada, where we went to just ahead of the Olin Reunion in Peterborough , ON in 2011. It was combined with a stop at Niagara Falls. I can always go to the Falls.

2. Barbados, where we spent our honeymoon in 1999.

3. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. I’ve been there twice, in 1998 (the Carls Perkins and Wilson had recently died) and 2016.

4. Paris, France. We were in France for a few days, but not nearly enough in the capital

TWO musical artists who make you want to change the station

I don’t know a musical act well enough to hate. There are aspects of various music that I don’t enjoy: misogyny, hyperviolence.

FOUR musical artists you love to listen to

The Beatles (what a surprise)

2. Sly and the Family Stone

3. Beach Boys – Sly and Brian died recently

4. Talking Heads

The past

TWO moments you’d like to erase

Oddly enough, this came up in conversation recently. Trying to get moved from a horrendous office space in August 2017 involved yelling (not just by me), and I needed to leave to cool off, but I was physically blocked. There are more details, but suffice to say: 1) I did get to move, but 2) it took WAY too much effort.

2. One morning in June 2009, I was trying to get back from Charlotte, NC, to Albany, NY. Because of a conversation too inane to repeat, I was late for my plane and had to switch items while in the TSA line.

FOUR moments you’d like to relive. OK, I’m not sure the premise is correct for me. Do I want a rush of nostalgia? No. Do I want to “fix” the past? Maybe, but THEN what? Do I want to re-remember stuff? Well, maybe.

I’m told that, when I was in third grade, I got so angry because some kids were playing keep-away with my hat that I went home. I can totally believe it. I don’t remember this, but my friends tell me I then hopped a Crowley’s milk truck to get home. I’d only want to relive to clarify the narrative.

2. When my maternal grandmother would ramble about relatives, which she called “relations,” I would take notes the next time.

3. I would put my childhood photo album in a safer place.

4. When I took apart the front door lock when I was a kid, I would have taken notes so I could put it back together.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.