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.

Walling ourselves out

“Is The United States Still The United States?”

I came across these two items on the same day, both about New York State: Quiet Upstate Road Becomes a Busy Exit From U.S. and State troopers: Hate-crime incidents are skyrocketing.

Also, I’ve been reading a lot of stories of frustration concerning travel. Canadian citizen going to day spa in US turned away – needs immigrant visa; what, that can’t be right. Due to visa issues, a well-regarded band from Ireland were unable to play their concert recently near here. Even British visitors to the White House have been having difficulty. Khizr Khan said he’s been told his travel privileges are under review; he is the father of a fallen American soldier and huge critic of the regime.

It will only get worse. As a Holocaust scholar threatened with deportation asked, “Is The United States Still The United States?”

With Muslim bans, shunning refugees, purported border walls, cemetery vandalism , bomb threats, and shootings of the other, I worry that the message the world is receiving is You Are Not Welcome here. And THAT is a bad thing, for the United States.

From here:
“Foreign students disproportionately study STEM and business fields. Two-thirds of foreign students pursuing a bachelor’s or higher degree are in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) or business, management and marketing fields, versus 48 percent of students in the United States…

“Forty-five (45) percent of foreign student graduates extend their visas to work in the same metropolitan area as their college or university.”

Much of the intellectual capital America needs, and has required for a good long while, has come from abroad. For instance, we’re facing a shortage of primary care physicians – and it’ll only get worse. The USCIS Will Temporarily Suspend Premium Processing for All H-1B Visa Petitions, which will hamper American industry.

If you were a scientist from India, and you saw not only bigotry but a blatant disregard for the value of information, and you think maybe that grant that would support your work might be dashed, part of the $54 billion that is supposed to be cut to support more military spending, would YOU uproot your life?

I’ve been told, more than once, that Americans will fill those roles, but there’s no evidence, at least in the short term, that it’s even remotely possible.

Plus there may be a slump in international tourism due to regime policies.

Ha, Mandy Patinkin Thinks He Can Change His Mind on Refugees, but the xenophobia, which hurts the United States, economically as well as other ways, may run too deep.

How I drove my parents bonkers as a kid

My mother was usually oblivious to the reference.

Jaquandor asked what I believe is the last of the Ask Roger Anything questions for this round, which I held off answering until now, because today would have been my parents’ 67th wedding anniversary:

What’s the thing you remember doing as a kid that drove your parents bonkers? (I’m talking harmless stuff here, nothing like playing with matches. Mine was to flick those spring-things with the rubber tip that keep the door from smacking into the wall as it opens. You pull those things over and let them go and you get this fun, loud BRRROOOOIIINNNGGG! sound as the spring snaps. Drove my mother NUTS.)

First off, I’m SHOCKED by your behavior as a child.

Secondly, I had the hardest time coming up with an answer to your questions. I even asked my two sisters, and they couldn’t think of anything.

I mean, I drove my father bonkers, but I didn’t see him feeling that it was harmless stuff. For instance, when I was in elementary school, I would watch the other kids play softball on the playground. And then those kids would go home, and other kids, who had already gone home, would return to the playground and play, and I’d watched them.

I almost never played myself, unless a team was really shorthanded, and they’d stick me in right field. I loved the game, but I wasn’t particularly good at it. I got better by the time I got to college, but not in 4th or 5th grade.

So I wouldn’t get home for hours after classes ended, and sometimes this would really anger my father, so much so that he’d pull out the strap – or worse, make ME go get the strap, so that he could use it on me. Well, at least once.

As for my mother, I did use to take words she said and add lyrics from the popular songs of the day. So if she were to say, “We go to get,” I’d respond, “if it’s the last thing we ever do,” evoking an Animals song. Or if she needed some help, I say, in my best Beatles voice, “you need somebody, not just anybody.” I don’t recall using these exact examples – and I can’t remember what I DID say – but it’d be something like that.

Truth is that my mother was usually oblivious to the reference, which was actually quite entertaining to me. I don’t think it really irritated or as much as mystify her. “What IS he talking about?” she must have thought.

Mitt Romney turns 70

When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were plenty of Republicans that fair-minded citizens could consider.

There was a Vanity Fair article about Mitt Romney back in February 2012. Michael Kranish and Scott Helman’s piece was “an adaptation from their new book, The Real Romney, to find that the contradictions, question marks, and ambivalence go deeper than his politics.” It couldn’t have helped that Willard Mitt Romney’s real first name is the same as a movie rat.

The real trouble with the 2012 Republican Presidential campaign is that most of the pundits assumed the same thing would happen in 2016. Mitt Romney was losing to, at different points, Michele Bachmann, Herman “9-9-9” Cain, and Newt Gingrich, among others, before the party let one of grownups become the nominee. The supposition was that the same thing would happen again in 2016, that the bellicose businessman might be the flavor of the month, but surely fade, leaving someone such as Jeb Bush or John Kasich with the nomination.

Surely, Mitt Romney wasn’t as bad as some of his GOP counterparts, faint praise, I suppose. He did enact a predecessor to the Affordable Care Act when he was governor of Massachusetts. Yet he was perceived as the out of touch millionaire businessman, largely because of the 47% quote. Yet his successor as the Republican nominee, whom Romney rightly criticized as a phony, had a broader appeal as “genuine.”

It’s peculiar, politics in this century. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were plenty of Republicans that fair-minded citizens could consider. Both of the US Senators from New York, Jacob Javits and Ken Keating, were Republicans, as was governor Nelson Rockefeller. William Scranton was governor of Pennsylvania, and George Romney, father of Mitt, was governor of Michigan.

There was a time in my voting lifetime when the vast majority of Republicans were people I would at least consider casting a ballot for. And I do know that if Mitt Romney had won in 2012, I would not be having the sleepless nights I’ve had since November 8, 2016.

I WAS disappointed when Romney suggested Betsy DeVos is a “smart choice for education secretary.” Still, I hope he finds ways to challenge this presidency; don’t know how much he’d be heard, but I’d love to see him use whatever clout he may still have.

Harriet Tubman Home, Auburn, NY

“The best part of the experience was the gentleman that provided the overview of Harriet Tubman’s life and conducted the tour.”

Vacation, July 18, 2016

The final stop on our summer vacation last year was to the Harriet Tubman Home. You are probably familiar with the heroics of arguably the country’s leading abolitionist. But the house, and its use, is an interesting story too.

“In 1858 New York Senator William Seward” – the future US Secretary of State who helped the US buy Alaska from the Russians in 1867 – “made Harriet Tubman a proposition. He would sell her his property in Auburn, NY for a reasonable price and flexible terms.” This transaction was technically illegal.

“Auburn had a strong abolitionist group and Seward was a well known supporter of the Underground Railroad who Harriet could depend on for funds and shelter for her people.

“Before the Civil War about 500 slaves passed through Auburn on their way north. Tubman knew Senator Seward well as she had used his house as a station many times. She was encouraged to move to Auburn [from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada] by a long time friend and supporter, Lucretia Mott.

“In 1886 her house was destroyed by fire, none were hurt. Nelson Davis, Tubman’s second husband, was a brick maker and helped rebuild her house. He replaced the original wood structure with brick, making it stronger and longer lasting.

“In order to fulfill her dream to build a home for the elderly Tubman purchased additional land. In 1896 Tubman bought at auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property located at 182 South Street. The land was sold for $1,450. The AME Zion Church raised funds and with the support of a local bank providing a mortgage Tubman was able to complete the transaction.”

We agree with most of the folk on Trip Advisor, that “The best part of the experience was the gentleman that provided the overview of Harriet Tubman’s life and conducted the tour. He was so very well informed and you could tell truly enjoys what he does in sharing her life with everyone that visits. The tour of the home was good; however, his presentation made this terrific.”

Of course, Harriet Tubman is scheduled to be on the $20 bill at some point before 2024. Harriet died on March 10, 1913, and March 10 is a minor holiday, especially in New York State.

Maybe I’ve taken up cursing for Lent

Iran’s Mother Teresa, Passes away at 91

It’s Ash Wednesday, the first day of the holiest period on the Christian calendar. The news is on the TV. The previous evening, he gave a speech before Congress in which he exploited the misery of a Gold Star widow. Earlier THAT DAY, he threw his generals under the bus for the death of that Navy SEAL. “They lost Ryan.”

I wasn’t yelling, but was talking aloud, “You schmuck! You’re the Commander-in-Chief! The buck stops with YOU! You’re SUPPOSED to say, ‘WE lost Ryan,’ you @$$#01e!” This was loud enough that The Wife, who had been upstairs at the time, to comment that she heard that. She also opined that I’ve cursed more in the past three or four months than I have in the 20+ years since I’ve known her. And this is almost certainly true.

It has usually happened when he lies about his lies. Or when one of his surrogates does the same. I remember giving the finger to the TV when adviser Kellyanne Conway came up with the phrase “alternative facts.”

When Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz said that rather than “getting that new iPhone that they just love,” low-income Americans should take they money they would have spent on it and “invest it in their own health care” – as though that was anywhere near equivalent cost, I gave him a silent “Chuck you, Farley.”

I have mixed feelings about swearing. I don’t buy that “everybody does it, so it’s OK.” I know PLENTY of people who forego it, at least not publicly. Moreover, he is a well-known vulgarian, and I don’t want to stoop to his level. I do keep reading that swearing is actually a sign of more intelligence – not less, but that’s obviously NOT universally true.

In other religious topics:

* My presbyter (think bishop, but it’s not, really) Shannan Vance-Ocampo wrote about going through the immigration process with her husband. Beyond the personal agony of these stories, I worry that we’ll discourage people coming into the country who have long provided economic wealth to this country, such as students and scholars, because of our xenophobia.

* Ashraf Qandehari-Bahadorzadeh, Iran’s Mother Teresa, Passes away at 91. She’s the aunt of Darius Shahinfar, the Albany city treasurer, who I first met when we were schlepping our kids to the same preschool.

* Diane Cameron, who led a writing exercise I participated in nearly three years ago, has written her third book, Never Leave Your Dead – A True Story of War Trauma, Murder, and Madness. Initially, this was about a guy who was involved in a dismal US military (in)action barely hinted at in this narrative. She writes about how “war can inflict deep and lasting psychological wounds in warriors.”

She spoke at my church on a Friday night in February. “In March of 1953, Donald Watkins, a former Marine… who served in China during the Japanese invasion of 1937, murdered his wife and mother-in-law.” Some of her points she also shared in this December 2016 TEDx talk. Not incidentally, Donald Watkins, many years later, married Diane’s mother. Riveting stuff.

* I just got a flyer for Dr. Henry G. Covert’s book Ministry to the Incarcerated, “a vital resource for prison ministry. The contents include the emotional world of inmates, institutional challenges, models for prison ministry, biblical teaching outlines, penal reform, re-entry and aftercare… Ministry to the Incarcerated is available on Amazon, eBook, and Kindle.”

* The Day Ringo Starr Got Death Threats -for Being Jewish. September 1964: I had forgotten about this.

Ramblin' with Roger
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