Roger O Green

The existential quest: Ask Roger Anything

YOU are my change agent.

Our intern this summer asked me, pretty much out of the blue, whether I believed in existentialism.

I know the textbook definition is: “a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.” But I wanted to know what HE meant.

“How can you have worked in the same job for over 23 years?”

“Because it always changes. The technology changes, the data changes, the clients and counselors change, the world changes.”

“So you count on things changing.”

“I don’t COUNT on the world changing, it just DOES. It’s like those occupational tests I used to take. They always asked what I imagined I’d be doing five years hence. What I imagined never meshed with the reality.”

I’m now going to try to will you all to Ask Roger Anything. That’s because YOU are my change agent. I may/do have some posts already planned. What YOU do is change the trajectory of my mind, thinking about THAT, when THAT might never crossed my mind. I find this to be a good thing, BTW.

As usual, you may ask me ANYTHING – advice or opinions or philosophical musings, even (GULP) politics. I will answer, generally within a month.

I will answer your queries to the best of my ability/memory/flashback/drugged state honestly, though the mind plays tricks on one, doesn’t it? A little obfuscation on my part IS not only allowed, but required.

You can leave your comments below. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or end me an IM on Facebook (make sure it’s THIS Roger Green, the one with the duck) and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

That was the week that was: late August

The guests gave our host unsolicited advice on romance.

The curse of a daily blog is that life sometimes gets in the way. I STILL haven’t written about the rest of the July vacation, which I will eventually do, not for your sake, but for my own. So as a blog cheat, I’m going to note the week that was, now a couple weeks ago.

Before that: Heck, I haven’t mentioned the TWO plays I saw the FIRST weekend in August. The first was All Shook Up at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, featuring one of my teenage nieces. It was a mix of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Elvis Presley and worked surprisingly well.

The other was Into the Woods at the Mac-Hadyn Theatre. With our front-row seats, sometimes the action was over our left shoulders, and sometimes (Little Red Riding Hood being devoured), it was so close we could almost touch it. But what we decided, after having the movie and this production, is that the story isn’t compelling enough to see again any time soon.

As for this past week, a few months ago, parents-in-law had arranged all of the families of their three surviving children to a timeshare in western Massachusetts. You make plans in May for the end of August, and they don’t always work out. One brother-in-law couldn’t make it for work reasons.

We delayed our departure on Saturday so we could attend a rededication of the marriage of Rosaline and David in our church. It had elements of a Cameroonian service, and it fun, but unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the reception, as we went out to Hancock, MA.

We had been there nine years ago, and there wasn’t much to do. The highlight then was watching trucks bring parts of the first of what are now several wind towers. Now, there’s tennis and other amenities. But I never used any of them.

The next morning, the Wife and I went back to Albany. The choir, heavy on sopranos, but light on men, sang at the funeral service of our friend Margaret Hannay. We sang Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace by John Rutter. I had difficulty singing:
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

My spouse then went BACK to Hancock, but I stayed in town, and attended a party our friend Jon threw, where the guests gave our host unsolicited, contradictory, but brilliant advice on romance.

Monday, I took off from work, but I had a professional development project to work on. I had a Friends of the Library meeting at 5 pm, followed by a meeting to give some expert feedback on the operations of the library. That evening, I needed to write a letter to an organization requesting speakers that HAD to be done THAT NIGHT.

Tuesday, work, then slog through professional development project until 9 pm.

Wednesday, work. The Wife and Daughter had just gotten home, but we needed to leave immediately for junior high orientation, which I had totally forgotten about. The school district is now engaging CDTA to provide bus service for the morning, and first afternoon routes, instead of the oft-unreliable bus company used in the past. The greatest challenge was the combination locker, which none of us could open with any regularity.

Thursday, work. I got a desperate request from my old boss to transcribe an interview with a friend of mine. The link didn’t work in Google Chrome, though I discovered by trial and error, it did operate in Firefox and Internet explorer. The interview turned out to be 90 minutes long, and with the time I wasted figuring out how to hear the piece, needed and fortunately found some help.

Friday, work. Transcription, interrupted by the Daughter not feeling well.

Saturday, transcription, edit transcript, tend to daughter still feeling poorly. You can tell she’s off when she pulls out her large unicorn to cuddle and asks Oscar the monkey to talk with her.

The only blogging I did was to write the intro for ABC Wednesday.

That was the week that was.

K is for Kris Kristofferson

“He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction”

I happened to get an issue of Rolling Stone magazine this year, and there’s a story called Kris Kristofferson: An Outlaw at 80, about how “one of the greatest songwriters of all time (covered by Johnny Cash… Elvis Presley and some 500 others)” was experiencing an “increasingly debilitating memory loss.” It turns out it wasn’t Alzheimer’s or dementia, but Lyme disease.

His first album, released as Kristofferson in 1970, was rereleased, with a nicer cover, a year later, as Me and Bobby McGee, named for the posthumous #1 song by Janis Joplin that he wrote. Some of the songs on that album include Help Me Make It Through the Night, For the Good Times, and Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, all hits for other people.

His second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, featured Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again), a minor hit for Roger Miller, and got to #26 on the pop charts for Kristofferson. It also contains my favorite Kris Kristofferson lyrics, from The Pilgrim, Chapter 33:

He’s a poet, an’ he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, an’ he’s a pusher
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned
He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home

His biggest single recording was Why Me, which got to #16 in 1973, from his fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn. He also recorded with his second wife Rita Coolidge.

Kris Kristofferson is also an actor, appearing in several films, before becoming a Movie Star in A Star is Born, with Barbra Streisand.

Now that he has most of his memory back, he’s listening to the old songs again, “to get reacquainted with his life’s work. ‘It just takes you back like a picture of something would,’ he says. ‘I was also interested in seeing if they still sounded good to me,’ he continues. ‘I’ve been pleasantly surprised, particularly with this one.’ He points to his third album, Border Lord. ‘I can remember at the time being so disappointed at the reception it got.’

“His wife [since 1983, Lisa] sits to his left and looks at him, beaming at his recall. ‘To me, the song is what matters, not necessarily the performances,’ he says as he moves a napkin to examine a picture of him in his twenties, looking disheveled in his meager Nashville bedroom. ‘Just the words and melody – that’s what moves your emotions.'”

“‘I may have some more creative work in me,’ he finally admits, then concludes on a characteristically impassive note. “But if I don’t, it’s not going to hurt me.'”

LISTEN TO:

“Blame It on the Stones”
“To Beat the Devil”
“Me and Bobby McGee”
“Best of All Possible Worlds”
“Help Me Make It Through the Night” which gets ‘lie’ and ‘lay’ right and wrong in the same song
“The Law Is for Protection of the People”
“For the Good Times”
“Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”
“The Silver Tongued Devil and I”
“Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)”
“The Pilgrim, Chapter 33”
“Nobody Wins”
“Why Me”

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Movie review: Café Society

The Woody tropes are there, including disdain for all things Los Angeles.

I view the new Woody Allen movie Café Society at the Spectrum Theatre. At the end of the film, the man in front of me asks, “That can’t be the end of it, can it?” The next day, The Wife sees the film, and she says pretty much the same thing.

Conversely, I enjoyed the ambiguity of the ending. I have had a few relationships like that.

In 1930s New York City, Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg is the Woody character) lives with his mother Rose (Jeannie Berlin) and father Marty (Ken Stott), a jeweler. With few prospects there, Rose calls her brother Phil Stern (Steve Carell), a very successful agent in Hollywood, hoping that Phil could find a job for his nephew.

After days of waiting around, Bobby finally gets to talk with Phil about his prospects. Phil has his secretary Vonnie (Kristen Stewart in arguably the best performance in the film) show Bobby around town. Bobby is taken with Vonnie, but she tells him she has a boyfriend, a journalist named Doug.

And then emotions get turned around. There are three scenes, pretty much in a row, that I particularly loved – they made my wife really sad – where the characters discover missing pieces of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Rose and Marty (Ken Stott) have two other children: schoolteacher Evelyn (Sari Lennick), who is married to philosopher Leonard (Stephen Kunken), and nightclub owner and gangster Ben (Corey Stoll).

There is really only one section of dialogue that is laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s near the end, a conversation with Rose and Marty about Christianity v. Judaism.

The movie also stars Blake Lively as Veronica Hayes and Brendan Burke as Evelyn and Leonard’s nasty and obnoxious neighbor Joe.

There are good and not-so-good Woody Allen movies in the 21st century. Café Society is pretty good, #20 in this list of All 47 Woody Allen movies – ranked from worst to best. The Rotten Tomatoes summary called it “amiable,” which is quite accurate. Yes, the Woody tropes are there, including disdain for all things Los Angeles, but it works here.
***
Woody Allen’s Biographer Tells All Id meet ego. Ego, id. The celebrated, controversial, highly self-aware filmmaker’s new ‘Café Society’ is about himself — but who is that? By David Evanier

Random notes from Facebook

When another person and I, separately, posted on Facebook from The New Yorker, The News Reshuffled what was clearly a piece of satire, Emotional Obama Tearfully Thanks Trump for Granting Him Citizenship, a few people thought it was unfunny. One, on my feed, said it was a “lie” that I was sharing FOX News garbage, and that the New Yorker is a terrible magazine.

Trying to explain that it was meant as humor did not help. However, when I posted, from the same source, that Obama had paid Mexico $5 million to keep Trump, now THAT was considered funny.
***
I believe:

One should NEVER say, “See what I did there?” As The Daughter rightly notes, it lessens the joke. Let others notice.

A: After releasing his health records to Dr. Oz, Donald Trump is now said to be considering allowing only Tex Baxter and Lois Lane to cover him. Peter Parker, Jimmy Olsen, and “Animal” will form the press photo pool.
B: What about Clark Kent?
A: Too much of a liberal do-gooder. “Truth and justice.” So corrupt!
Me: And Clark would see right through him.
C: I see what you did there! 😀
***
I posted this video on Facebook, Are Cracker, White Trash, & Redneck Racist? from Decoded on MTV News, which led to a very long conversation about white privilege, which Francesca Ramsey mentioned only in passing. Conversations about white privilege are ALWAYS lengthy.

I appreciated input from Michael Rivest and others on this, but I shan’t relitigate it here.

It’s a good thing I didn’t post the White Fragility Workplace Training.
***
Keith Olbermann took on DJT in GQ, which Arthur linked to. In a Facebook discussion, someone wrote of Olbermann: “He is a paid character assassin. He’s rehashing the same accusations made against Trump. since the beginning of his campaign.”

To which someone else noted: “I will refrain from insulting you personally. But as Roger [me] said, you only have to listen to what comes out of Trump’s mouth. And because he is featured on almost every news and talk show 24/7, I have heard him actually say most of the things Olbermann attributed to him. In other cases, I have read the accounts of people that have had to deal with him. I even know a couple of people personally who have had to try and get paid for the work they did for him. So this is not a ‘choice’ I have to make about believing Olbermann or not. It is the sad reality of Donald Trump. It’s hard to imagine that one guy running for President can be such an ass clown, but then Mr. Trump is no ordinary guy.”
***
A local reporter posted on Facebook: “the #518 is getting a new area code. Like or dislike…”

Wow, the dislike was STRONG. “I dislike this change. Life is more complicated when there are more numbers to use.” Which is true; one will have to dial 518, even within the 518, which I have to do at work presently. But people won’t have to get new phone numbers; the new area code, which has not yet been determined, will be for new calls. Expect it in October.

Someone asked if we’d get 666. I wrote: Here’s the current list. 666 IS available, but don’t count on it!

One person would have preferred they divided 518 geographically, as they did with 914, leaving only Westchester County, just north of Albany, as 914 and creating a new area code 845 in the rest of the area. “An overlay means if I get a new neighbor, I may need to dial 10 numbers to call her. An overlay is easier for them, not us. Another example of not putting people first.”

Not necessarily. The change was a pain for all those counties in the Mid Hudson section of New York who had to change ads, make new business cards, repaint signs. Not to mention all the folks interacting with those people, businesses, colleges, governments, et al.

“This area could have kept 518 in the Capital District.”

Probably not. The plan that was rejected “would have meant giving residents of both Albany and Troy, as well as towns south of them, a brand new area code and phone numbers to learn.”

But my favorite comment was “Don’t they have anything better to do?” Actually, making sure we have enough phone exchanges IS what THEY do.