Roger O Green

“Move to the back of the bus”

“We’re going to get to know each other a little bit better.”

The day after one of our snowstorms – snow in upstate New York in February? – a lot of us were taking the CDTA bus. Maybe some had safe parking spots they didn’t want to move from, while others perhaps had not dug out.

Someone had shoveled the snow in front of the bus kiosk. Unfortunately, the bus stopped beyond the kiosk, and we had to climb over a snowbank to get to the bus entrance. To his credit, the bus driver did apologize.

We’re going down Western Avenue. All the seats are filled. But the folks standing in the aisle only go to the rear exit of the bus, about 2/3s of the way back. I understand it, sort of; they want to be able to get off easily.

But we got to a stop around Quail Street, and at least a half dozen people couldn’t get on the bus. If the bus driver told the folks to move back, as drivers are wont to do, I didn’t hear him.

As those folks were left at the curb, this young blonde woman, probably in her mid-20s, worked her way to the back of the standees and chastised them for not moving to the back of the bus to make room for more passengers. “Do you understand what you did?” she said, very directly, to a couple of folks. “Those people are STUCK out there, in the cold.”

Then she took on the tone of a camp director. “We’re all going to move back to make room for others. We’re going to get to know each other a little bit better.” And instead of yelling at her, they actually did what she told them.

I was in awe.

As more people departed, she was seated, and I moved up to congratulate her on her moxie. She said, “Well, you in the back supported me.” I assume it was when she mentioned the stranded passengers being cold, I added from the rear of the bus, “And probably late for work.”

Anyway, I thought it was an impressive feat on her part.

February rambling #1: Bowling Green Massacre

At the Intersection of Love, Faith and Holy Outrage: The Women’s March and the Gospel

Angela Merkel is now the leader of the free world – the US President’s sole ideology is corporate autocracy with a populist facade

More than half of his voters say the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre is proof his immigration ban is necessary. BTW, it never happened, and Kellyanne Conway’s remark wasn’t a slip of the tongue, as she has said it before

DMV Glitch Registers Green Card Holders to Vote

Yes, honorably-discharged veterans of the U.S. military have, under certain circumstances, either received deportation orders or been deported

If You Liked the Inquisition, You’ll Love the House Science Committee

How Each Senator Voted on Trump’s Cabinet and Administration Nominees

How to Become a Paid Protester

Americans Now Evenly Divided on Impeaching 45

American Hot Dogs

“At the Intersection of Love, Faith and Holy Outrage: The Women’s March and the Gospel”

51 Immigrant Poets – An interactive map on the ‘Muslim ban’

Irwin Corey (1914-2017), who I last wrote about here

Suzanne Pleshette would have been 80 this year

Richard Hatch, RIP – I probably watched Battlestar Galactica, but I definitely saw him in The Streets of San Francisco

RIP Adele Dunlap, 114, oldest American

Bald men look more successful, intelligent and masculine. science says – well, duh
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Scathing Orange poem wins New Zealand competition

Paul Rapp’s New England Patriots connection

Amy Biancolli: it’s the best story pitch, the best, everyone thinks so

The ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ Show That Wasn’t: How CBS Refused to Have the Actress Play a Divorcee

New blogger: Tracy Brooke’s Travels, a woman from Atlanta now in Indonesia

Could Dogs be the State Vegetable?

NEW DC COMIC REINVENTS SNAGGLEPUSS AS ‘GAY SOUTHERN GOTHIC PLAYWRIGHT’

Now I Know: Why the U.S. Government Really Wants Some People To Take Vacations and The Man Who Gets Lots of Credit and Do You Want to Burn a Snowman? and The Trickiest Tongue Twister and Why In America, It’s Typically Free to Go Pee

Watching popcorn pop

Black History/Black Recency

Stories for “Black History Month – You can freely use AwesomeStories’ vast archive to explore the topic throughout February– This issue features people who: helped to overthrow slavery and “Jim Crow Laws”; helped to free and inspire millions of Americans; helped to forge a new path forward for their country

Louisiana kid’s ‘School to Prison Pipeline’ project

Who Gets to Be African-American? An Academic Question

I Shouldn’t Have To Learn Black History From A Movie

HOW AUTHOR TIMOTHY TYSON FOUND THE WOMAN AT THE CENTER OF THE EMMETT TILL CASE

A History Of Black Cowboys And The Myth That The West Was White

Jesse Owens Was Brave – So Were These 17 Other Black Olympians

At her first recital, 12-year-old Nina Simone refused to start singing after her parents were moved from the front row to make room for whites

The Racist Super Hero Who Never Made It

Music

“That Day In Bowling Green” written by Dave Stinton

Emo prez

Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty, Lorde Lead New Orleans Jazz Fest

Coverville 1157: Hollies and CSNY Cover Story for Graham Nash’s 75th and Our House – Graham Nash

Tom Jones And Janis Joplin – Raise Your Hand (1969)

Coverville 1158: Guns N’Roses Cover Story II

Jazz Legend Al Jarreau Dead at 76. Here’s Eight Performances That Show Why He Was the Greatest Male Jazz Singer of His Time

Asia singer John Wetton married Syracuse woman just 2 months before dying

February 14: Saint Valentine and his day

Saint Valentine is represented in pictures with birds and roses.

I was looked at the Catholic Online about Saint Valentine. For a Protestant kid, I’ve long been rather fascinated by the whole Roman Catholic canonization process.

The stories of Saint Valentine may involve two different saints by the same name. Someone of that name was arrested multiple times for trying to convert people to Christianity. marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by Claudius in Rome.

“A relationship between the saint and emperor began to grow until Valentine attempted to convince Claudius of Christianity. Claudius became raged and sentenced Valentine to death, commanding him to renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and beheaded.

“St. Valentine refused to renounce his faith and Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269.” Or 270, or 273 or 280…

“Because so little is reliably known of him, in 1969 the Catholic Church removed his name from the General Roman Calendar, leaving his liturgical celebration to local calendars. The Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize him as a saint, listing him as such in the February 14 entry in the Roman Martyrology, and authorizing liturgical veneration of him on February 14 in any place where that day is not devoted to some other obligatory celebration…”

“Saint Valentine is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.” Fainting IS a part of romance, I reckon, and sometimes love is a plague.

This theory has been heavily disputed: “While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial… others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘Christianize’ the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.”

The Census Bureau, in its Facts for Features, notes that “in A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 as Valentine’s Day… Esther Howland, a native of Massachusetts, is given credit for selling the first mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards in the 1840s.” So his holiday wasn’t just “invented by Hallmark, as I hear EVERY year.

Among people 15 and older who have been married, 19.1% of men and women “have been married twice as of 2015. About 5.4 have married three or more times. By comparison, 75.5 percent of people who have ever been married have made only one trip down the aisle.” 29.7 and 27.8 years are the “median age at first marriage in 2015 for men and women, respectively.”

I DO understand the sentiment that we should cancel St. Valentine’s Day, since there sometimes appears to be “precious little love in the world.” Perhaps that all the MORE reason to honor it. Those people who scrubbed the swastikas off the New York City subway train, that’s love. When folks rally at the local Jewish Community Center, twice, in 2017, because of bomb threats, that’s love. It would be easy to focus on the initial bad actions, but it’s our response to that action that is the real answer.

F is for farpotshket (ABC W)

Can you think of a word that sounds more complicated, muddled and frustrated than farpotshket?

Better Than English: Untranslatable Words defines the Yiddish word farpotshket as “Something that is all fouled up, especially as the result of attempts to fix it–repeatedly making something worse while trying to fix it.” It is pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable.

This term rather well described me when I took woodshop in 7th and 8th grade. A minor wobble in one leg of a project would eventually become three legs that could not bear the weight of the creation.

There was a 2005 National Public Radio story The New Words and Ideas We Need sings praises of the word: “The art of trying to fix something only to make it far worse is described by the Yiddish word farpotshket. Can you think of a word that sounds more complicated, muddled, and frustrated than farpotshket? It’s like a Frankenstein of obscenity, created from different parts of a dozen swears. The next time you reach to brush a piece of lint off your date’s shirt, then spill the bottle of wine on their pants, try screaming, ‘Farpotshket!’ It’s far more satisfying than a hundred curse words.”

Both the Urban Dictionary and definithing describe the word farpotshket as Completely ruined as a result of attempts to fix a minor imperfection. “Don’t try to fix that tiny smudge! You will make the entire painting farpotshket.”

The painting reference, of course, reminds me of that famous story of Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) in the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain. It was an unremarkable painting, but the attempt to restore the fresco by Cecilia Giménez, an untrained elderly amateur, in 2012, made it international news. Oddly enough, the botched repair has made the site a major tourist attraction.

When do YOU experience your farpotshket moments? Do you get it right the first time, or do you settle for “that’s good enough”?

ABC Wednesday – Round 20

Academy Awards 2017

“The idea was to redefine a 467-minute documentary as a cinematic experience and to be eligible for the end-of-year awards circuit.”

When the Academy Awards nominations were announced on January 24, I noted what I’d seen, and what I liked the most, and also who/what I thought would win. Link (only the first time) to any movie I saw and reviewed.

Picture

“Arrival” – I thought it was a nice meditation. It may have peaked too soon, and with no acting nominations, I don’t expect it to win.
“Fences” – I liked it a lot, with bravado performances. But perhaps it was too stagy.
“Hacksaw Ridge” – I had no real interest in seeing this. It was, per the R rating, “for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence including grisly bloody images.”
“Hell or High Water” – I had considered seeing it, but reviews such as “The violence has speed, impact and follow-through — it’s a magnificent rebuke to all the hundreds of cute killings on screen in summer movies” made me wary
“Hidden Figures” -it is my favorite film of the ones nominated. Maybe not the best, but the one that made me the happiest when I left the theater
“La La Land” – I do like this movie too, and have defended it
“Lion” – great first part, OK second part
“Manchester by the Sea” – fine film, depressing as hell
*“Moonlight” – the best picture nominated
All the Best Picture noms in the first half of the alphabet!

Directing

Denis Villeneuve, “Arrival” – I love the way the story is put together in a nonlinear way, which I should credit to the editor, I suppose
Mel Gibson, “Hacksaw Ridge” – I had forgotten that Gibson was directing it; he’s come out of Hollywood purgatory, it would seem
Damien Chazelle, “La La Land” – paced well, I thought, though some I’ve talked with would disagree
Barry Jenkins, “Moonlight” – my rooting interest
Kenneth Lonergan, “Manchester by the Sea” – fine job

Actor in a leading role

Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea” – I was distracted that a comic character he played in a Saturday Night Live piece is not dissimilar to this character
Andrew Garfield, “Hacksaw Ridge” – he’s in “Silence” too; haven’t seen that either
Ryan Gosling, “La La Land” – I think he might win because he learned to play piano for the role
Viggo Mortensen, “Captain Fantastic” – I would like to see this, suddenly
*Denzel Washington, “Fences” – I wonder if the limited venues chosen by the director (who was NOT nominated) will affect the actor’s chances; maybe not, as it was a tremendous performance

Actor in a supporting role

Mahershala Ali, “Moonlight” – not only is he great in this role, he’s fine in Hidden Figures; my rooting interest
Jeff Bridges, “Hell or High Water” – he’s well-liked, well-regarded
Lucas Hedges, “Manchester by the Sea” – really glad he was nominated
*Dev Patel, “Lion” – I thought it was a bit overwrought for a time, and it bugged me
Michael Shannon, “Nocturnal Animals” – I steered away from this film, so can’t say

Actress in a leading role:

I’m not much for “slights” but I thought Amy Adams would be here for Arrival, steadied by her performance in Nocturnal Animals. And I thought Taraji P. Henson had a real shot at a nomination for Hidden Figures.
Emma Stone, “La La Land” – more than with Gosling, she was criticized for not being able to sing. I don’t think she’ll win
Natalie Portman, “Jackie” – people loved or hated the movie; the weekend it left town, I had decided to see it. She may win
Ruth Negga, “Loving” – great performance, but quiet. I don’t think she wins
Meryl Streep, “Florence Foster Jenkins” – an honor to be nominated, again
Isabelle Huppert, “Elle” – I thought about seeing this, but a film of that’s “a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her” just didn’t quite make the cut. Still, I wouldn’t bet against her winning

Actress in a supporting role

Viola Davis, “Fences” – this is not a supporting actress role. She won Best Actress for the same role on Broadway. Still, she’s as close to a lock as anyone.
Naomie Harris, “Moonlight” – after watching her interviewed by Charlie Rose, she’s become my favorite in a year without Viola Davis
Nicole Kidman, “Lion” – she’s good, had a really fine scene or two, but not blown away
Octavia Spencer, “Hidden Figures” – she was solid and dependable, and nothing wrong with that
*Michelle Williams, “Manchester by the Sea” – she’s very good, and in another year, she might win

Adapted Screenplay

“Lion,” by Luke Davis – the first part is great
“Arrival,” by Eric Heisserer – I enjoyed it, but it seemed to confuse more than a few
“Moonlight,” by Barry Jenkins – my rooting interest, the most important story being told
“Hidden Figures,” by Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder – this is quite a good synthesis of fact and near fact
*“Fences,” by August Wilson – August Wilson died in October 2005; how does he even get nominated in this category?

Original Screenplay

“Manchester by the Sea,” by Kenneth Lonergan – I think this will be the consolation prize for a fine film
“Hell or High Water,” by Taylor Sheridan – I heard good things
“La La Land,” by Damien Chazelle – maybe, but I’m not feeling it
*“20th Century Women,” Mike Mills – its only nomination; won’t win
“The Lobster,” by Efthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos – I heard all sorts of things about this movie, which I never had a chance to see. It sounds weird, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked it. But it won’t win here either.

Cinematography

“Arrival” – as an unconventional story, it pulls off the look of its elements convincingly
“La La Land” – bright and shiny when it’s positive; I suspect it could win
“Lion” – great contrast between the India and Australia sections
“Moonlight” – has the appropriate bleak look
“Silence” – looks good in the ads

Documentary feature

“Fire at Sea”
“I am Not Your Negro” – a story about James Baldwin that’s has appeared in trailers but hasn’t made it to town yet
“Life, Animated” – I liked it, but it’s a personal/family story, and will have trouble competing
“OJ: Made in America” – as the Boston Globe story explains: “Before putting it into heavy rotation on ESPN in June and July [where I saw it], ESPN Films released the documentary in two theaters in May: the small New York City indie stalwart Cinema Village and the similar Laemmle Monica Film Center in Los Angeles. Drawing crowds wasn’t the point. The idea was to redefine a 467-minute documentary as a cinematic experience and to be eligible for the end-of-year awards circuit.” This clever tactic is allowed. It is VERY good, but this feels like a bit of a cheat
“13th” – Ava DuVernay’s piece on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and mass incarceration I would very much want to see; watch the trailer.

Documentary short:

“Extermis”
*“4.1 miles” There are 4.1 miles from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos, and thousands of people in recent years have made the perilous journey – as of this writing, you can see the film here.
“Joe’s Violins” – this was a Kickstarter project
“Watani: My Homeland”
“The White Helmets”

Foreign language film:

“Toni Erdmann,” Germany
“The Salesman,” Iran
“A Man Called Ove,” Sweden – this film played for weeks in Albany, and jut at the point we finally were going to see it, it left. Bummer.
“Tanna,” Australia
“Land of Mine,” Denmark

Sound editing – now we get to the technical categories where I have no idea

“Arrival”
“Deepwater Horizon”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“La La Land”
*“Sully”

Sound mixing

“Arrival”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“La La Land”
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
“13 Hours”

Original song

“City of Stars” (“La La Land”)
“How Far I’ll Go” (“Moana”) – Lin-Manuel Miranda could get an EGOT (Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony). In fact, since he won a Pulitzer, he could win a PEGOT, like Richard Rogers and Marvin Hamlisch. And with two songs from La La Land, he’s not throwing away his shot
*“Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” (“La La Land”) – this is the song that made me cry, so it’s my pick
“The Empty Chair” (“Jim: The James Foley Story”)
“Can’t Stop the Feeling!” (“Trolls”)

Visual effects:

“Deepwater Horizon”
“Doctor Strange”
*“The Jungle Book” – it did look good
“Kubo and the Two Strings”
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

Makeup and hairstyling

*“A Man Called Ove”
“Star Trek Beyond”
“Suicide Squad”

Costume design

*Mary Zophres, “La La Land”
Madeline Fontaine, “Jackie”
Consolata Boyle, “Florence Foster Jenkins”
Colleen Atwood, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”
Joanna Johnston, “Allied”

Film Editing

“Arrival”
“Hell or High Water”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“La La Land”
*“Moonlight”

Animated Feature Film

“Kubo and the Two Strings” – here’s the soundtrack
“Moana”
“My Life as a Zucchini”
“The Red Turtle”
“Zootopia” – clearly my favorite of the two I’ve seen.

The Academy Awards will air on February 26.