Roger O Green

Death, politics, plus other happy topics

I don’t know about you, but I’m STILL recovering from the election. Oh, maybe it’s not just the election, maybe it was Leonard Cohen’s death, and Leon Russell’s and, interestingly enough, Gwen Ifill’s. When I heard the news about the PBS newswoman, I sobbed for twenty minutes, and I’m not even sure why.

Maybe it was because the electoral process often missed Gwen Ifill’s sagacity as she, mostly quietly, fought the cancer. Surely, it’s because, at 61, she was younger than I. Maybe it was seeing how her death affected others. Pete Williams, reporting on MSNBC, could barely get the words out without choking. Or maybe it was her calm in rough seas.

What I have noticed is that people before the vote had different points of view. But it has NEVER come out so vigorously, post-election. Some folks in my circle got into a bit of a Facebook tussle over Donald Trump, which was largely about how his family seemed to monetize everything in the transition, from “as seen on 60 Minutes” bling to the greatagain.GOV website seeming to hawk Trump businesses, to a potential conflict if his adult kids were to get security clearance.

As this quote from Hot Air notes:

If Trump has real estate in the UAE and the Trump kids discover that there’s a developing terrorist threat there, and they decide to sell that property because of it, they’ve used secret national intelligence made available to them by their father to avoid a financial loss for the family. It’s as far from a blind trust as you can get: Instead of the managers of Trump’s wealth being completely independent of him, they’d be exploiting him to see things on the global financial landscape that they otherwise never would have known. It’ll be a “superhuman-sight trust,” not a blind trust.

And even if they’re scrupulous somehow about keeping business and government separate, just by pure chance they may end up selling assets or buying assets in a place that later coincidentally turns out to be strongly affected by some Trump administration policy. The public will assume corruption even if it’s not there, which will damage Trump. For the sake of his own credibility, he should stick with a blind trust.

Of course, the request for clearance “never happened,” I’m told; I suspect it was a trial balloon. And “Trump isn’t taking a salary” though he ought to. And “the Clinton stole the silverware.” And it all got rather testy after that. But in years past, who we and they voted for just would not have come up. And, for the most part, it didn’t matter; one didn’t think less well of the other.

People being disenfranchised saddens me as much as it angers me. There’s hate mail, and a lot worse out there. This is interesting: in the same month the movie Loving, about a white man and a black woman winning a Supreme Court case about getting married, is being released, SMU is flooded with fliers titled “Why White Women Shouldn’t Date Black Men.” So maybe I’m mourning.

I shan’t mention the white nationalist champion the Prez-elect picked as his chief strategist or the climate science denier who’s heading his EPA transition team or his anti-gay potential SCOTUS pick or Rudy Guiliani.

The only things that make me happy, and only mildly, seem to involve Vice President-elect Mike Pence. He’s dealing with his own email controversy, ironically. Lots of people are donating to Planned Parenthood in his name, which I love! He’s leading a transition that may in discord, which, in the short term, might not be too bad for the country.

My favorite Barack and Joe meme actually involved Michelle and Jill asking why was it always the guys? “Male patriarchy.”

So I’m in a major funk. Even doing Chuck Miller’s quiz thing didn’t help:
Year given: 1986
Age: 33
Now: 63
Relationship status: Living with someone
Now: Married
Living in: Albany
Now: Albany
Pets: None
Now: Two cats
Was I happy?: There were elements of happiness. I had my 33 1/3 party in July because. I still have a copy of the invitation somewhere in the attic. Work at FantaCo was interesting because I was working on a comic book.
Now: Well, you WOULD ask AFTER the election
Kids: None
Kids now: One

I know others in similar, or worse, situations, and I feel for them. Oh, and I attended my cousin’s funeral last week.

You know what ELSE it is? It’s information and the fact that I can no longer trust much of what I read, a real pain for a librarian.

When I saw that jazz man Mose Allison had died, I didn’t believe it, not because, at 89, he couldn’t have passed away, but because I was unfamiliar with the source. It wasn’t until I read it in the New York Times that I was satisfied it was true. This is exhausting over time.

This list of False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources is useful, but occasionally there are really useful insights in some of them, especially on the satirical sites. And it may be that the problem is the failing media who cut their budgets. The word of the year is post-truth; this suggests to me we’ll NEVER be able to talk with each other. This makes me terribly sad.

But the one thing that gives me a modicum of hope is that a LOT of people seem really stirred up to engage in activism. As the Rev. William J. Barber II noted, A Dying Mule Always Kicks the Hardest. “Why Donald Trump’s election means ‘we must work together for a Third Reconstruction in America.'”

Listen to Mose Allison. Your Mind Is On Vacation and Monsters of the Id.

And from Sharon Jones, who ALSO died (dammit), Stranger to My Happiness and Retreat, which she did not.

Hypnotized at the county fair

The event was so surreal that I probably DIDN’T talk about it.

Here’s a story I didn’t tell you, about being hypnotized, because it didn’t convey enough. But suddenly, it does.

In August of 2015, The Wife, The Daughter, The Daughter’s good friend and I went to the Altamont Fair, which is the joint fair of Albany and Schenectady Counties in upstate New York. I don’t go every year – my family went without me in 2016 – but it’s enjoyable enough.

At one of the stages, a hypnotist was looking for subjects to come on stage. The Daughter nagged and pleaded with me to participate, and I ended up being the last of eight or ten people to volunteer.

He put us “under”, saying whatever he said. I’m aware that I’m on the stage, but follow his commands to:
slur my words
make my most romantic face (Head tilted, doe eyes, pursed lips, I’m told)
play an instrument (electric bass I was surprised he knew I was playing the bass rather than a guitar)
drive fast around curves

Later, The Wife said that he dismissed a couple of people that he was unable to hypnotize. She thought I was just acting, faking, but I was not.

About my story Baptized Again, about me speaking in tongues, Uthaclena asked, and Arthur agreed:

How do YOU interpret your experience of glossolalia?

That is the thing: I didn’t interpret it. No one slipped something in my drink. The event was so surreal that I probably DIDN’T talk about it, not out of embarrassment, but because I guess I wanted it to have more of an impact. But no, a week or two later, I was busy leading my debauched life.

Maybe it was God’s sense of humor; if there’s an afterlife, that’ll be one of the things I’ll have to ask Her. “What the heck WAS that?” And “How did one of my glasses lens shatter when I was a kid, while I was wearing them?” Hey, THAT’S what I should ask youse guys: “If there’s an afterlife, what earthly experience would you want to be explained?”

Then Chris asked:

Was it like a trance state?

I then realized that my speaking in tongues was very much like “a state of consciousness in which a person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction,” which is the textbook definition of being hypnotized. And I must be susceptible to it.

Music Throwback Saturday: I’m Your Puppet

They were cousins James Purify and Robert Lee Dickey

Usually, I pick a song that just came to me in this feature. But this time, I decided to look at the Billboards Hot 100 singles charts for 50 years ago, November 19, 1966

1. You Keep Me Hangin’ On – The Supremes, Last Week: 7
The song was at 27 the week before its rise to the Top 10. After going to 1, it went 3, 5, 5 then out of the Top 10

2. Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys, Last Week: 4
The song was at 17 the week before its rise to the Top 10. It stayed another week at 2. behind Winchester Cathedral, before going to 1 on December 10, then down to 3, 8, and out of the Top 10

3. Winchester Cathedral The New Vaudeville Band, Last Week: 6
The song went from 24 (November 12) to 6, 3, 3, 1, 3 (behind Good Vibrations and Mellow Yellow), then back to 1 for two weeks, before its slow slide 3, 4, 8, out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

4 Last Train To Clarksville -The Monkees, Last Week: 2
It entered the Top 10 on October 8, after being 18 the week before, then from 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 (November 5), 2, 4, 7, 10. But after a one-week hiatus, the Monkees were back in the Top 10 with future 1, I’m a Believer

5. Poor Side Of Town – Johnny Rivers, Last Week: 1
On October 15, it was 11, then 7, 4, 3, 1 (November 12), 5, 5, 9, and out
LISTEN here or here (truncated version)

6. Devil With A Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly -Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels, Last Week: 9
On November 5, it was 18, then 9, 6, 4 for four weeks(!), 5 and off. Mellow Yellow and the Top Three songs here kept it at 4 for so long.
LISTEN here or here

7. I’m Your Puppet – James & Bobby Purify, Last Week: 10
On November 5, 11, then 10, 7, 6, 6, then off the Top 10
They were cousins James Purify and Robert Lee Dickey (d. 2012), from Florida, who had three more Top 40 hits.
LISTEN here or here
Rerecorded in 1976 and became a hit in the UK. LISTEN here

8. 96 Tears -? (Question Mark) & The Mysterians
Last Week: 3
Back on September 17, it was 25, then 8, 6, 3, 3, 2 (behind Reach Out I’ll Be There – Four Tops), 1 (October 29), 2, 3, 8, and out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

9. If I Were A Carpenter -Bobby Darin, Last Week: 8
On October 29, 11, then 8, 8, 9 and out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

10. Rain On The Roof – The Lovin’ Spoonful Last Week: 15
Its only week in the Top 10

(Yes, I didn’t link to artists I’ve likely will link to, or have already done so in the past.)

Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland

Fredonia, NY – July 17, 2016

The Wife had made all the travel arrangements for our vacation, and she was pretty successful, except for that Ramada near Ashtabula, OH . To quote Elizabeth Taylor, who was quoting Bette Davis, “What a dump.”

But something was amiss with our reservation in Fredonia, NY. We’d be traveling much of the day, and it was already 8 pm. While the Wife and Daughter went into the hotel, trying successfully to get a room, I sat in the passenger seat in the car.

And for some reason – probably watching the news too much, with black men getting killed, police getting killed – I started wondering what would happen if a police officer happened to come by, wanting to know what I was sitting there. Now I’ve waited in the car for years, without incident. Why it was an issue at that moment was probably because it was getting dark, and/or from fatigue.

I realized that if a cop HAD come up to me, I couldn’t roll down the window. We used to have two of those car fobs, but one got lost, and I didn’t have it.

In short order, I came up with all sorts of scenarios by which I could get shot because my hands couldn’t be seen. I bolted out of the car in a near-panic. To distract myself, I pulled out my tablet and played hearts.

The Daughter came back, and yelled, “Did you get it?” I didn’t know what “it” was. “It” was the sunset, which was gorgeous, and I was utterly oblivious to it.

She mocked me for playing my game, but I was in a whole ‘nother head.

A few weeks later, I was at work when I got a notice that there was a bank robbery in a building within the visual range of my office. The suspect was a black male in his 40s or 50s. I’m in my 60s, but I was nearby. I recalled this article. That same wave of discomfort ran over me.
###

So who can identify the source of the lyric that is the title of this piece? (Besides Dustbury.)

Mom would have been 89

I suspect that it was my mom who engineered the household’s purchase of the Encyclopedia Americana.

Musing about my next birthday coming up in a few months, I was wondering how I would remember how old I was, I realized that it would be easy: two to the sixth power, or 100000 base 2.

My mom was thrilled that I was learning base 2 when I was in fifth grade. You know base 2? Unlike base 10, which has ten digits, 0-9, base 2 only has two digits, 0 and 1.
1= 1 base 2
2= 10 base 2
3= 11 base 2
4= 100 base 2
5= 101 base 2
and so on

She was excited because, I was told, base 2 is used in COMPUTERS! 1 is on, 0 is off. So this would mean I could be a computer programmer!

As it turned out, the only thing I ever learned about computers is how to turn them on and off, and not always even that.

But I loved base 2 equivalent placeholders, and I could recite them – 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 – without even thinking about them. This seemed to please my mother.

But I have very few other recollections about her talking to me about my school work. She was a work-outside-the-home mom when most of my friends had their moms staying at home. That was time-consuming and must have been enervating.

Still, I suspect that it was she who engineered the household’s purchase of the Encyclopedia Americana. And it was her additional income that made it possible.

Since they were expensive for our family’s household income, I made sure they got well used. I’m not sure if anyone else used them much, but over two or three years, I read all 20-odd volumes all the way through. And my parents, at my urging, bought these annual updates, and I devoured them too.

Mom attended Daniel Dickinson school, as my sisters and I did; I’d written about it periodically, including here.

Anyhoo, mom would have been 89 today. And I think to call her, so I pick up the phone sometimes before I realize that I can’t. I am surprised I haven’t figured that out yet; she’s been gone nearly six years.

I have no idea where this picture was taken; she was probably single at the time.