Roger O Green

O is for Olympic Observations

I’m still crushed by Jim McKay’s “they’re all gone.”

I’ve watched a lot of Olympic Games over the years. Somehow, though, they are starting to run together in my mind. What year was it that Sarah Hughes won the women’s figure skating finals, after being in fourth place after the short program? It was 2002, but I couldn’t have told you this without looking it up.

So here are my now fading recollections, without checking sources except to verify that my memory was in fact correct.

1896 Summer: Athens, Greece – obviously, I don’t remember the specific event – how old do you think I am? – but I do recall that this was the beginning of the modern Games
1904 Summer: St. Louis, MO, United States – the debacle that Shooting Parrots mentioned
1936 Summer: Berlin, Germany – this will always be the Jesse Owens (pictured) Olympics for me, with Hitler’s assertion of a master race being shattered
1948 Summer: London, United Kingdom – I must admit that I learned much about the still bombed-out city holding the first summer Games since the end of World War II from NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Games

1960 Winter: Squaw Valley, CA, United States – I don’t specifically remember these games, but I do recall the disastrous plane crash in Belgium the following February that wiped out the entire 1961 U.S. World Figure Skating Team
1960 Summer: Rome, Italy – I remember Cassius Clay losing or throwing away his heavyweight championship gold medal after these Games when returning to a still segregated US
1968 Winter: Grenoble, France – ski racer Jean-Claude Killy
1968 Summer: Mexico City, Mexico – the black power salute of Carlos and Smith; also, Bob Beamon’s record long jump
1972 Summer: Munich, West Germany – of course, the killing of Israeli athletes; to this day, I’m still crushed by Jim McKay’s “they’re all gone.” Plus, Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals in swimming
1976 Summer: Montreal, Canada – Bruce Jenner won the decathalon. Beyond that, a number of African countries boycotted the Games because of the participation of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.

1980 Winter: Lake Placid, NY, United States – the US beat the USSR in the men’s hockey semifinals, then Finland in the finals.
1980 Summer: Moscow, Soviet Union – 65 nations boycotted because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
1984 Summer: Los Angeles, CA, United States – The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners boycotted in response to actions four years earlier
1988 Winter: Calgary, AB, Canada – (pictured) Katerina Witt’s second straight Olympic title in figure skating “matching the same feat performed by Norway’s Sonja Henie”
1992 Summer: Barcelona, Spain – the US basketball “Dream Team” of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and other NBA stars
1994 Winter: Lillehammer, Norway – that soap opera involving Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly hiring a goon to kneecap female figure skater Nancy Kerrigan; Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul beat Kerrigan, with Harding finishing eighth.
1996 Summer: Atlanta, GA, United States – I less remember the Games than the bomb detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, which killed two and injured over 100 others. Some poor security guard named Richard Jewell came under suspicion. The bomb was actually set by Eric Rudolph, who is currently serving a life sentence for the bombing. One of the local (Albany, NY area) reporters covering the Olympics, Chris Kapostasy (later Jansing, when she moved to NBC/MSNBC in 1998), won a New York Emmy Award in 1997 for her coverage of the bombing.
1998 Winter: Nagano, Japan – Michelle Kwan had been winning World Championships in women’s figure skating, yet lost to [I had to look it up] Tara Lipinski in the Olympic finals

2008 Summer: Beijing, China – this was Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals in the swimming events. The great concern beforehand was the air quality, which, thanks to good weather, wasn’t as bad as feared.

I’m sure there are other bits that you will remind me of…

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

Image of Witt was originally posted to Flickr by zipckr at http://flickr.com/photos/7363465@N08/3439530032. It was reviewed on 03:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC) by FlickreviewR, who found it to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0, which is compatible with the Commons. It is, however, not the same license as given above, and it is unknown whether that license ever was valid.

A political false equivalence

Romney has apparently followed the law. But to those have been given much, much is expected.

There’s this blogger I came across who I like. But I was puzzled by a comparison made between President Obama’s birth certificate and Gov. Romney’s tax returns, as being similarly not newsworthy.

In the case of the birth certificate, it was authenticated to a degree acceptable to anyone who isn’t a conspiracy theorist.

Whereas the tax returns are interesting because they were not released, save for the last two years, though a self-provided “summary” was made available. Truth is, I don’t care whether Romney releases the documents or not. It DOES, though, speak to his transparency, or lack of same, for his father George set the bar when he ran for President back in the 1960s and put out a dozen years of returns.

The Gospel lesson a couple of weeks back was Mark 10:17-27, about the rich young man who followed the law. In verse 21: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Further, “And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Romney has seemingly followed the law, doing the absolute minimum of what is required. But to those who have been given much, much is expected. I believe it is reasonable that he makes a good-faith, and precedented, attempt to show us whether he is a tax dodger, since it might give us some insight into the fiscal policies he would initiate, were he become President.

Not incidentally, the sermon addressed this 9th-century explanation/rationalization of this Scripture, suggesting that it was referring to a place called The Eye of the Needle, where a camel could get through, but not if it were overburdened by lots of stuff. But as my pastor indicated, and this article agrees: “There is no evidence for such a gate, nor record of the reprimand of the architect who may have forgotten to make a gate big enough for the camel and rider to pass through unhindered.”

Past/future

If Hitler never lived, then does Stalin take over Europe?

Film critic Roger Ebert had a blog post Did you choose your religion? But the original title, as one can see in the URL, was “Would you kill Baby Hitler?”

The original entry began: Of course, you would have needed to know on April 20, 1889, that the little boy would grow up to become Adolf Hitler, and would commit all of the crimes we now know he committed. The only way you could know that, apart from precognition, would be to have traveled backward in time from a point when Hitler had committed all his crimes and you knew about them.

This was in context with a discussion of, among other things, the new film Looper, for which a big-time spoiler alert should have been stamped.

But this is a popular theme. There’s some current CBS show called Person of Interest about a computer that foretells crime. There was a previous CBS show(what was that called?) about a guy who would get tomorrow’s newspaper today and had the day to stop some heinous event from happening; a cat was somehow involved. I have actually never seen either show nor read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone. The piece generated very interesting and enlightening points, unlike most comment threads these days.

The problem, if one COULD go back in time, would be the unintended consequences. If Hitler never lived, then does Stalin take over Europe? These are obviously unanswerable questions, but they fascinate me.

Dustbury points to a variation on the theme:

>Steve Sailer…has imagined two different scenarios in which we’d already had a black President:

Walter Mondale picks Tom Bradley for the Veep slot in 1984, manages to beat a rattled-in-the-debates Ronald Reagan, and is killed when Air Force One crashes;
Colin Powell, urged on by Mrs. Powell, defeats Bob Dole, then Bill Clinton, in 1996.

Given either one of these scenarios, Sailer asks:

In either alternative history, does Barack Obama become the second black President? If there had already been a first black president, would anyone have ever even considered Obama to be Presidential Timber? Would you have ever even heard of Obama?

It’s been my contention that a President who is black (or Hispanic, or a woman) may be held to a different standard, higher by at least some so that the viability of a second black as President would be inextricably linked to the success or failure of the first. That said, if there HAD been a previous black President, would Obama have played such a huge role in the 2004 Democratic convention? Possibly not.

What thinkest thou?
***
Making the case for future voter fraud.

Me and Donna George

DONNA L. GEORGE, Staff Member Albany United Methodist Society
Born: 27 Oct 1949; Died: 20 Sep 2002

I had this friend named Donna George. I knew her from work with the socially active Albany United Methodist Society. I don’t know why, but certain people, including a particular pastor, treated her quite badly, taking advantage of her goodwill. I think that, at some level, I felt a lot of sympathy for her. Ultimately, she saw our relationship one way, and I another, yet we managed to maintain a friendship in spite of that.

In 2002, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Knowing she would be incapable of making decisions very soon, she got three or four of her friends to come to St. Peter’s hospice to explain her wishes that we divvy up her music, books, and art and give them to various buddies before she died, lest her family, from whom she was mostly estranged, could get their hands on them.

I was one of the folks in charge of the music, giving this person some Sinatra, and that person some classical albums, et al. I held onto a Beach Boys box set, which I had given her, and I also kept the Roberta Flack album Quiet Fire, for it contained a cover of the BeeGees’ To Love Somebody, which represented in song what she wished our relationship would be. I requested it on Coverville back in February (Roberta’s 75th birthday), and Brian Ibbott played it at the 18:50 mark.

The minister who gave her such grief was at the funeral, as was another adversary. I was so miffed.

There was an article in the local newspaper about her contributions to social justice, but I haven’t been able to find it. All I could retrieve was this letter to the editor, which is, remarkably, still relevant, unfortunately.

POPULAR ATTITUDES ABOUT POVERTY DEEPLY FLAWED
Albany Times Union (Albany, NY). (July 28, 2000): News: pA14.

A recent letter to the editor pointedly noted that, in a Times Union photo, a customer in a food pantry line was talking on a cell phone. The writer sarcastically asserted how nice it was that this allegedly poor person could have this convenience while waiting for free food.

This strikes me as an instance where what is “fashionable” allows certain groups to be “fair game.” We look at a photo, assume the worst, and crow about it, knowing that many will buy in, based on very limited evidence.

Yes, this person might be the owner of the cell phone. But here are some other possibilities. The person could need to make an important call for a prospective job at the exact time of his/her appointment at the pantry, and someone lent the phone to solve the dilemma. I know a mom who is among the working poor (the fastest-growing pantry population) who makes other sacrifices so she can have a cell phone to be in close touch with her children while she is performing her job duties — which often require her to be on the go. A relative might provide the gift of a cell phone so that a working parent can stay in ready touch with the children.

The possibilities are nearly endless. But popular views of people in poverty tend to allow for none of these. They are poor and they should have nothing — certainly no “frills!” If they do, they are “getting one over” on the system. All of this is part of a false “them” and “us” way of thinking, and being that it is rampant today, is certainly at odds with both secular compassion and the habits of the heart of any faith community I can think of. We can all do better than this.

DONNA L. GEORGE, Staff Member Albany United Methodist Society
Born: 27 Oct 1949; Died: 20 Sep 2002

20 Years a Librarian

When we were on the LAN, it was great!

I started my current job as a business librarian on October 19, 1992. It’s the only librarian job I’ve ever had, though I was a page at the then Binghamton Public Library for seven months back in high school.

After I quit FantaCo and spent a miserable year at Blue Cross, I started being nagged by not one, but THREE people, two librarians and a lawyer, insisting that I should go to library school. I didn’t want to; I had tried graduate school a decade before, in public administration; didn’t much like it. Having no better idea, though, I capitulated.

I found that I enjoyed it greatly. My work-study project for the dean, the late Richard Halsey, included doing a demographic study of the students enrolled in the program. Of the 104 folks in the program, the average age was 37, which was MY age! This was extremely comforting.

Since I was in the dean’s office, one of my professors badgered me to hold a meeting to see if we could re-institute a student association. Pretty much because I called the gathering, I got elected as the president, which meant that I got to cajole people to go to various student/faculty committees.

After I graduated in May 1992, I didn’t have a job, so I continued working at Midnight Comics until I was hired by the NYS Small Business Development Center Research Network, as the third of four librarians providing reference services for SBDCs all over the country. It had been in Georgia, but they lost the competitive contract.

First, I had to learn how to run a BBS, a bulletin board system, when I hadn’t even HEARD of it before that. My phone was also the fax line, so I never knew when I picked up whether I’d get a person’s voice or an earful of static.

In those days, we mailed our information to the counselors. We had a CD-ROM reader for a half dozen discs, but had to take turns using it. When we were finally on a LAN, so that we ALL could use the CDs at the same time, this was astonishing!

We eventually got Internet connectivity, but we could not e-mail much info. For one thing, even in the latter third of the 1990s, not everyone HAD e-mail. For another, the e-mail capacity for most university-based servers seemed to be easily exceeded.

Meanwhile, we also lost the national contract, based on the monetary proposal, despite accolades from counselors. So we were cut from having seven librarians at the peak to four. I remember that this was right around the time I was on JEOPARDY! in November 1998, because two of my colleagues declined to come to the Monday night TV watching party after they had been told they would be laid off the previous Friday.

Now we serve just New York with five librarians. Since everyone has e-mail, we can make documents into PDFs, and we have a site where our counselors can collect the data.

This is our fourth location in 20 years. We started in SUNY Central, downtown on Broadway in the “castle.” Then to 41 State Street mezzanine, which was the most stupidly constructed workspace I’ve ever been in; 41 State Street, 7th floor – the only time I’ve ever had a solo office with a door that closed – I LOVED that office; and for the last seven years, to Corporate Woods, and cubical land. Rumor has it we’ll move again next year when the lease runs out, but I shan’t worry about that until the time comes.

My previous longest job was 8.5 years at FantaCo. The next longest was 13 months at Blue Cross. So 20 years seems like a long time. There were times (the El Gato period, e.g. – the less said, the better) when I thought that would not be possible.

Happy anniversary to me.