Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

The Jobs reaction

While I don’t feel the emotional pull of Jobs’ passing that I have had with other public figures, I think there was an awful lot of unnecessary snark targeted at Apple employees and fans who wept as though their father had died. For some, especially the former group, he probably WAS like a father figure.

I was fascinated, at some oddly arm’s-length manner, about the death of Steve Jobs. Genius, no doubt; visionary, for certain. And, though I never purchased an Apple product – no MacIntosh, no iPod, no iPad, I recognize the impact Apple’s design had on PCs, and just about everything else. I have also seen all but two of the Pixar films.

I came across this article, “arguing against a Jobs hagiography.” I LOVE the word hagiography; it’s almost never used in the literal sense – biography of a saint – but rather to inbue characteristics on the dead that are overblown or inaccurate, usually with an admonition not to do so.

Interesting that the post-Jobs world was apparent even before the announcement of his death. When the new iPhone 4S was released last week, speculation was high “whether Apple CEO Tim Cook can keep Apple going like Steve Jobs did remains an open question. Industry analysts who closely study the company’s every move are somewhat mixed. Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday, said some, revealed a lackluster show from Cook. Jobs was legendary for splashy product launches shrouded in secrecy and rehearsed to perfection.”

And of course, Cook can’t. It’s like being the new coach of a very successful sports team; he’ll always be compared with his predecessor, and invariably won’t do quite as well. I feel for Tim Cook; he has the great misfortune of not being Steve Jobs.

While I don’t feel the emotional pull of Jobs’ passing that I have had with other public figures, I think there was an awful lot of unnecessary snark targeted at Apple employees and fans who wept as though their father had died. For some, especially the former group, he probably WAS like a father figure. As for me, I’m always depressed when people younger than I pass away.

Here are some items that caught my interest:
Steve Jobs’ Playboy interview (1985)
Steve Jobs’ government legacy: Citizen-centric computing; Jobs’ ability to craft tools for intensely personal computing helped
spark direct citizen-to-government computing.
Steve Jobs and His Magical Business Decisions, even as his failures are noted.
The Life of Steve Jobs
A TV commercial never shown in this form
My favorite Steve Jobs parody
Tributes from:
About.com
Spatula Forum
Shooting Parrots
Arthur at AmeriNZ, whose podcast I listen to on iTunes
MAD magazine
PARADE magazine (quotes)
The Onion: The Last American Who Knew What The F@#$ He Was Doing Dies
Jon Stewart, whose commented that, since he died too young, we hadn’t “used up” his creativity yet; at some level, I understood that.

M is for Martha

Mary sat and listened to Jesus as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work.

 

I always liked the name Martha. Partly, it’s because my first girlfriend was named Martha. I used to serenade her with the song Martha My Dear by the Beatles [LISTEN], from the white album. It was only later I discovered that Martha was Paul McCartney’s English sheepdog.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (pictured), of course, was the first First Lady of the United States, though she wasn’t so dubbed at the time. Martha is one of those classic girls’ names that, while extremely popular in the US in the 1880s (#14 in 1882), never lost at least a core of support; it didn’t leave the top 100 until 1966 and was still at #709 in 2010.

I’ve heard the slightly derisive term “being a Martha.” This referred to Luke 10:38-42 when Martha of Bethany and her sister Mary “offered hospitality to their friend Jesus…Mary sat and listened to him as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work. Jesus told Martha not to worry about small things, but to concentrate on what was important.” This proved to be a key concept in Christian hospitality; don’t NOT invite someone over, just because your home is not immaculate.

My daughter is fond of a PBS TV program called Martha Speaks, which “is an animated children’s television sitcom based on the 1992 children’s book of the same name by Susan Meddaugh about a talking dog named Martha…who is owned by ten-year-old Helen… When Helen feeds Martha some alphabet soup, the soup travels to her brain instead of her stomach, resulting in her ability to speak. The show focuses on synonyms and vocabulary, with each episode featuring an underlying theme illustrated with keywords.” LISTEN to the opening title theme song, which features these lyrics: “Martha Speaks and speaks and speaks and speaks and…Communicates, enumerates, elucidates, exaggerates, indicates, and explicates, bloviates, and overstates and (pant, pant, pant) hyperventilates!” And here is a video guide to the episodes.


ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Eating in Canada

The Wife’s favorite place to eat was Tim Horton’s.

I read in our AAA guide that Toronto, Ontario, Canada is a city of over two million people, and with five million in the metro area, which is about one-seventh of the entire population of the country. There are over 100 languages spoken there, and we heard more than our fair share. So, with such rich cultural diversity, why did we manage to eat at a Subway subs restaurant?

Part of it was convenience.  There is a Subway just across from the Royal Ontario Museum, it was about 6 p.m., and the Daughter was hungry. Part of it was her peanut allergy; going to some Chinese or Thai restaurant, which the Wife and I might have gone to on our own was not really practical due to the likelihood of the use of peanut oil. And the Daughter, a least in part because of peanut allergy fears, just isn’t a very adventurous eater. Oh, that particular Subway had no spinach, only lettuce; I prefer the former on my sub.

Convenience factored into eating at some of the attractions we were visiting. BTW, there’s a Nestle freeze pop, sold at the Toronto Zoo, made in a facility where peanuts are used. Did not anticipate that.

The one night we went out to dinner, we walked to the gay part of town, not unlike New York City’s Greenwich Village, and ate at the Rainbow Café, only five or six blocks from the hotel. The biggest problem with the place that, though we were inside, smoking was allowed outdoors, and a door was open; actually, more like a bay – it looked, on the side, like a three-car garage, with a section up.

The Daughter’s favorite place to eat was a place (a chain?) called the Golden Griddle. We ate dinner there one night and breakfast another morning. It was a clean, safe place. And Lydia got a toy at the end of the meal. And speaking of toys, I think it was Wendy’s hamburgers, where we stopped leaving town, at which the toy in the kids’ meal was a 30-second timer and some cards for charades; I loved that.

The Wife’s favorite place to eat was Tim Horton’s. We’d started seeing them in western New York, but the donut shop was ubiquitous in our travels. There was a dinky place in our Toronto hotel, which we never went to, except that she verified was not peanut-free. But as we were leaving town, she got a couple of donuts and an iced coffee and loved the freshness and taste.

This took place on the road from Peterborough: we stopped at a place that had Tim Horton’s, Burger King, something called Pizza Pizza, and another place. The Wife stood in the lengthy TH queue to get me a fruit smoothie and herself a couple of things, while I stood in the shorter BK line for food for the Daughter. I was finished with getting my order, while Carol was STILL in line. She got distracted by the fact that a whole family suddenly showed up to order in front of her and she managed to forget my drink. By the time she realized this, the TH queue was even longer than it was when she entered it. She did make it up to me, though, buying me a smoothie –it WAS good – at our stop 6 kilometers before we crossed the border back into the United States.

Sean Lennon’s birthday; and it would have been his father’s

We were JUST THERE, yet we missed seeing John & Yoko in person.

One of those signs that you are getting older is when you start saying things such as “I remember [him or her] when [he or she] was X years old [some age the person hasn’t been for a VERY long time].” And that’s how it was with Sean Lennon. I didn’t know him personally, but, to me, he was frozen in time at five years old, his age when his father was killed.

Here’s an audio of John and Sean talking about birthdays.

Of course, Sean continued to grow up, in spite of my myopia. I think that’s why, when he performed in Albany in the spring of 2007, when he was 31, I just had to go see him. That and, I suppose, that second-hand connection to his late father who I could never see live.

There was an antiwar rally I attended in New York City – must have been 1972, give or take a year – and on our way back to New Paltz on the bus, but still within the city limits, we could hear on the live radio (I’m thinking WBAI) that John and Yoko had shown up at the event! It was thrilling, but also frustrating; we were JUST THERE, yet we missed seeing them in person.

Anyway, here’s a link to bios of the Beatles kids. You’ll note that many of them became musicians as well.

Sean Lennon turns 36 today; John would have been 71.

MOVING question

Moving sucks.

Here’s an easy question, or maybe not. How many times have you moved? I recall my Internet buddy Amy noting that she lost track after she moved 30 times. I’m in the same situation.

Oddly, after moving from upstairs to downstairs in the same house when I was about six months old, I spent the next 18 years at the same address.

But then I went to college, and I had at least seven addresses in New Paltz/Kingston, and that doesn’t include the dorm. Side trips to Binghamton (again); Charlotte, NC; and Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC. Eventually, I moved to Schenectady (three addresses – technically four – in 20 months), and Albany (maybe 20?) Odd too, because, I’ve been in Albany for 32 years, and I’ve been in our house for 11 years.

Oh, yeah – moving sucks.

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