Roger O Green

Myself in Three Fictional Characters

“That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”

There’s this Facebook meme of posting images of three fictional characters that define me, apparently without describing them. I find the exercise oddly unsatisfying. Whereas when Dustbury and Chuck Miller cheated and EXPLAINED why they picked their folks, THAT was interesting to me.

For instance, of the three roles here: one you probably know, one you know the actor but likely not the character, and the third is played by a guy I knew, not very well, back in college, and most of you won’t get at all. So what that give you, the reader?

Or maybe I’m wrong. Any guesses as to the CHARACTERS I’ll take for a day or two before approving the comments.

I suppose I could have picked three other characters that you should all recognize:

Now, I suppose I ought to tackle that other meme, that of coming up with my “life quote.” Except, of course, I’m stymied.

I could steal from Kenneth Rogers who sang:
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run

I was taken for a time with a line in the 1991 movie Grand Canyon, when the Steve Martin character says, “That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”

On my more serious days, I could try, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

But ultimately, I’ll stick with my first hero, who said “I yam what I yam,” and that wouldn’t be wrong.

Keith Lamont Scott of Charlotte, NC

Some gun person asked me, “Wouldn’t you feel safer having a gun?”

You’ve likely heard about the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man, at the hands of the police, specifically a black police officer. There were demonstrations that started out peacefully but turned violent for a couple of days.

Putting aside, for the moment, the grief over the untimely death of the individual, I was immediately concerned about the well-being of my “baby” sister and her adult daughter who live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Somehow it’s different when you see a massive demonstration at the corner of Trade and Tryon, and you say, “I know exactly where THAT is.”
The family, BTW, is fine. My sister and my late parents moved down there in 1974, and it was a struggle to adjust, but they seemed to have made the transition, not without some race-based difficulty.

Charlotte is the home of several banks, and there is great wealth there, but also systemic injustice. The reaction to the Scott shooting was larger than just his death, but about similar incidents in the recent past in the Queen City.

I thought Robert Reich made a good point:

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the account given by the Charlotte police of how they came to fatally shoot… Scott on [September 20] is true – that he had a handgun. Okay. So what? North Carolina is an open-carry state (like 30 other states) where a citizen has the right to walk around with a handgun.

The Charlotte police department says its officers saw Scott “inside a vehicle in the apartment complex. The subject exited the vehicle armed with a handgun. Officers observed the subject get back into the vehicle at which time they began to approach the subject.”

So exactly what illegal activity did the Charlotte police observe before they approached “the subject?” The only conclusion it’s possible to draw is that it’s illegal to carry a handgun in North Carolina if you’re African-American.

Eugene Robinson made much the same point, which is that In America, gun rights are for whites only. Some gun person asked me, “Wouldn’t you feel safer having a gun?” I said, “Hell, no!” And that was before in incidents in North Carolina and Minnesota.

The Weekly Sift went further, suggesting that there is The Asterisk* in the Bill of Rights when it comes to both the Second Amendment (right to carry arms) and Fourth Amendment (against unreasonable searches and seizures) for blacks.

A United Nations working group says U.S. police killings are reminiscent of lynching. Yow. Read about what eighteen academic studies, legal rulings, and media investigations shed light on the issue roiling America, police, and racial bias.

Strategically and philosophically, I oppose rioting. But when one’s level of outrage hits a certain threshold – remember Keith Lamont Scott, because this happens so frequently, sometimes I can’t keep track – I surely understand it.

(I didn’t even mention the death of Terrance Crutcher of Tulsa, OK at the hands of white police officer Betty Jo Shelby because the shooting appeared unjustifiable even to Donald Trump.)

L is for Lanes of Traffic

“When there’s no bike lane, you’re supposed to ride on the sidewalk.”

1. In July, traveling north on that stretch of Interstate 90 in New York between the Pennsylvania border and Buffalo, closer to the former, there are four lanes of traffic, two in each direction.

The Wife is driving and is in the right lane. Another car is in the left lane, slowly passing us. Suddenly, a motorcycle darts between us! Another motorcycle is already ahead of the other car.

Then the motorcycles, in turn, proceed to drive between not one, not two, but FOUR pairs of cars, in about three minutes. I was happy no one got hurt.

2. I am riding my bicycle down my street. I am as far right as I can be, given the fact there is a string of parked cars. I can sense that there’s a car that wants to pass me, but there’s oncoming traffic, and this is not an option.

We catch a red light, and we both stop. I can pull to the right because there’s no car that close to the intersection.

The driver says, “There’s no bike lane.”

“OK”

“When there’s no bike lane, you’re supposed to ride on the sidewalk.”

“NO, sir!”

“That’s the law.”

“You are INCORRECT, sir. Check your drivers’ manual. There’s a section on bicycles in there.”

Seriously, I used to carry around the booklet from DMV for such interactions. In my state, it is ILLEGAL for me to ride on the sidewalk, unless I’m under 14. (Note: I’m not.)

Apparently, this is a problem elsewhere.

3. Still, I LOVE riding my bicycle in the city, because I often find change on the ground, where the driver’s side door might be. I’ll stop for even a nickel, but not for a penny. Though if I stop for a mixture of coins – it has happened – I’ll get the pennies as well.

4. August: I was waiting for a bus, when a young man, probably in his twenties, asked me if I could “spare some change” so he could ride the bus. I told him that I could “spare a 50-cent change card” that I happen to have. (The fare is $1.50, and if I put in two $1 bills, I get the change card.)

His eyes narrowed as he said, teeth clenched, “Have a nice day.” I don’t think he was being sincere.
***
Now I Know: Slow and Steady Wins the Lottery

The Calculus of Bad Driving

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

The Lydster: Twisting by the pool

She ~~suckered~~encouraged her mother and me to actually set up the pool

One of my brothers-in-law and his family had an above-ground swimming pool. But because they were scheduled to move, related to his new job, the family gave US the contraption.

And in our backyard, the parts sat. There were, no exaggeration, 80 pieces listed in the manual, none to scale, and I had neither the time nor the inclination to sort it out.

This is a bit ironic since there USED to be an area in the backyard, bricked off, where an above-ground pool once resided.

The Daughter meticulously marked all the parts in some color-coordinated system that I could not decipher. She ascertained that there were at least a half dozen pieces missing, which we subsequently got from my BIL.

Then she ~~suckered~~encouraged her mother and me to actually set up the pool, even though I’m not particularly handy, certainly not as accomplished as she is. And sure enough, the pool pieces all eventually fit together, with her doing the bulk of the work.

We filled up the pool, as it turned out, ONE DAY before an emergency ban in the city of Albany, and neighboring towns, on use of water for that, and several other non-essential purposes such as handwashing one’s car. A sinkhole and a resulting water main break a few blocks away diminished the available water supply.

The Daughter loves being in the pool, even on those evenings that don’t seem that warm, though we have had our patch of hot and humid weather. She is not a particularly proficient swimmer, but she loves doing acrobatic activities in the water.

We haven’t done all the requisite activities. There’s a desalination system (wha? we didn’t use saltwater) but it has been a boon to the Daughter’s fitness, and perhaps more important, her spirit.

Listen to
Twisting by the Pool – Dire Straits

Dad would be 90

Dad always did a spot-on impression of FDR.

Dad was always about 47, give or take a decade. It’s like Willie Mays was always 30 to me. When I see those pictures or that string bean of a young man, that wasn’t my father (and he was not yet my father, for most of that time). And in the early days, I don’t recall that much.

Les Green had a lot of different jobs, including floral arranger, sign painter, and singer/guitarist. But for six years or so, he worked at IBM, driving these electric trucks around, moving material from place to place. It was at night, so we seldom saw Dad, except on weekends. This was the period our mom would take us to W.T. Grant’s almost every Friday night to have the all-you-can-eat fish.

Still, we did see him on weekends, when he’d make spaghetti sauce that would cook on the stove for hours. Or he’d make waffles in a waffle iron with a certain panache, and tell stories about him making breakfast for General Washington, which I believe to be untrue.

But you can never tell. Since his early days were such a mystery – and still are – maybe he WAS a time traveler, There’s a song he used to perform called Passing Through, written by a guy named Dick Blakeslee in the 1940s, and popularized by Pete Seeger.

The lyrics were about the narrator seeing Jesus on the cross, and Adam leaving the garden, Washington shivering at Valley Forge, and this one:
I was with Franklin Roosevelt’s side on the night before he died.
He said, “One world must come out of World War Two”
“Yankee, Russian, white or tan,” he said, “A man is still a man.
We’re all brothers now, and we’re only passing through.”

Dad always did a spot-on impression of FDR when he sang “one world must come”. He started being a ‘singer of folk songs” back in the late 1950s around our hometown of Binghamton and would sing for Leslie’s and my elementary school classes each semester for three or four years, which was a treat, in part because he wrecked his sleep schedule to do this.

I’ve noted that when my father quit IBM in 1968 to work in a federal Office of Economic Opportunities program called Opportunities For Broome (our county), my homeroom teacher, Mr. Joseph told me straight out that my father was “crazy” to leave IBM. And maybe he was.

Or maybe being away from his family, and working at night in a job that did not challenge him intellectually or artistically, was making him crazy. His decision always made sense to me.

My father, sister Leslie, and I singing together started just before he left IBM, but thrived when he got to work in the daytime.

I went away to college at New Paltz in 1971, and he, my mother, and my sister Marcia moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974, and, of course, I’d see him far less frequently. But, for most of his time, he looked the same. He looked like Dad.

His 90th birthday would have been September 26.

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