April 2026 - Page 2 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing – What Don’t We Know?

Boys In The Band

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!

This week’s meme was stolen from Ken and Dot’s All Sorts. This blogging duo was asked to share things about themselves that their readers may not already know. Their answers have been used as the basis for this week’s questions.

Tell Us Something – What Don’t We Know?

1. Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

No, but I have never mourned that fact.

2. What foreign language did you study in school? How much of it do you still remember?

I took three years of high school French. The first year, I was pretty good, but I got worse and worse in the succeeding years.

Yet when my wife and I went to France in May 2023, I remembered enough basic phrases for the locals to think I was at least trying. And reading French was even easier.

In our Paris hotel, the television stations were some from France but also the UK. But as we traveled farther west, almost all of the TV was in French, some of it dubs of American programs.

3. What recipe did you most recently prepare? Where did you get the recipe, and how did it turn out?

Lasagna, described here. It’s really difficult to screw up Betty Crocker.

34th state

4. What song have you listened to over and over and over again?

As seen above, my church has had the theme “Tell Me Something Good” from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. And every time I see the bulletin, I think of the song Tell Me Something Good by Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan, whose birthday and year are the same month as mine. It was written by Stevie Wonder. I love that song.

But if you mean songs on repeat ever? That is a WAY too long list. And there’s usually a story behind it, such as “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas.

5. Are there currently any pets in your household? Are you considering adding another?

Stormy the cat is it. No, she’ll be the last one.

6. As an adult, have you ever performed with a drama group? (Student productions don’t count.)

Boys In The Band in Binghamton in 1975

Godspell in New Paltz in 1976

Plus roles in some plays at church, including Our Town (1984), Once On This Island (2020), and a couple of others.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

The 1992 Mainstream #1 Rock Tracks

an influential 1835 hymnal

The 1992 Mainstream #1 Rock Tracks were the songs that were getting airplay on mainstream rock stations, regardless of format (singles, album cuts, etc.).

Remedy – the Black Crowes, eleven weeks at #1M, #48 pop

How About That – Bad Company, 6 weeks at #1 M, #38 pop

Hotel Illness – the Black Crowes, 6 weeks at #1 M; did not chart on the pop charts, but it was released as a single. Probably unrelated, Hotel illness family ‘too traumatised to holiday again.’

Thorn In My Pride – the Black Crowes 4 weeks at #1 M, #80 pop

Human Touch – Bruce Springsteen, 3 weeks at #1 M. #16 pop

Even Better Than The Real Thing – U2, 2 weeks at #1 M, #32 pop

Again Tonight – John Mellencamp, 2 weeks at #1

One – U2, 2 weeks at #1 M, #10 pop

Sting Me – the Black Crowes, 2 weeks at #1 M, did not chart pop

Rest In Peace – Extreme, two at #1 M #96 pop

The rest were #1 for 1 week, Mainstream

Let’s Get Rocked – Def Leppard, #15 pop

Digging In The Dirt – Peter Gabriel, #52 pop

Keep The Faith – Bon Jovi, #29 pop

The Robinson brothers

From Wikipedia: “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion is the second studio album by American rock band the Black Crowes, released on May 12, 1992… The album’s name derives from the full name of the Southern Harmony, an influential 1835 hymnal compiled by William Walker…

“It was a record for an album to feature four album rock number-one hits (previously set by Tom Petty in 1989, with three). The album itself reached the top spot of the Billboard 200 album chart, propelled by the success of these singles.”

I never owned the album, though someone had given me their previous collection, Shake Your Money Maker. The only albums I own from the songs represented above were Us (Gabriel), Human Touch (Springsteen), and Achtung Baby (U2).

Incidentally, I’m fond of One by Johnny Cash from the 2000 album American III: Solitary Man.

Binghamton-adjacent

Rev. Alphonso Whitfield

These are random Binghamton-adjacent pieces.

ITEM: An old friend from high school sent me a clipping from the Broome County Office for Aging’s Senior News. Specifically, on page 15 of the February 2026 issue was a story titled LOCAL HISTORY. “In observance of Black History Month this February, we are privileged to dedicate this issue to celebrating the profound and essential contributions of Black individuals in shaping Broome County.”

Four people were highlighted. “Gentleman” Joe Taylor (1923-1995), I might have met but did not know. My father, though, absolutely knew him. The well-regarded boxer, after retirement, opened Gentle Joe’s restaurant on Susquehanna Street.

Dr. Beverly Housten Dorsey (1925-2023) was married to Beverly R. Dorsey, MD (1922-2011) for about 60 years. One black doctor provided a sense of community pride, but two? Wow! Beverly Housten’s resume is astonishing. My great aunt Deana Yates, my maternal grandmother’s sister, did some cooking, cleaning, or sewing for them.

Midgett S. Parker (1925-1999). His first name was pronounced Meh-JET. I didn’t know he was a chemist. But he was a leader at Trinity AME Zion, which I attended for many years.

Alphonso Whitfield (1903-1999) became “a charter member of the Interracial Association,” where my father worked in the 1960s.
He was a preacher at the AME Zion Church. He and his wife, Constance, were my godparents. My parents became the godparents of his grandson, Walter Jones. Alphonso and Constance’s daughter, Marcheta Hamlin, I wrote about at length HERE. I remember annual car trips to Utica to visit my godparents, when Rev. Whitfield was serving there.

13 Gaines Street?

ITEM: One of my friends from grade school sent me this Zillow listing, purportedly for 13 Gaines Street, and wondered if it was the house I grew up in. No, I lived at 5 Gaines Street.

But Gaines Street was only a block long, between Oak and Front Streets, so I knew the houses. That did NOT look like 13. I went there quite often because Lawrence and Dorothy Greene lived at 13, and we would get each other’s mail. Per the Binghamton City Directory of 1960, which I accessed on Ancestry, one or both of them worked at Ansco. And their son, Danny, would play in our yard periodically. But 13 was smooth and green and white.

Finally, I called the listing agent. The address SHOULD be 1 AND 3, not 13. THAT makes sense. It’s the house next to 5 Gaines that a tree crashed into. The red corner convenience store his gone in favor of a parking space, and the yellow house to the left represents newish construction on Front Street that wasn’t there 30 years ago.

Remarkable

ITEM: I came across online on International Women’s Day, Remarkable Women From Binghamton Who Made History. One of them I’ve known all my life. “Born in Binghamton in 1940, Frances M. Beal, better known as Fran Beal, is a feminist and peace and justice political activist. Beal was a founding member of the SNCC Black Women’s Liberation Committee, later called the Third World Women’s Alliance. Fran Beal is most well known for the book she wrote, which is called ‘Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.'”

She’s my mother’s first cousin, daughter of Ernie Yates (my maternal grandmother’s brother) and Charlotte Berman Yates. I wrote about her HERE. Even though she’s been living in California, she’s still famous in her hometown, as I discovered HERE

“The Missouri Compromise!”

Maine statehood

I was heading to take the bus to attend my choir rehearsal one cold February evening. Even several dozen meters away, I could hear someone at my stop, saying, repeatedly, “Do you know about the Missouri Compromise? Remember the 14th Amendment!”

It turned out to be a young Black woman, maybe 22(?), who was chanting it, stopping for about ten seconds between recitations. The folks at our bus stop generally ignored her, but some at the stop across the street started yelling, “Shut up!” or a variant.

Since I had to walk past her, I ALMOST replied, “Yes, I do! The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri to enter as a slave state. It set a precedent for the next 30 years or so. I even wrote a bit about it.” But I opted against. You can read how Henry Clay shepherded the bill here, and the bill’s wording here.

HCR

Then, on March 14, Heather Cox Richardson posted a piece titled “Happy Birthday, Maine.” You can access it on Substack here. In part, she wrote:

“Mainers were angry that their statehood had been tied to the demands of far-distant slave owners, and that anger worked its way into the state’s popular culture. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 meant that Maine men, who grew up steeped in that anger, could spread west.

And so they did.

“In 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had moved to Alton, Illinois, from Albion, Maine, to begin a newspaper dedicated to the abolition of human enslavement, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob, who threw his printing press into the Mississippi River.

“Elijah Lovejoy’s younger brother, Owen, had also moved west from Maine. Owen saw Elijah shot and swore his allegiance to the cause of abolition. ‘I shall never forsake the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother’s blood,’ he declared. He turned to politics, and in 1854, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature. His increasing prominence brought him political friends, including an up-and-coming lawyer who had arrived in Illinois from Kentucky by way of Indiana, Abraham Lincoln…”

“Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, overturning the Missouri Compromise and permitting the spread of slavery to the West.” HCR wrote that the repercussions of that 1854 action included the creation of the Republican Party by 1856. When he ran for President in 1860, Lincoln picked Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to be his running mate.

So, the Missouri Compromise was the beginning of much anti-slavery fervor, which helped define the issue before the Civil War.

Reply to My Texts?

can I FIND my cellphone?

In the Social Q’s column of the New York Times for March 18 was a piece titled My Relative Takes Forever to Reply to My Texts. What Can I Do? The subhead: Stung by a family member’s laggardly response times, a reader considers confronting the issue head-on: “Do you make all your friends wait like this?”

I thought it was an absurd question. The response, in part: “Here’s my view, along with a suggestion: Sending texts to people does not obligate them to respond on our timetable. Still, I know that mismatched feelings of closeness can be hurtful in relationships. If that’s your concern here, stop sending idle texts and suggest an activity in real life: a dinner date or a walk in the park. Because it’s shared experiences that make us closer — not keystrokes.”

This reader response, I thought, was the usual rule of thumb: Not all texts are the same. Some require an immediate answer: “Where are you? We were supposed to meet here 10 minutes ago.” Some do not: ” I am having a wonderful day gardening – it’s gorgeous out. (and so on for a full paragraph).” The whole point of texting is that a reply can be quick or not, depending on the circumstances. Let it go.

Another reader comment: My cellphone is for my convenience, not anybody else’s. I’ll get around to texting you back when I deem it sufficiently important. Plus, the older I get, the harder it is to text on that tiny little screen without a zillion typos. Which, again, because I am old, I am compelled to correct before sending. This is definitely true. I hate the physical act of texting, as I tend to hit two keys at once. At least, I’ve (mostly) figured out the jargon.

Generational

This reader comment is dead on: Believe it or not, there are those of us who came of age in the pre-cellphone age for whom texting is not a primary form of communication. We get around to reading and responding to texts when we get to them. I’m 75; I have a landline, and sometimes I don’t check my cellphone (when I can find it) for texts for days on end, which I admit can be a problem at times, but that’s simply the way it is.

Even in my generation, I was not an “early adopter.” We too have a landline, in part so that I can call and FIND my cellphone. I DON’T go days on end, but it might be for hours.

I’ve chosen to treat my cellphone like a regular phone. If I’m involved with something else, including downtime, I don’t answer or respond. I’m in full resistance to the distraction economy.

One of the things I used to do was look at my phone as soon as I got up in the morning in my office upstairs. Then my wife’s charger went on the fritz. So now my wife and I both charge our phones on a device with multiple charger ports that I bought for our 2023 trip to France. It’s downstairs. This is SO much better for my mental health.

There were hundreds more comments, but these hit the spot.

In the comic strip ZITS, there was a two-day stretch on March 25 and 26 about Jeremy, the 15-year-old protagonist, getting upset that his friend Hector wasn’t replying to his texts. It felt about right.

I see my cellphone as a tool, not an extension of myself, to be used at my discretion. But you may have a different relationship with your cellphone.

The broader issue

In the New York Times essay, No Wonder You Can’t Concentrate, Cal Newport addresses my broader concerns. Here’s just one paragraph:

Many of these declines in cognitive skills became notable starting in the mid-2010s, exactly the period when smartphones became ubiquitous and the digital attention economy exploded in size. An increasing amount of research implies that this timing is no coincidence. A meta-analysis released last fall showed that consuming short-form video content, as delivered by apps like TikTok and Instagram, is associated with poorer cognition and reduced attention, and the results of a clever experiment from 2023 found that the mere presence of participants’ smartphones in a room significantly reduced their ability to concentrate.

I find that my phone being off, downstairs, or, recently, “accidentally” left at home has created a level of relaxation I had not experienced in a while.

So I WILL text you back eventually. Probably, assuming you are not spam, which you often are tracked as being.