Roger O Green

The HOW’S OBAMA DOING? Question

I’ve tried, really tried not to talk much about Barack Obama lately. Part of it is a deep abiding irritation that there’s been so much blather about how he hasn’t solved the economic crisis yet. The obvious point, of course, is that HE’S NOT PRESIDENT YET. I find that I’m even more annoyed with the incumbent, who, rather than trying to burnish his image in his last days, seems to have abdicated the position.

Then there’s all the talk, mostly from the left, about the formation of his cabinet. I identify as left of center politically, and I’m fine with his Cabinet choices. I must admit that I practically giggled when he chose Eric Shinseki as his secretary for the VA, a bit of in-your-face towards the Bush administration. Beyond that, nothing shocking. It seems as though some people were expecting Obama to create a Secretary of Peace and pick Dennis Kucinich to run it.

Some are making a big deal out of some recent Republican victories since November 4, suggesting that Obama’s lost his touch. Saxby Chambliss won reelection in the runoff for his U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, but he was leading before. John Fleming kept the seat of retiring Rep. Jim McCrery in Louisiana. Then, Republican newcomer Anh “Joseph” Cao beat a corrupt incumbent, William Jefferson, in a heavily Democratic Louisiana congressional district; he’ll be the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress and the first Republican to hold that seat since 1891, a seat held by both of ABC News’ Cokie Roberts’ parents, BTW. What all this really has to do with Obama is lost on me.

Headline from the Evans-Novak Political Report: Blagojevich arrest causes headache for Obama. well, not so much. The Illinois governor’s foul-mouth tirade after learning he’d get nothing for the Senate seat he wanted to hold hostage most observers found exculpatory re: the Obama camp.

I’ve found the whole “native-born American”/birth certificate issue both quite irritating and fascinating. The birth certificate issue I believe is dead, but the constitutional eligibility issue – his father, as a Kenyan, was a British subject – remains live. It’s discussed ad nauseum here, especially the comments, but I think the law will settle the issue favorbly.

Not incidentally, if Obama WERE declared ineligible to serve, what the heck would happen then? I’ve been looking at the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, but it offers no guidance.

There are those who believe that Obama Should Prosecute Bush Officials Who Designed Torture Policy. I’m good with that.

So, my question is in the title. How do you think Obama’s doing, given the fact that…well, I think I already mentioned that.

There’s no one as Irish as Barack OBama- Corrigan Brothers
or LINK

ROG

Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout the Weather

I’ve been having a difficult time getting my daughter dressed in the morning, and it’s not really her fault.
On Sunday, it was 28-30 (all temperatures Fahrenheit) for most of the morning. But then the temperature went into a free fall. My wife came back from grocery shopping at 4 pm; not only was it down to 23 degrees, but the wind was blowing at 29 mph, gusting to 37 mph. By midnight, the temperature was a balmy 12.
Monday at 6am, the temperature was 6. It only got up to 19 degrees (3 pm), and went back to 13 by midnight.
Yet Tuesday at 6 am, it was 25 degrees and kept going up even after sunset, so it was 49 at midnight.
Wednesday at 6 am it was 53 degrees. It was 55 at 11am but 48 at noon and got colder during the afternoon.
Thursday started out slick and 27 degrees, but ended up with sleet and freezing rain and eventually snow.

Graphic captured at 5:30 p.m., 11 Dec 2008

So when I suggest apparel for the daughter, based on ever changing conditions, it’s tricky. I must convince her of the efficacy of snow pants and boots one day, and a jacket and sneakers a couple days later.

All the data, BTW, came from wunderground.com, a really useful site for historical weather data. Most references on the site are to 51 minutes after the hour, but I rounded to the next hour. Most temperatures are in tenths of a degree, and I rounded up (.5-.9) or down (.1-.4), the way they taught me in grade school.

ROG

Librarian chic

A friend of a friend of mine asked:

Please tell me what life is like for a research librarian. I’m IT support for several different libraries. I work closely with the librarians on a daily basis. Many of them are my age or older and not at all worried about age discrimination as they cross into their 60s and b beyond. The say that this type of problem is just not that important for librarians. I cannot say the same for the IT business. They tell me that it is a very good industry to?look at if I’m thinking about changing careers as I get older. Can you give me some idea of what your level of job satisfaction is? Thank you in advance.

Librarians have been told for years that they will become extinct as more and more information is made available on the Internet. We have not found this to be so. For one thing, someone has to be the gatekeeper as to what is good and what is crap. For another, there will always be specialized databases that you’ll need someone to access and search.

I think there is a librarian ethos of cooperation with each other. I don’t think it’s sexist to say that it may be a more collegial business at least in part because it tends to be a female-dominated business.

When I was in grad school in public administration in 1979-80, it was very competitive, with students actually hiding resources from each other. In library school in 1990-92, students were more helpful to each other.

There can also be a teaching component. We’re trying to get our folks to use blogs, to use Twitter and other newer technologies. This means WE need to know what that stuff and Facebook and other services mean, whether they make sense for us and for our customers, who are business advisors and by extension, the small businesses they serve. Occasionally the learning curve, plus doing what we’re hired to do (reference) is hard to fit in, but we usually manage.

If you have the sense of curiosity necessary to be a good librarian, you’ll do well. If you want something stagnant, probably not so much.
***
“Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control the knowledge. Don’t piss them off.”

– Spider Robinson, science fiction author, from The Callahan Touch
ROG

U is for the United States

visited 30 states (60%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

As you can see from the map above, I’ve been to 30 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.

The pictures interspersed in this piece are from my trip to my 30th state by some measure, Illinois, specifically Chicago, different shots from my piece on Chicago here. By other measurements, though, I’d already been there, since I’d been through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport 20 years ago. In any case, the descriptions below do not include airline layovers, and there now no states for which being at the airport is the only connection.

I started thinking: what were the circumstances of the first trip to each state I visited?

Born: New York

Day trip to adjacent state: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont.
When I was growing up, my friend Carol’s family had a cottage south of Binghamton, just inside the PA border.

State visited en route to another place: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia.
I feel guilty actually counting Delaware, since it was on a trip to DC. But I did eat there; the rest of them I’ve actually slept in.

Vacation: Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island
Is visiting your family actually a “vacation”?

Work-related, FantaCo: California, Wisconsin
California was a twofer. FantaCo flew me out to San Diego in 1987 for the Comic Con and I stayed with my sister, who had moved there a year or two earlier.

Work-related, SBDC: Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah
In fact the ONLY time (or in the case of FL, times) I’ve been to those states.

Finally, in 1969 or 1970, a bunch of us from high school traveled to Tennessee to help the folks in a very poor rural county. At some point, we were out wandering around without our adult supervision when we came to a sign: Now entering Mississippi. We walked about a half mile before we thought better of the idea of a bunch of northern high school kids of mixed races wandering around in rural Mississippi and returned back to the Tennessee farm we were visiting.

Pictures (C) 2008, Mary Hoffman. Used by permission.
ROG

Horror films? Not for me

One of the overriding problems I had in my later years at FantaCo in the late 1980s was that we were putting out product that I was selling that I did not enjoy. It wasn’t just the Freddy Kruger masks and the Freddy Kruger gloves (plastic, not real) and the Jason Voorhis masks that bothered me. It was all the Herschell Gordon Lewis related material that ewe published that I didn’t read and yet from which I was actually beginning to make a reasonably decent wage that ultimately caused me to quit. It’s not that I had a moral objection to them; it was that I just didn’t enjoy a lot of gruesomeness. I’ve never seen a Sam Peckinpah film, for example. And after seeing A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather and Catch-22 in a short time period, I pretty much swore off movies rated R for violence for nearly a decade. So it’s a miracle that I’ve seen ANY of the movies of the top horror movies. A number of people did this, but I first saw it at Tom the Dog’s.

1.The Exorcist. William Friedkin (1973) – certainly I’ve seen large chunks of this movie at home on TV. Oy.
2.The Shining. Stanley Kubrick (1980) – this movie I actually saw in the movies. And I HATED it, NOT because it was gruesome but because Jack Nicholson’s character seemed to be going crazy when he and Shelly Duval are having their first meeting with Barry Nelson. So I believe NONE of what follows from Nicholson, especially the cutesy “Here’s Johnny!” It felt like Jack doing Jack and I disliked it on that point. Actually thought the excessive amount of blood was laughable, not scary or gory.
3.Alien. Ridley Scott (1979) – saw this in the theater and LIKED it
4.The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme (1991) – was at my parents’ house and one or both of my sisters was watching it on HBO; I bailed fairly early
5.Saw. James Wan (2004) – now here’s a movie I just will never see
6.Halloween. John Carpenter (1978) – did see large parts of this on TV
7.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven (1984) – only small parts of this
8.Ring (Ringu). Hideo Nakata (1998) – neither version
9.The Wicker Man. Robin Hardy (1973) -no
10.The Omen. Richard Donner (1976) -no, still in my no R rated period

11.The Birds. Alfred Hitchcock (1963) – this I saw at some revival theater, and it STILL scares me
12.The Thing. John Carpenter (1982) – no
13.Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher (1987) – don’t think I avoided it, just didn’t see
14.Dawn of the Dead. George A Romero (1978) – always intended to see this, actually
15.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper (1974) – oddly enough, this as well. Someday.
16.Jaws. Steven Spielberg (1975) – no, and I feel culturally deprived.
17.The Blair Witch Project. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez (1999) – no. might.
18.An American Werewolf in London. John Landis (1981) – no, but still might.
19.Se7en. David Fincher (1995) – probably won’t.
20.Poltergeist. Tobe Hooper (1982) – may someday.
21.The Amityville Horror. Stuart Rosenberg (1979) – probably won’t.
22.Candyman. Bernard Rose (1992) no
23.Scream. Wes Craven (1996) no
24.Carrie. Brian De Palma (1976) probably will someday.
25.Friday the 13th. Sean S Cunningham (1980) certainly I’ve seen parts of it.
26.Final Destination. James Wong (2000) – nope
27.The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi (1981) – probably not
28.Hellraiser. Clive Barker (1987) – nope
29.Hostel. Eli Roth (2005) – heck, no, any more than I’d see Saw I to infinity. This played three blocks from my house and I had zero interest.
30.Salem’s Lot. Mikael Salomon (2004) – maybe some day.
31.The Descent. Neil Marshall (2005) – don’t know this
32.The Hills Have Eyes. Wes Craven (1977) – maybe some day.
33.Wolf Creek. Greg McLean (2005) – don’t know this. Tom got bored.
34.Misery. Rob Reiner (1991) – this movie I actually saw in the movie theater and liked, because it feels so normal on the surface. Around this time, someone told me that they were my biggest fan, not having seen the movie or read the book, and it freaked me out!
35.Rosemary’s Baby. Roman Polanski (1968) – saw this in New Paltz, NY in 1971. Happy memories. Oh, it was the date I was on.
36.Child’s Play. Tom Holland (1989) – don’t know
37.The Orphanage. Juan Antonio Bayona (2008) -don’t know, but I’m guessing not.
38.The Entity. Sidney J Furie (1981) – no, but I might
39.Nosferatu. FW Murnau (1922) – seen segments, not the whole thing
40.Night of the Living Dead. George A. Romero (1968) – feel as though I SHOULD see it
41.House on Haunted Hill. William Malone (2000) – don’t know
42.The Haunting. Robert Wise (1963) – no, but not of any real avoidance.
43.It. Tommy Lee Wallace (1990) – no, and it just didn’t look that good in the previews.
44.Audition. Takashi Miike (1999) – don’t know.
45.The Changeling. Peter Medak (1980) -heard of, but don’t really know
46.The Mist. Frank Darabont (2008) – probably won’t
47.Suspiria. Dario Argento (1977) – probably won’t
48.The Vanishing. George Sluizer (1993) – probably won’t
49.Shutter. Masayuki Ochiai (2008) – don’t know
50.Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez (2007) – now this I did actually avoid when it was part of Grindhouse

So, I’d say I REALLY saw four, all with one word titles, excluding articles: Shining, Birds, Alien, Misery. I should probably add Exorcist. Five out of 50. Probably will double someday.

ROG