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.

Rear View Mirror QUESTIONS

What new technologies have you embraced? For which do you decide, “I prefer the old-fashioned way?”

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote an essay called Clinging to the rearview mirror. He quotes Marshall McLuhan:

Most people…still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.

Ebert notes, among other things:

He doesn’t like video games, 3D movies, or reading books on the Kindle.
When he owned LPs, he “possessed something tangible. When I download an album from iTunes, I can listen to it, but I possess nothing I can touch.”
*”When I enter a theater and see a movie, I experience it differently than when I watch a video.”

These new things aren’t worse, or better; they are just different.

I too am an analog man. While I bought CDs, eventually, my first love is the LP.
I haven’t really played video games since the 1980s.
I HATE 3D movies and think they are a scam.
Video is definitely secondary to seeing a film in a theater.
I have a cellphone, but I don’t give out the number, because I don’t want to be available 24/7. I use it to call work or home when I’ll be late when I’m out of town, and for emergencies.

What new technologies have you embraced? For which do you decide, “I prefer the old-fashioned way?”?

Let’s talk about me

So what two characteristics do you think are most like me?

Of course, everything in this blog, one way or another, is about me.

But I admit to being utterly fascinated by tests that supposedly explain me. For instance, at my last work conference, the speaker gave us a test to see what our individual communication styles are. The choices were:

Driver (dominant, bottom line, panther)
Expressive (influencing, needs interaction, peacock)
Amiable (steady, wants nice & fair, dolphin)
Analytical (careful, detailed, owl)

So what two characteristics do you think are most like me?
Take your cursor over the info below and block it to read. I’ll also put these in the answers 24 hours from now.

I picked expressive and analytical.

The test picked amiable (48 points), expressive (39); analytical got 10 points, and driver got 1..

Discuss.

OH, and if you want the code for whiting out the text, let me know that too.

Let the poor sweat

“Where Heritage sees luxurious poor people, I see a desperately sliding middle class. And there’s no substantial research here to prove either view is right.”

There was this recent article in the National Review, Modern Poverty Includes A.C. and an Xbox, reporting on a Heritage Foundation report, What is Poverty. The implication was clear: the poor in the United States don’t have it all that bad.

My initial inclination was not to even address the issue. After all, it was one of those unwinnable arguments with people of a particular mindset And look at some of the items- Owning a refrigerator? Probably provided by the landlord; ditto the stove and oven. Air conditioning is a necessity in much of the country. TVs are a relatively cheap form of information and entertainment. Even people in Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa have cell phones. And are these new items or second-hand?

But some of my data colleagues made interesting points:

One wrote: “Poverty status is about the ability of a ‘family’ to obtain a given standard of living based on its current flow of resources during some relatively short period, e.g. one year. Much of today’s poor were not poor in the recent past when they were able to purchase the consumer durables” measured. Interestingly, my seven-year daughter made pretty much the same observation when I was talking about this.

Another data colleague reflected on the interesting responses of who “bought stuff when employed and now haven’t worked in years and it’s difficult to replace what they have. Where Heritage sees luxurious poor people, I see a desperately sliding middle class. And there’s no substantial research here to prove either view is right.

“Not to mention the details. If you have an air conditioner, you may not be able to afford to turn it on. Individual pay-as-you-go cell phones are encouraged for the unemployed as help in job searches and more stable than landlines given the instability of housing for the poor… Subsidized housing often comes with washers and dryers because it takes fewer resources than trips to the laundromat. Go into any thrift shop in the U.S. and find used x-box systems for $10 or less as the employed trade up to a better system. And non-digital TVs for the taking.”

It’s clear that the writer created “a ‘straw man’ in selectively picking out polling data indicating that most Americans view poverty as third-world style depravation. If you think that is appropriate to the US, then quite right; few Americans qualify.” But, by American standards, the promise of children doing better than their parents is very much in question.
***
The Effect of Income on Appliances in U.S. Households

Visiting Dad’s Grave

Did we want to put anything else on the stone, for either of them? I don’t think anyone ever asked us 10.5 years earlier.

My father died 11 years ago today, and I was going to show you pictures of the gravesite, but in some home construction project, we’ve tidied up and I can’t find them. Maybe in six months, they will turn up.

In truth, those were pictures of my mother’s burial back in February that I wanted to show. Since my father died, I’ve been to his gravesite only twice since, before my mother’s internment.

When I’d go down to Charlotte, NC to visit my mom and sister, we’d talk about going. But it wasn’t just a hop in the car across town, it was nearly an hour away, at the Salisbury National Cemetery Annex, VA Section 8, grave 358. And once we got there, we’d tend to stick around for a while.

In any case, for a marker of such a relatively recent vintage, my father’s headstone seemed to have more than its share of wear and discoloration. At mom’s burial, the guy in charge of the cemetery told us that there would be a new stone prepared. On one side would be my father’s information, including his military service unit, and on the other side would be my mom’s info. Did we want to put anything else on the stone, for either of them? I don’t think anyone ever asked us 10.5 years earlier.

For my father’s side, it had to be short, for space considerations. We, surprisingly quickly, settled on “Renaissance Man” for him. He was a singer, guitarist, painter, writer, flower arranger, civil rights leader, church leader, (failed) businessperson, and general all-around force of nature.

For my mother’s side, we agreed to “The Wind Beneath Our Wings”, based on the related song my sister Leslie sang at both my father’s funeral (to my mom) and my mother’s.

The cemetery folks sent me a survey, asking how well they did, how the facility looked, et al. I must say that it was all great.

The Les Green 45s collection

There was also a country version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer While I Was In The Rear.

Some months back I was listening to a TIME-LIFE collection of songs from the 1950s. One of the tracks was The Impalas – Sorry (I ran all the way home)- (listen) And it reminded me of my father.

I remember his LP collection. It was full of mostly serious artists such as Wes Montgomery, Enoch Light, Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, plus some other folk artists, primarily from the early 1960s.

But his singles collection, which probably predated his albums by a half-decade or so, were filled with sillier fare:

Listen to The Ivy Three – Yogi; and here are the lyrics of the song performed by three dudes from Columbia University.
Listen to The Four Tophatters – 45 Men in a Telephone Booth; I bought a compilation CD of Cadence Records once primarily for this song.
Listen to The Playmates – Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler). My sister Leslie and I STILL know most of the words.
Listen to the Everly Brothers – Bird Dog. (This version is a demo of the actual recording, but a pretty close approximation.) It was backed with the lovely Devoted To You (listen).

There was a country single by the group called Carlisles: Nine Have Tried (and Nine Have Died), with Bargain Day, Half Off, the lyrics of which can be found here.

There was also a country version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer While I Was In The Rear. I can’t find out who did it, though Dave Bartholomew (listen) performed a bluesier version.

My sister Leslie recalls The Ventures – Walk Don’t Run, in the collection, which I don’t. The records themselves are long lost to the ages.

Anyway, it’s almost the 12th anniversary of my father’s death, and thinking about him and music was therapeutic.

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