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.

VOTING Questions

I was reading in Newsweek a couple weeks ago about some (Republican) politician complaining about ex-cons voting. I don’t see the problem. I think the ex-cons SHOULD vote. Perhaps:
1) They’ll feel more a part of the society as engaged citizens.
2) They’ll be able to better suss out the crooks who actually get elected, the Duke Cunninghams, the Bob Neys.

If anything, I’d think we would like to get MORE people to vote. Are people afraid that a bunch of former felons will get together and take over the town? If so, they should get out and register (and vote) themselves.

(Greg noted this story about the White House pursing legal efforts to limit voter turnout. This is not just unjust, it’s pathetic.)

I also was interested in the recent French election. Apparently, the top two vote getters, Nicolas Sarkozy, who got 31% in the first round, and Ségolène Royal (26%), will be in a runoff, but the candidate who is reportedly most acceptable (or least unacceptable) to the widest number of people, François Bayrou, came in third (19%), so won’t be in the runoff.

So I’m wondering:

1) What restrictions, beyond making sure somebody is of age and actually lives in the district, should there be on voters? I’m against too many restridctions.

2) What can be done to engage more people in the political process? Would Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or other alternate voting methodologies work? How about voting over several days and/or online?
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For free IRV? stickers send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: voteIRV.org, 26 Glen Street, Malden, MA 02148. Spread the word and make it stick: IRV; for a better democracy!
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Dennis Kucinich, member of Congress and Presidential candidate, has introduced Articles of Impeachment Against Vice-President Richard Cheney. Kindly, Kucinich waited until the the Veep’s blood clot was under control to reintroduce the measure.
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Bush v. Bush.
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Erin Davies makes the best of a bad situation, letting the world see and contemplate the hate speech scrawled on her vehicle. The initial act of vandalism was especially disturbing to me since it happened in my city (Albany), but Erin’s reframing is quite intriguing.
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What the rains of last week did to the basement of the David Sarnoff Library last week.
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Last, but certainly not least, send some love to Kelly and Lefty.

ROG

ROG

Sometimes, you just get a little down…

The damn home computer has been giving me fits the last three weeks. Initially, I thought it was a faulty Internet connection on the part of Time Warner. I talked to THREE servicepeople, then a fourth actually came to my house. This seemed to fix the problem, briefly, but then it start up again. Finally, with help, I discovered:
1) I have an Internet connection – I can play Internet backgammon – but I can’t get to any URLs. I was thinking about reinstalling one of those old AOL discs, except that
2) I’m apparently dangerously low on memory
So, I’d done some blogging – actually a lot a couple weeks ago Saturday – at the library, and wrote all the posts you read so far that week. And I did write a couple things at home in Word for this week. But I find it harder not to go fact checking or finding a picture or adding a link. So, it’s made me frustrated.

My very good friend Mark came up from the Mid Hudson (an hour or so south of here) to try to fix the beast, but it became so problematic that he had to take it home with him. So I couldn’t even write stuff in Word at home for a few days this past week.

Since I tend to work ahead, it wasn’t TOO problematic for the pieces already posted, but it MAY be in the next couple weeks, because my inventory of emergency posts are kaput. Ironic because..well, you’ll see.

And, oh, yeah, I also lost my wallet. Trips to the DMV, the library and the bank, calls to the credit card companies, blah, blah. (And it gets more brain-dead than that, but never mind.)

…and then I get a couple lovely e-mails:

From an old friend, to her friend, with a copy to me:

Many adore Roger and his understated but hilarious way. I love his curiosity on oh just about any topic and his librarian-like thoroughness when he riffs on it. Have you been reading his blog? Top ten. Met him probably about 15 years ago now…

And from someone I did a workshop on “Guerrilla Marketing for Librarians” a couple weeks ago:

Hi, Roger! I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to share your expertise and ideas with us yesterday at the meeting. I enjoyed meeting you and really found your presentation to be motivating and inspiring! I am sure others felt the same. Thanks for speaking to the group — your energy and enthusiasm, mixed with your business know-how, made for a wonderful presentation.

I post these, not to be an egomaniac. (I may be an egomaniac, but that’s not why I’m posting them.) I’m posting them to remind myself, when I’m a little blue, that it’s OK, I’m OK.

For it was the great ADD who told me, when I started blogging, “”You can’t please everyone; you got to please yourself.” No, wait, that was the late Rick Nelson. Well, ADD said SOMETHING like that at the time.

And, not that anybody asked, but I was considering moving the bloggy to the Times Union page. I think I decided not to on Easter morning. So now that Mark has returned my computer and it’s working again (thanks, effendi!) I can actually work on updating my weblinks, which I’ll try to do a little bit every day.
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Oh, Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, died. I remember my first non-G-rated film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, which was rated M, the forerunner of PG. (I have the soundtrack on vinyl -“Take 10 terrific girls, but only 9 costumes.” The movie ratings, which Valenti helped instigate, were imperfect, everyone knows (much kinder about violence, too fussy about the hint of sex, to my mind), but they’re still somewhat useful.
ROG

ROG

The Lydster, Part 37: Miss Independence


There was this old commercial for an OTC headache reliever in which a woman of a certain age is trying to assist her teenaged or adult daughter. The younger woman snaps, “Mother, please, I’D RATHER DO IT MYSELF!” (Anyone actually remember the name of the product? I’m thinking Anacin, Bufferin or Excedrin, but I’m not sure.) Anyway, the daughter, after taking the headache remedy, is happy, smiling, working together with Mom.


Now, what, pray tell, does any of this have to do with my lovely, sweet-tempered, cooperative daughter?

Well, I have become aware of the rhythm of the things that she can do herself – or thinks she can – and it is not always prudent to offer assistance at these times. She wants to pick out her clothes, and most of the time, she does, even if her mother would not have selected that particular pair of socks. The only time we try to change her mind is if the clothes might be too warm, or not warm enough – a difficult thing to gauge given that it’s below 30 and above 80 in the past week and a half. She can carry things I didn’t think she could, and successfully.

Yet, there are times, usually in the beginning of the day, when she’s not quite awake, or the end of the day, when the eyelids are drooping, when she wants to be carried downstairs or upstairs, and I try, we try to be sensitive to those nuances.

Lovin’ the little girl. Sorry, I’ve been corrected: BIG girl.
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Sometimes, I think I’m the only proud father in the world, even though I know intellectually that’s not the case.

ROG

ROG

Roger’s Problem Is That He Has No Opinions


Hope you can read the item above about the cause of global warming.
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I was sad to read that writer David Halberstam had died. Probably the only book of his I ever read in toto was 1972’s The Best and the Brightest, but it so informed me about VietNam that it was pivotal in my understanding of “wisdom” run amok. I’ve read large sections of The Powers That Be (1979), one thick book. But I have read, and enjoyed the essays on sports, which may have been excerpted from his many sports books, such as The Breaks of the Game, The Amateurs, and especially Summer of ’49, about the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry. Halberstam died in a car accident on the way to see Yelberton Abraham Tittle, the former New York Giants’ quarterback, for a book about “The Game”; a decade before the Super Bowl, the 1958 Colts-Giants Championship Game helped to “make” the NFL.
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Most of the pieces about Boris Yeltsin were about his mixed legacy: “Russians pay respects to flawed hero Yeltsin”: Tributes to Yeltsin praised him for taking on and defeating the Soviet establishment, but also noted his shortcomings during his eight years as president – economic turmoil, a disastrous war against rebels in Chechnya and his drink-fuelled gaffes.” Somehow reminded me of an American President, Richard Nixon.
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I was interested in personal international reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings. Here’s one from an expatriate in New Zealand, and, at my request, one from Great Britain/ Someone domestic noted, in response to a comment I made: “People see an Iraq bombing and think, ‘Gee that’s sad, but not unexpected.’ People expect bombing and mayhem in a war zone” but not on a peaceful college campus. OK, sure. But those lives lost are no less horrific to me because they’re “expected”. (And I suspect those families in Iraq are just as horrified by the loss of their loved ones, and don’t think it’s “sad, but expected.”)
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I first heard about the Ken Burns’ exclusion of Hispanics in his upcoming WWII documentary from history professor GayProf. Since then, the situation has been rectified, with Burns’ support. While hailed as a victory in some circles, I’ve also read a lot of that “affirmative action/political correctness run amok” rhetoric. I was most struck by this particular passage in GP’s piece: “This time, Burns set out to chart the little-discussed Second World War. How often have I said, ‘If only somebody would stop and think about that forgotten war!'” In setting himself to be the end-all and be-all on this oft-mined area, I think Burns had a greater responsibly to paint the broadest tableau possible. Off topic: GP, what do you think about this article Commentary: The hypocrisy of repeating the ‘w-word’?
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Here’s an editorial about Kitty Carlisle Hart, more than a panelist on a game show, but New York State’s grand doyenne of theatre.
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And yet I have nothing pithy to say about the passing of music legend Don Ho?

ROG

ROG

Daredevil Omnibus


ADD wrote to me a couple weeks ago:
Hey Roger,
I have a question for you that I just posted to my blog
Let me know if you have any info at all.
Hope all is well!

As I may have mentioned, it was rather strange to see in the pages of the Daredevil Omnibus the pages from FantaCo’s Daredevil Chronicles, a magazine I worked on, though Mitch Cohn was the editor. The intrepid Alan David Doane asked me if Marvel had asked permission to appropriate pages directly from the FantaCo publication, and whether they paid the contributors.

The short answer, as far as I know, is no. The long answer is a little more complicated.

When FantaCo put together the X-Men Chronicles, a fanzine about the uncanny mutants edited by me, Marvel was very pleased. SO pleased that they gave us permission to use the Marvel Comics Group strip on the top of the page of the Fantastic Four Chronicles (cover by John Byrne, edited by me) and the Daredevil Chronicles (cover by Miller/Janson, edited by Mitch). In other words, they were licensed products of Marvel. Therefore, my guess is that Marvel believed they had a right to appropriate the DDC for the DD Omnibus, as it was their product, so there was no need to give permission.

Fred Hembeck tells me that Peter Sanderson, whose FantaCo interview of Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, appears in the book, was given a copy of the book, according to Sanderson’s Quick Stop column. Fred, whose illustration accompanies that interview, is still waiting for his copy. You’d have to ask John Byrne and George Perez whether their Daredevil drawings earned them a copy, or something more.

Incidentally, at least one “independent comics” publisher loathed the DDC, because of the emphasis on Miller and Janson, to the exclusion of the rest of the canon (Wally Wood, e g.). I won’t tell you who he is, but you know when the sun or moon temporarily disappears?

I asked Mitch about all of this. He wondered about the copyright issue too when I first mentioned the project to him. I agree with him that would depend on how the copyright was done, which he recalls was all FantaCo except for trademarks owned by Marvel. While he notes that Tom Skulan (the FantaCo owner) might have a case against Marvel, we both would think Marvel would have run it past their legal department before committing to do it. “It’s not like they needed that stuff in there,” Mitch opined.

You should know that the subsequent Avengers Chronicles, which Mitch edited, and the Spider-Man Chronicles, which was my baby, no longer had the Marvel Comic Group strip. That’s because of something that happened, a decision I made, that caused Marvel editor Jim Shooter to call with a profanity-laden tirade that poor Mitch got to hear. But that’s a story for another day.

ROG

ROG
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