Roger O Green

I-o-wah

The conservative political pundit Robert Novak handicapped today’s Iowa caucuses yesterday.

The most likely outcome (for the Republicans) appears to be:
1st Place: Mitt Romney
2nd Place: Mike Huckabee
3rd Place: Fred Thompson
4th Place: John McCain

The Democratic field looks to shake out this way:
1st Place: Barack Obama
2nd Place: John Edwards
3rd Place: Hillary Clinton
4th Place: Bill Richardson

As much as I’m a political junkie, I’m happy that there will be actual voters going out to decide this, rather than hearing ad nauseum pundits and pollsters projecting what will happen. Now we’ll get to hear ad nauseum pundits and pollsters explaining what did happen.

And how do I feel about all this?

Your Score: Linus

Wishy-Washy: 62%, Mental: 65%, Physical: 53%

With the outside world being such a big and scary place, everyone needs a source of comfort and security. For Linus this is his blanket – even though Lucy and his grandmother try and break him of the habit. He has an unparalleled knowledge of the Bible and has managed Charlie Brown’s baseball team on occasion. When Halloween comes around, make sure your pumpkin patch is sincere.

TEST
***
Anthony makes the correct theological point that Christmas is not over. Apparently, retailers are rejoicing as well.

ROG

Looking forward to

So what am I most anticipating in the new year?
READING
For the first time in decades, THREE comic-related items:
The Steve Ditko book.
The Jack Kirby book
The Fred Hembeck book. BTW, happy five years of blogging, Fred!

WATCHING
More movies; likely next chance, MLK Day. Likely film: Juno.
Pioneers of Television which starts TONIGHT on PBS with sitcoms (I Love Lucy; Joyce Randolph on The Honeymooners; Marlo Thomas about her father Danny’s Make Room for Daddy’ the man himself on The Andy Griffith Show; and DVD and MTM on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Football. Seriously, taping it then watching it later is SO much more efficient. Definitely some of the NFL games. Probably a bowl game or two.
The Golden Globes, just to see who actually shows up and say they support the Writers’ Strike, even as they’ll be others who’ll boycott the show altogether for the same reason.

HEARING
The new music I got in the last month, including the John Lennon Anthology. There’s more, but I’ll save it for my Top 10 album list.

VISITING
Williamsburg, VA with the family. My in-laws have as timeshare.
Visiting the BNorman Rockwell Museum, not all that far from here in Stockbridge, MA. My wife wants to see the Rockwell stuff. I really want to see LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel (through May 26, 2008), featuring Jessica Abel, Sue Coe, R. Crumb, Howard Cruse, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Brian Fies, Gerhard, Milt Gross, Marc Hempel, Niko Henrichon, Mark Kalesniko, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Matt Madden, Frans Masereel, Frank Miller, Terry Moore, Dave Sim, Art Spiegelman, Lynd Ward, Lauren Weinstein, Mark Wheatley, Barron Storey and others.
Seeing my friends Gerelt-Od and Soyol who used to live in Albany then returned home to Mongolia, but who’ve been in NYC the past year; I haven’t seen them in nearly a decade.
Seeing my friend Deborah, who I met in 1977 in NYC, who moved to Japan and then France, and who’ll be visiting the Western Hemisphere at some point this year. I haven’t seen her in over a quarter century.

DOING
Worrying less
Sleeping more
Drinking more water

That’s as close to New Year’s resolutions as I go.

ROG

2008

Happy New Year!

This is a leap year, being divisible by four. (There are exceptions; 2100, 2200, and 2300 are NOT leap years, but most of us don’t have to worry about that.) Next month (February), there are five Fridays. Three of them are paydays for me. The chance of that happening is about one in 56.

The Beijing Olympics will start on 08-08-08, eight apparently being a lucky number in the Chinese culture. I wonder if the air quality will be an issue for some athletics. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that at least one medal-contending athlete from the United States or western Europe will withdraw for that reason. Feelings will be hurt.

Rumor has it that there’s a Presidential election this year. The Iowa caucus is in TWO days; the New Hampshire primary is in a week. Super Duper Tuesday, when several states vote is February 5. The Democratic and Republican candidates are supposed to be all but selected by then, but I’m not sure, though the only states of any size that AREN’T having their primaries/caucuses by mid-February are Ohio and Texas, on March 4. The United States is holding its first Presidential election with no incumbent president or vice-president running since 1952 (unless Dick Cheney accepts a draft from the Republican convention – horrors!) It’ll be interesting. I have NO idea who the nominees of either party will be.

ROG

The final curtain

I was watching Wednesday’s JEOPARDY! on Saturday – no surprise there – and there was a $1600 question about Women of Distinction: “In November 1988 she was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head a modern Islamic nation. ” It was, of course, Benazir Bhutto. On Thursday, she was dead. Yes, I know they tape the game show, but I still found it a bit spooky.

A couple musicians died this month, and I hadn’t noted it yet.

Ike Turner: recorded perhaps the first rock song, Rocket 88. Enhanced his wife’s career and the song Proud Mary. Beat his wife. Great musician, not so great human being.

Oscar Peterson: When I think of my father’s record collection, I usually think of the folkies like Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger and Odetta. But now that I ponder it, there were a few Oscar Peterson albums as well. But I did not really appreciate him until I was considerably older. Wonderfully lyrical pianist. I never knew he was Canadian.

Dan Fogelberg: seems like someone gave me an LP of his once upon a time. Actually bought the greatest hits album for my wife a couple years ago because she had a roommate in college who played Fogelberg incessantly. I could only recognize two of his songs, Another Auld Lang Syne, because it shows up every holiday season, and Longer, which appears on some compilation album. Conversely, my wife can sing along with over half of the tunes. I was on Barnes & Nobles’ online site this week, and along with the big current hits and Christmas music, high on the list was that same greatest hits album I had bought for my wife.

But it’s the fact that he died of prostate cancer – at 56! – which, of course, is what killed my father. I’m thus compelled to ask my male readers of a certain age (certainly by 50, or earlier with a family history) to get checked regularly.
ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Anthony

But before that, one last question from Scott:

5. (I may have missed this somewhere in your posts) Have you ever considered becoming a minister?

When I was 12, and probably a year or two before and after, I was pretty much convinced of it. I had a “born-again” experience when I was nine, and it seemed like the logical path.

And now to Anthony:

1. What is the one thing that if they didn’t have it in heaven you would seriously think about taking up residence in the other place because you would miss it so much?
Music. You get the sense that they’ll be celestial choirs singing all of the time. If heaven is tuneless, that’d be hell.

2. What is the hardest passage of Scripture for you to accept?
Interestingly, I’ve a great rationalization for any of those loopy Old Testament readings such as Deuteronomy 25 as a message for a different time.
(I can even go a couple hours on Thou Shall Not Kill: what DOES that mean in terms of self-defense, war, capital punishment, war, abortion, stem cell research, et al.?)

What’s harder to deal with, and this ties directly into the conversation about becoming a minister, is perhaps a core tenet of Christianity, at least as understood by many: John 14:6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
At the point I was 15 or 16, I was having a difficult time with the notion that a good Hindu or Buddhist, who had never heard of Jesus Christ, was going to hell – the reason we were supposed to go out and “save those savages”, in Africa and elsewhere. It was at this point I pretty much turned away from the faith of my youth, and it took over a decade before I found my way back, with the ability not to necessarily buy into the doctrinaire positions of fundamentalism. I’ve gotten better with ambiguity. I’ve talked with Christian clergy, and at least a few struggle with the same issues.
I read a biography of Mahatma Gandhi decades ago, and there was a quote in there that has stuck in my mind about why he chose not to be a Christian: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.” Don’t think that was the exact quote, but close enough.

3. What do you dislike most about yourself?
My ability to go to a very melancholy place rather easily.

4. What is the most profound spiritual experience you have had?
I was in a play (Our Town), and became good friends with this woman named Rusell. She ended up contracting this rare but almost always fatal disease and was at some hospital in Boston. A bunch of us went to our church chapel in Albany, stood in a circle and prayed for Rusell. At about that time, she was cured and fully recovered; it was, the doctors said, a miracle.
***
Dorian reimagines Christmas.
***
New England 16-0. Feh.

ROG