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.

Family Health Report: October 2017

The Daughter missed three days of school in September

Chuck, Heather, Fran, this blogger. (c)2017 Chuck Miller
Early in October, my wife slipped on some stairs, getting a nasty bruise on her hip . It turns out there was moss growing on the top step. We would have probably sued the property owners, except they were us.

Yeah, we replaced our front steps when we redid that porch. But the back steps are in dire need of repair, something that might have made this year’s list of things to do until the boiler conked out.

The Daughter missed three days of school in September, until we found medicine that could help her with what ailed her. When she got ill the week of Columbus Day, I was home with her and called her primary physician’s office.

The person, not the doctor, who treated her last time said I COULD bring her in again. But her lungs were clear last time, so she wasn’t sure what they could do for her. She expressed ta theory she was stressed about homework; well, she wasn’t before she got sick again, though she sure is now.

More than being irritated, I’m frustrated that I don’t know what to do for my child. My wife took her to the allergist the next day, who tested at 25 – 25 what, I don’t know, but it was extremely low. The allergist gave her a combination of meds the primary’s office told her not to take together. A week later, her breathing score was 100, which is good.

I’m just tired. Stayed up talking to an old friend until after midnight one day, and the next met with some Times Union current and former bloggers, then worked on the Albany Public Library Foundation’s gala for some hours, planning Black History Month at church, extra choir rehearsals for our Randall Thompson performance, et cetera, et cetera,, et cetera.

I have probably more topics I want to write about but don’t have the time than any point in this blogging. Writing relaxes. Not writing gets my subconscious mind working in overdrive.

I WILL have days off on Election Day and the day before Veterans Day. Any port in the storm.

Randall Thompson celebration: 1st Fri/1st Pres

Feast of Praise The Lord Is My Shepherd Alleluia The Last Words of David

Includes the Randall Thompson pieces Feast of Praise, The Lord Is My Shepherd, Alleluia and The Last Words of David

First Presbyterian is at 362 State St, corner of Willett St, near Washington Park in Albany

Long live the personal essay!

“…writers being encouraged to not simply mine personal feelings for a quick click, but to make connections between the personal and the political more explicit.”

For reasons currently lost on me, I have put up a profile on the Quora site. Quora is a user-based site that where questions are asked and answered.

As is the case in human interactions online, some are sincere queries, while others, usually political in nature, and often about Obama and that guy after him. “If liberals hate Trump so much, why don’t they just leave?” Some kind souls answered that one, but not me.

For some reason, maybe because I’ve been doing it for 12.5 years, I’ve answered questions about blogging. But not all of them. One directed to me that I ignored: “Which blog content would make more money, diet and exercise or drawing and graphic design?”

Some months ago the New Yorker noted that the personal essay boom is over. A key sentence: “Personal essays cry out for identification and connection; what their authors often got was distancing and shame.”

In response, Salon posted The “personal essay boom” is dead. Long live the personal essay! “What we are instead experiencing is an evolution — of writers being encouraged to not simply mine personal feelings for a quick click, but to make connections between the personal and the political more explicit.”

Both of these pieces talk about blogs from women, and describe posts that are far more high profile than mine. Still, the discussion made me want to continue to do whatever the heck that I do each day. I didn’t get into this for money or fame. And a good thing too, because then I’d be REALLY disappointed!

I do it because makes me feel just a little less powerless. It grounds my thought process by having to write it down in sentences than to just say, “Daylight Saving Times SUCKS!” (It does, BTW.)

My Quora pieces generally have said, “Write because you have to.” Every once in a while, I check in with myself and realize, “Yup, still need to do this thing.”

MOVIE REVIEW: The Florida Project

Brooklynn Prince is incredible.


The Landmark Theatres have some sort of electronic movie that I belong to. I was selected as a winner of an “admit-two” ticket for the Monday, October 23rd, 7:30 p.m. screening of THE FLORIDA PROJECT at Landmark’s Spectrum 8 Theatres.

Unfortunately, Monday night is the Daughter’s play rehearsal night, so it was impossible for both my wife and I to go. So I went with my friend Mary.

I had seen the trailer previously, which fortunately does not reveal too much. The film was directed by Sean Baker in a sort of a cinema verite. It was though the story, from a screenplay by Baker and Chris Bergoch, were a documentary.

It follows around Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince), a five-year-old leader of a group of kids – Valeria Cotto as Jancey, Christopher Rivera as Scooty – running relatively freely in these of extended-stay motels, probably once decent venues not far geographically, but miles away economically from Walt Disney World, which was originally dubbed The Florida Project.

Willem Dafoe is Bobby Hicks, the manager of The Magic Castle Motel – definitely not to be confused with The Magic Kingdom – just trying to do his job, collecting the rent, which is usually late, from Halley (Bria Vinaite), Moonee’s mom. But occasionally, he gets involved in his tenants’ lives, in spite of himself.

For a time, I wasn’t sure where the film was going, with its various vignettes. It only later occurred to me that the pastels of the housing units belie the difficult situation these folks find themselves in. By the end, the viewer will recognize the part of the population not often shown in film, as it “raises sobering questions about modern America.”

Dafoe, of course, is the name performer, and he is quite fine. But Brooklynn Prince is incredible in the lead. Check out the very positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (96%), though less so from the public (75%), who might be impatient that the narrative doesn’t “spell it out” more quickly.

Q is for a Famous Quotation

My late father used to say, fairly frequently as I recall, this quotation: “It is better to remain silent and be thought of as a a fool than to speak up and remove any doubt.”

But who was he quoting? I couldn’t find anything in Bartelby or Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, the latter, in print form, a constant source of my entertainment growing up.

Finally, I found a similar quotation at Quote Investigator. Was it attributed to Abraham Lincoln? Mark Twain? A Biblical Proverb?

“There is a biblical proverb that expresses a similar idea, namely Proverbs 17:28. Here is the New International Version followed by the King James Version of this verse:

“‘Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.’

“‘Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.'”

After dismissing Lincoln and Twain because the attributions to them were so much after their time, and noting the Proverbs have not quite the same sentiment, QI favors Maurice Switzer, from a “book titled ‘Mrs. Goose, Her Book’… The publication date was 1907 and the copyright notice was 1906. The book was primarily filled with clever nonsense verse, and the phrasing in this early version was slightly different:

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

This all begs the question, Is it true? Do people actually think you’re smart if you retain a mysterious silence? Perhaps; this does not appear to be a period in history when a lot goes unsaid. That apparent need to always say SOMETHING is often to the detriment of the speaker, and, quite often, of us all.

Rather off topic, but LISTEN to the Tremeloes sing Silence is Golden.

For ABC Wednesday

Ramblin' with Roger
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