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.

Christmas eve 2014

We are all illumined by candlelight in a period of silence.

Christmas booksSomeone I knew on Facebook before I met her in person tagged me, and a couple of other people, with this photo, which came from who knows where. (I was going to say “Allah knows where,” but deferred.)

One of the things about the Christmas Eve service, pretty much in both my current church and the previous one, is that they are about the same, every year.

There’s music, interspersed with readings. The readings, particularly, the later ones, are pretty much as they were last year and the year before that.

(I occasionally wonder if people who only attend church on Christmas and Easter think that the church has a really limited repertoire.)

We light the candles during the singing of Silent Night as the room lights are dimmed. We are all illuminated by candlelight in a period of silence.

One could see this as boring, and predictable, yet I choose not to do so. It’s Christmas Eve again, and we wait in anticipation of what is going to happen.
***
O Holy Night, with Trombone Shorty.

X is for Xylopolist

Consider this as my Christmas/Hanukkah/Festivus/Kwanzaa present to you!

christmas_tree

A xylopolist is someone who sells wood. Or, from Encyclo: 1. One who sells timber; a timber-merchant. 2. A dealer in wooden objects or one who sells various kinds of wood or wooden objects. I assume this includes someone who sells Christmas trees.

X is always tricky for ABC Wednesday participants. There are two common prefixes in English that start with X that folks have used quite often.

Xylo- refers to wood, while xanth- means yellow in color. Here’s a list of unusual words beginning with X; a number of words start with xeno- (strange, foreign) or xero- (dry).

If you are seeking other words, try plants, specifically these botany entries.

Look also at common Mandarin Chinese words.

Consider this as my Christmas Hanukkah Festivus Kwanzaa present to you!

abc15

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

Hack attack!

THE INTERVIEW Teaser PosterGiven the fact that I had, and still have, no interest in seeing the SONY picture The Interview, I am nevertheless saddened to see its theatrical release scuttled. As you probably heard, the film is about a couple of “tabloid TV show” journalists…

When they discover that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is a fan of the show, they land an interview with him in an attempt to legitimize themselves as journalists. As Dave and Aaron prepare to travel to Pyongyang, their plans change when the CIA recruits them, perhaps the two least-qualified men imaginable, to assassinate Kim.

SONY pictures’ computers have been hacked by cyberbullies believed to be tied to North Korea. Or maybe not. A load of internal data was released – more anon – but the most serious action was a threat that suggested people stay away from the theaters showing the film, lest some Sept. 11, 2001-type attack befall them.

The riffraff on the Internet who think that SONY created the threat as a way to boost buzz for the Interview I find odd The conspiracy theorists are tiresome; it spent $30 million on the film, and tens of millions on the promotion. In any case, the alert got several of the largest movie theater chains to decide not to show the film, scheduled to open on Christmas Day. SONY then decided to pull the film from release.

Naturally, the politicians have weighed in. Mitt Romney, the once and perhaps future Presidential nominee suggests that SONY stream it for free. The incumbent, Barack Obama, suggested that we continue to go to the movies, and told SONY that it made a mistake shelving the flick.

A small part of me is actually thinking that the hoary cliche, We’re letting the terrorists win, seems appropriate here. As the George Clooney petition, which NO one in Hollywood signed, there’s a lot of cowardice in Tinsel Town. On the other hand, as Mark Evanier noted: “We cancel airline flights if there’s even a vague threat. We evacuate buildings if there are suspicious packages. In a sense, the terrorists/hackers have already won this one.”

Some of the data breaches of SONY have turned out to be everything from merely embarrassing to so problematic that lawsuits are threatened; it has been very costly for the company, both fiscally and on a trust level. Some of the issues revealed:
Salaries
The script for an upcoming James Bond film
Tom Hanks used to check-in hotels under the name Johnny Madrid.
Alex Trebek considered quitting JEOPARDY! over a recent Kids’ Week kerfuffle
*Denzel Washington blacklist?

The journalism website Poynter has addressed the ethics of hacked email and otherwise ill-gotten information. It suggests:
Do additional reporting to verify the details. You must be sure it is accurate before you pass it along
Avoid distortion and instead ensure appropriate tone. This means watching your headlines, adjectives, and all the other details that give a particular piece of information a certain tone. When you add flavor to information, it needs to be appropriate.
*Add context, by seeking additional input or rebuttal from the relevant stakeholders. Context makes information more accurate.

A stocking stuffer for me: Ask Roger Anything

You can ask me ANYTHING, and I will answer. Promise.

One of those Facebook pictures has a message something like, “As I get older, I crave less for material presence and more for emotional presence.” A broad interpretation, to be sure, but pretty valid. Except for the Hess truck and a few other items, I’m not all that desperate for “stuff” this holiday season.

However, I continue to have a great need for something approximating personal reflection, the subtext of this blog. But doing it oneself is difficult. And limiting. I only tend to think about topics and questions that are within my comparative narrow purview.

That’s where YOU come in. You can ask me ANYTHING, and I will answer. Promise. And almost surely relatively soon, generally within thirty days. I’m STILL looking for the stumpers; I LIKE the stumpers.

I agree to answer your questions to the best of my ability and memory. Of course, memory is a tricky thing, self-selecting, imprecise. As always, a little obfuscation is allowed, just because I like the word obfuscation.

You can leave your comments below. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s OK; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, and note that you want to remain anonymous. Otherwise, I will cite you, or site you or sight you…

Consider this a Christmas/solstice/Kwanzaa/whatever present to me. And you KNOW it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

Reality hits hard (with apologies to fillyjonk)

One catalog company I ordered from called me to tell me my card had been declined.

hospital-bed-talk-with-doctorThe blogger fillyjonk wrote on December 15: ” I dunno. Locally and globally, sad and difficult stuff.” She was SO right.

*Her post began: “Someone took hostages in Sydney. In a Lindt chocolate shop.” Unfortunately, that ended with two of the hostages being killed, along with the gunman.

*About the same time, I’m listening to this story of a guy killing his ex-wife and five of his ex-in-laws at three different places in Montgomery County, PA, just north of Philadelphia, before turning the gun on himself. Worst of all, I awaken the next morning to the news of 140+ people murdered by the Taliban in western Pakistan, most of them children.

*Locally, and more recently, there was an Amber alert for a five-year-old boy near around here, then canceled 10 hours later when the boy’s body was discovered. The abduction story was a crock; his 19 y.o. cousin has been arrested. Meanwhile, eight children were slaughtered in Cairns, Australia.

*The Daughter complained of sharp pain on her left side, and we went to the ER at Albany Med on Saturday night, December 13. We were there from 8:30 p.m. until 2:30 a.m., and bed after 3 a.m. I SO don’t do 3 a.m. well anymore. Then I went to church in the morning. I’ve been on fumes all week.

*She has some infection in or around her kidneys, and she has to take an antibiotic. But halfway through the regimen, the hospital calls to say that the type of infection she has is resistant to the antibiotic she has been taking, so she needs to take a DIFFERENT one and start the regimen all over.

*The illness meant that I missed two days of work, one full day, and two half days, which feels actually worse than two full days because my work rhythm is off. I was going to go to a luncheon to honor people at SUNY Central who had reached milestone anniversaries. (Because we were switched to SUNY Albany for a time, both a colleague and I missed both our 15th and 20th-anniversary luncheons.) But I missed it, seeing my boss, a former colleague, and two long-time friends get awarded. Worse, the ticket I bought ($30) went to waste because we were so shorthanded. Because…

*Our office secretary left on November 5, so we – well mostly a library colleague and I – have been answering the main phones. One of our library colleagues, Amelia, had a baby at the end of November, which is lovely, of course, but she’s out on maternity leave until late February. So when one (OR MORE) of the five, currently four, librarians is out, it becomes a strain on the system. There were just two of us two Thursdays ago (snow and the flu kept the other two at home), and two on the day of the luncheon.

We usually have a week’s turnaround on the reference queue but, currently, it’s about 10 days. This will EVENTUALLY rectify itself as the demand slackens during the holidays, but looking at the list of questions undone is depressing and frustrating. And one of the librarians will be away for a week around Christmas.

*One of our choir members has been away much of the year getting treatment for cancer in Arizona. My mother’s first cousin Robert is now on dialysis. And while I didn’t know them, I mourn the loss of my friend Steve Bissette’s parents, his father in late October, and his mother in mid-December.

*We have lost our custodian at church a few weeks ago. The Wife chairs the Administration Committee until the end of the year, so this is a task that involves meetings, et al.

*All this busyness has made it difficult to concentrate on Christmas shopping. One catalog company I ordered from called me to tell me my card had been declined; what I didn’t notice in the pile of mail unread is that the bank had pulled one card as compromised and replaced it with another.

*Of course, it’s been havoc on blogging. I have a daily blog and write one post every two days. It’s not a lack of topics, it’s a lack of time. This will explain, in part, an increase in typos.

*I’ve had a deficit in not only sleep but good dietary habits and housecleaning effort. The house is messier than even my relatively low standards can bear. Where IS my cellphone? It’s in the bedroom, SOMEWHERE.

So, happy holidays, everyone. I’m told it gets better; sure hope so.

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