Roger O Green

Apology QUESTION

I came across a podcast that addressed the question about what makes a good apology and what does not. Can’t find it at the moment, but what’s interesting to me is that I tend to remember the negatives:
DON’T use the word BUT. An example would be, “I’m sorry, BUT you started it.”
DON’T use the word IF. My least favorite apology: “I’m sorry IF you’re offended.” The clear implication is that you really SHOULDN’T be offended, but I better say it anyway.
The one DO I recall: Do say the word. “I apologize” or “I’m sorry.”

I was at a wedding once, and all the family members on my side, even people less close to the bride than I was, were included in the program. except me. This, I believe, was an honest mistake. The person who put it together spent about five minutes apologizing without apologizing, saying, finally, “I just don’t apologize,” as if that were some soerrt of badge of honor.

And the idea of the public apology, which we seem to have seen lots of, utterly fascinates me. Mark Sanford. David Letterman. Kobe Bryant. Eliot Spitzer. Tiger Woods, sort of; I mean the apology was “sort of”. It’s such a cliche they’ve made a TV drama about it: the Good Wife on CBS.

Of course, there are instances where one may be afraid to say I’m sorry for legal reasons. Canada has bandied about having legislation allowing people to say “I’m sorry” without assuming legal responsibility for their actions.

In other words, saying you’re sorry can’t be used against you later as evidence in civil court. “The goal of the legislation is to encourage sincere apologies,” said the Ontario Attorney General. “Saying sorry for a mistake or wrongdoing is the right thing to do.”

Proponents of the law say the ability to make an apology without legal consequences will help ease hard feelings, resolve disputes, and reduce the number of lengthy, costly lawsuits.

The Apology Act is partly based on the actions of more than 30 states across the U.S. where apology laws have been enacted specifically to make it easier for doctors to say “I’m sorry” instead of “See you in court.” Under those laws, an apology for a medical mistake is inadmissible in court.

My questions:

1. What are we the public, not the wronged party in their marriage, due from celebrity screw-ups? Is there some formula that I can plug in, tallying their level of fame, whether they are government officials, the number of times they appear on the cover of national magazines, the frequency and length of the indiscretion. Whether the guy – it’s usually a guy – refers to the “other woman” as his “soul mate”.

2. Should we have laws allowing for apologies for, say medical malpractice, without that apology be admissible in court?

3. How are you at apologizing to your smaller, more private flaws? I THINK I’m pretty good, but I could be mistaken, oblivious to some opportunities to say “I’m sorry” more often.

The Rod Serling Holiday

Near twin Gordon has decreed, and I have capitulated, to try to make both Bogie Day and Serling Day the holidays of choice in the blogosphere. Why? “Because both men were born on December 25th, and both encapsulate the ultimate in pop culture coolness.”

But I just don’t have enough to say about Humphrey Bogart, though I did see The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and one of my favorite films in the whole world, Casablanca. One of the times I saw Casablanca was in Rochester, NY outdoors in a park with my old neighbor from New Paltz, Debi. How I came to even be in Rochester involves lost brain cells. Oh, yeah, and I have a recording where expounds on the value of baseball.

As for Rod Serling, what more can I say that I didn’t already say here or here, where I discuss meeting him or any number of other posts about episodes and whatnot.

It occurred to me, though, that I may never have mentioned the fact that I attended the world premiere(!) of Twilight Zone: The Movie, 13 days before it officially opened. The event took place, naturally, in Binghamton, NY, my hometown, on June 11, 1983 at the Crest Theater on Main Street, which had a seating capacity of approximately 800. I saw lots of movies at the Crest growing up. Hmm, I wonder if Serling saw any movies there growing up? It was a walkable, certainly a bikeable distance from his house on Bennett Avenue.

Some of the details have faded to memory, such as how I got tickets. I DO recall that it was very hot outside, waiting there for the dignitaries to come in. Of course, Rod was not one of them, having died eight years earlier from smoking cigarettes.

And I DO recall that this was a Very Big Deal for this small city where Rod Serling’s family moved to from Syracuse before he turned two. One of the dignitaries was Helen Foley, Serling’s beloved high school English teacher. Another was Richard Deacon (pictured below with Betty White, circa 1983) who was on Leave It To Beaver, but was best known as the put-upon producer Mel Cooley on The Dick van Dyke Show. Deacon, who died in 1984, was born in Philadelphia in 1921 but also grew up in Binghamton.

As for the movie itself, well, I’d have to see it again. I did think the first segment, a vague remake of A Quality of Mercy (Season 3, episode 80), was almost unrecognizable from the original. The filming of that segment led to the accidental deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors. Whereas the remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Season 5, episode 123) felt pretty much like the William Shatner version, at least in my memory.

The movie segment It’s a Good Life, featured a character named Helen Foley (played by Kathleen Quinlan), which got a big laugh from the audience; oddly, “Helen Foley” was not the name of a character in the original episode, but rather in the Nightmare as a Child television version.

*An episode guide of the television series can be found here.*

Pictures of Rod Serling c. 1955; all photos from LIFE.com.
ROG

A Hitchcockian Evening

It was a not-that-dark, clear and cool night two and a half weeks ago, before the first snow. I was riding my bicycle home past the NEW! IMPROVED! Pine Hills branch of the Albany Public Library.

Then I noticed a presence. Well, it wasn’t a singular presence. Rather, I could sense a whole bunch of creatures seemingly peering at me. I noticed that the trees were filled with black birds, crows or ravens. It was eerily like that Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds, which I saw decades ago and which terrified me, except that film used a flock of seagulls, if I recall correctly.

Suddenly, the birds were on the move! Were they going to attack?! Well, no. But in traveling from tree to tree, they were going to poop. I heard the plop, plop of bird droppings all around me as I rode feverishly the last few hundred yards to my house. Fortunately, I made it home without pelted. I called my wife to see the hundreds of loud, cawing birds in our tree and the trees of our neighbors.

The next morning, they were gone. All that remained were their “gifts” all over the sidewalk, the road, and notably, all over the cars on the street, including ours.

I will remember the evening that I was almost murdered by crows, figuratively..

Crow in birdhouse at the Bronx Zoo.
Location: New York, NY, US
Date taken: 1942
Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt
For personal non-commercial use only from LIFE.com
ROG

Social Insecurity

My favorite time of the year is when I get that statement from the Social Security Administration telling me how much money I have made each year. I’m less interested in how much I made last year as I am years ago.
1969 – $529: seven months as a page at the Binghamton Public Library
1970 – $102: I have no idea
1971 – $3,371: six months working at IBM before I went to college. This would be the most money I would make until 1978. I made enough to pay for my college expenses and to lend my parents $1500 for the down payment on a house. Tuition was cheap, and I had a Regents scholarship to SUNY New Paltz.
I worked odd jobs during college, making as much as $2,661 in 1975 and $50 – $50? in 1976.
1978 – $7,434: I was a teller for the Albany Savings Bank for one month, where I was making $6,000 a year, less than what I had in my drawer on state paydays, before I quit to work for the Schenectady Arts Council, at $8,400/year. Unfortunately, that CETA job ended early in 1979.
Then from 1980-1988, I could see my pay progress at FantaCo in Albany, only to drop back in 1989, when I worked for Empire Blue Cross. I mention this specifically because there were some people at the time who thought I was crazy to work at a “funny book” store, but I was making more money there than the “respectable” insurance company, thank you.
I’ve been working my current job since 1992, and the thing particularly of interest is how much putting aside money for health costs alters the bottom line.

Oh, the other interesting thing on this SSA form is my estimated benefits if I retire at 62, 66 or 70. Especially heartening is this little caveat: “The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2037, the payroll taxes will be enough to pay only about 76 percent of scheduled benefits.” Of course, I have a five-year old; I’ll NEVER retire.
ROG

V is for Values

When I was pondering the notion of “value”, this came unbidden into my head:
When the values go up, up, up
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall this season
Will show you the reason
High quality! Economy!
music by Leon Mitchell; words by Charles A. Gaston; original version (c) 1946

When I was growing up in Binghamton, NY in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Robert Hall was THE place to go for back-to-school clothing. The clothing was inexpensive but solidly made, the kind of place a working-class family wanted to shop for their children’s apparel.

The secret of the stores’ success was told in this 1949 TIME magazine article. But what sold me were the nifty ads, sometimes with the lyrics slightly altered, which you may be able to hear here and/or here.

But the more pervasive meaning of the word “values” involves the “set of emotional rules people follow to help make the right decisions in life.” Or the wrong ones, I suppose. In a large country such as the Unites States, not to mention a vast planet, one hopes for commonality in values, but certainly cannot expect unanimity.

Yet some groups have successfully seemed to have hijacked the term “values”. There is a group of “values voters”, for instance, who are in the right wing of American politics. Based on their recent summit, they are concerned about the “silenced” Christians, the evil of “Obamacare” (health care), “defending marriage”, and in general, the “vast left wing conspiracy.”

While I support differing points of view, I’m troubled by the notion that only those people of a particular political persuasion are the only ones with “values”. It’s similar to the notion that “Christian” only represents a certain political POV.

As a “liberal” and a Christian, my values are just as legitimate. Oh, and I vote, too.

ROG