Roger O Green

The color green + healing

Lumpy

Captain_kangaroo — Mr. Green Jeans, Captain Kangaroo, 1960

Jessica Kantrowitz has a Substack. Her recent “free-write Friday” prompt was “The color green + healing. You can interpret the prompt however you like.”

“(Adjust to your own preferences.) Sit with a notebook or device and set a timer for 20 or 30 mins. Write whatever comes to mind, either as random thoughts (journaling style), a poem, or a short story. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, just put words on the page.”

Okay, I will free associate here.

Growing up with the name Green was an interesting experience. On the phone, I would say my name as Roger Green: “Roger, R-O-G-E-R; green, like the color.” About 10% of the time, people would ask, “Is that with an E at the end?” and I would say No. I thought “Green, like the color,” was a clarifying statement. Yet, it seemed to confuse people about 10% of the time.

Growing up, I lived in a green house with asbestos siding. The worst thing about it, besides the possible carcinogenic impact, was that if you happened to rub against it, it really hurt. You could get a nasty little abrasion on your arm.

Neighbors

Down our little one-block, 16-address street, Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY, there was a family named Greene with an E at the end. Their house was white, but it had green trim. We would get their mail a fair amount, and they got ours; fortunately, we are very friendly with each other. The kid over there, Danny, would sometimes come over and play in our backyard. We had a very small backyard; there wasn’t much greenery.

When I wanted greenery, I usually went to Valley Street Park, a few blocks away, where a ball field was located. I’d also go to Ansco Ball Field. The easiest way to get to Ansco from my grandmother’s house was to cut through Spring Forest Cemetery, which had great greenery among the headstones.

I most appreciate cities when they have greenery. I like Recreation Park in Binghamton, Central Park in New York City, Washington Park in Albany, Central Park in Schenectady, and various other parks I’ve been to. Parks and greenery make a place feel civilized, something that tames the urban concrete jungle. I need greenery.

Every time I saw stories about Baltimore in the news, I noted the lack of trees, at least in the urban areas. This made the streets feel not only barren but hot.

I like trees. When I was a kid, there was a chestnut tree on Spruce St, about halfway between my grandmother’s house and ours. I would collect the chestnuts, keep them for several months, and then throw them away in the spring. I liked to collect them, appreciating the smooth feel of the chestnut. It was comforting.

TV

As a kid, I used to watch Captain Kangaroo. There was a character named Mr. Green Jeans. An inordinate number of people used to refer to me as Mr. Green Jeans; I think it bugged me when I was much younger, but I became rather insulated from it over time. Hugh “Lumpy” Brannan played the character. I always look for green characters on TV; Green Hornet, which I watched a bit, featured Van Johnson as the title character and Bruce Lee as Kato. Later, of course, there was Kermit the Frog.

When I was 25, I worked as a bank teller for about a month. I didn’t love the job, but I learned to keep the greenbacks in the right order. They are always facing up and in the same direction. I implemented this process at the comic book store where I used to work, FantaCo.

The other day, I was at the grocery store. This guy approached me and said, “Hey, would you like to help me buy this piece of food?” It looked like sushi or something, and it cost $7.99, and I said sure. I bought it, and the guy waited at the exit. I handed the food off to him. It was no big deal. When you’ve had periods of not having the money, you can become very sensitive to making it available to others if you can afford it.

The weird thing about that particular day is that, as I walked out of the Price Chopper parking lot, I saw lying on the ground a $5.00 bill and three $1.00 bills—$8, exactly what I had spent on this guy’s sushi. So, it turned out to be not only a kind act but one that cost me absolutely no money.

I think that’s enough of this; it’s an interesting exercise.

ARA: the Presidents

undeniable

Kelly, that guy from western New York, asked several questions, two about the Presidents.

One scenario I had in mind when Biden was elected was that he would serve two years–essentially steward the country through the worst of COVID and get the economic recovery going–and then step down, making Harris President. Should he have done so? Would Harris have done better as an incumbent?

One thing I know about Joe Biden is that he is a traditionalist regarding the presidency. Barring extraordinary circumstances, such as severe illness, he would never serve two years and then resign. Only one president in our history resigned from office: Richard Nixon in 1974, less than two years after Joe became the US senator from Delaware.

Moreover, if he had announced too early that he would quit after two, any chance of his agenda being acted upon would have been almost impossible to achieve. I suppose he could have done it secretly and then announced it after the midterms of 2022.

However, completing a president’s agenda in the best situations takes time. There are negotiations to be had, and much of what he achieved was in the latter half of his term. I noticed that FOTUS felt entitled to do everything on Day One, but he didn’t even have his cabinet in place on January 21st.

Secondly, I don’t think he would have ceded the presidency to Kamala Harris in 2022. Many people, including me, thought she was a terrible candidate when she ran for president in 2020. Heck, her campaign didn’t even make it to the election year; she started it in 2019 and ended it in 2019.

HHH redux

Moreover, in 2022, she would have been burdened by immigration and inflation worse than in 2024. Conversely, the Biden support for Israel in the Gaza war harmed her greatly. It would have been like Hubert Humphrey running against LBJ’s Vietnam War in 1968; it would have been even more difficult for Kamala to separate herself from Joe.

She was a much better candidate than I anticipated when she ran in 2024. Still, many people hated the process of her becoming the Democratic nominee; even people I know IRL, who probably voted for her, were appalled by the manner in which she became the pick.

I have intimated before that it would have been a better choice for Joe to decide to be a one-term president much earlier. There have been willing, “successful” one-term presidents before. The most noteworthy in terms of his agenda was James Knox Polk (1845-1849), who managed to win the Mexican War and expand our manifest destiny. I’m not saying this is good, merely that he was triumphant at it.

His inner circle ultimately served him poorly by trying to manage his physical decline. As Dean Phillips suggested, Biden should have stepped down around July 2023. Then, there would have been a primary process that most Democrats would have embraced.

(BTW, my candidate would have probably been Pete Buttigieg because he spoke so well to the rightwing news crowd, going on their shows regularly; he was like the “FOX whisperer.”)

All that said, I’m not sure that ANYONE could have beaten FOTUS unless the man were indicted shortly after January 2021. Jack Smith’s much-too-late report proves clearly that he was the felon we all knew he was. “But for [his] election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” the report states.

AotD

On November 22, 2024, Senator John Fetterman told ABC This Week’s Jon Karl: “You have a singular political talent [in FOTUS]. It’s undeniable. …if you’re not afraid to say all of those things, or, and after you survived an assassination, you literally were shot in your head and had the presence of mind to respond, ‘fight, fight, fight.’

“I was driving home from Indiana County (PA) at nine o’clock, and there was a Trump superstore on the side of a road, nine o’clock on Friday night, and people are buying swag. And that really crystallized in, at the assassination [attempt]… the day or two later, you start seeing people wearing shirts with that iconic picture. And, you know, the energy and the anger and, it’s like, wow, I really thought — in fact, I thought that might be ball game.'”

So, FOTUS has mastered the Art of the Deal, in which January 6, 2021, was a stroll through the Capitol. His pardon of the J6 insurrectionists was the final nail in the gaslighting coffin.

“They’re eating their cats” is merely Orange hyperbole. Yet I read how he picks out the lies and errors of others. Joe LIED about not pardoning Hunter. He was wrong about the fact that the Afghan Taliban wouldn’t take over Afghanistan that quickly.

Part of the reason is that many Americans, especially men, preferred Ben Shapiro, “Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, YouTube, and X over the mainstream media,” where Biden and Harris largely operated.

Perhaps it’s a function of what author Jianwei Xun, in his book about FOTUS and Musk, calls Hypnocracy, a “new form of social control… that… induces a permanent functional trance through algorithmic modulation of collective consciousness… In the era of post-truth and artificial intelligence, power no longer operates through repression but through the manipulation of reality perception.”

When this question came in, my daughter and I watched the 2005 Charlie the Chocolate Factory movie with Johnny Depp. She suggested that the children that Willy Wonka selected were like FOTUS. Much of the American public was like the indulgent parents who capitulated to their noisy brats.

BHO

What WERE 45 and Obama saying to one another at President Carter’s funeral, anyway?!

“Donald, you know that I think you’re a dipwad. But you’re gonna be president again, much to my consternation. [FOTUS laughs]. So you’re in ‘the club.’ Let’s get together and have a rational conversation somewhere about why you shouldn’t undermine the Panama Canal treaty or blow up NATO by seizing Greenland and threatening Canada. Hey, if these actions don’t happen, people will think all of this is bluster and that you’ve ‘grown’ into the presidency. This could help your historical reputation!”

Lydster: making my life brighter

office chair

lamps My daughter has been making my life brighter for two decades, but right after Christmas, it wasn’t merely a metaphor. My wife and I had gone out to see a Saturday matinee. When we got back, she had put together three lamps for the living room that Santa had brought for me.

The front of the living room was too dark, so I couldn’t read the spines of my CDs. The last time my friends visited for a hearts game, the room was too dark for them, so this was a really important addition.

That she did it all by herself was quite remarkable. She had wanted to do this earlier, but her parents were always around, so she had to wait until we went to the movies.

Better seating

She also brought an office chair upstairs and put it together. I had one that broke down. Then, I used a stationary chair, which was more comfortable but less easy to get in and out of—the office chair swivels. Additionally, the new chair makes it much easier to clean the room. The hardest task was taking the old chair to the attic; I was not strong enough to do it myself.

During the cleaning – I picked up, and she removed stuff – we also had a wonderful conversation about life. We talked about the friends she had when she was younger. She still has some of them, and others have faded away, but she keeps track of many. We talked about our friend Bonnie, who she believes is the first significant person in her life to die. She doesn’t really remember my mother; the last time she saw her was when the daughter was five. Also, we discussed other relationships each of us have had.

We talked about the time we deconstructed the rotting shed in the backyard, one of the great joys I had working with her. It was a wonderful evening.

Current KC Chiefs; 1950s NY Yankees

Go, Buffalo Bills!

Growing up, I was a New York Yankees baseball fan because we had a farm team in Binghamton, NY, a Yankees affiliate, the Triplets. But I knew many people around the country hated the Bronx Bombers because they were too successful. They won the World Series every year from 1936 to 1939, again from 1949 to 1953, and were in the mix most years between 1955 and 1964.

Moreover, they received disproportionate press coverage, even though two other teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, were located within the City limits for most of that period. Mickey Mantle was a bigger star than he would have been in Cleveland. Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe!

I spent much of last weekend watching four football games. As is usually the case, I did not watch them in real-time but recorded them and watched them later. It’s been clear that I’ve been rooting this season for the Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills. The Lions lost, alas, but the Bills won.

I’m pulling for the Bills, the only team that plays its home games in New York State. Moreover, I want them to get the monkey off their back as the only team to lose four consecutive Super Bowls (Jan 1991-Jan 1994).

No threepeat!

But I realized only recently that I’m also actively rooting against the Kansas City Chiefs, and I’m not the only one. They’ve won three Super Bowls in five seasons and are going for a threepeat this year. There are many articles about how they were the worst team in the league this season with a winning record. And some complain that the officiating favors Kansas City.

Maybe I’m tired of all the State Farm ads with quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid or the ubiquitous presence of tight end Travis Kelce and his recently NFL-retired brother Jason.

I have no strong rooting interests between the Washington Commanders and the Philadelphia Eagles. They’re both in the NFC East, where I root for the Giants when they have a decent team. They aren’t the Dallas Cowboys, who I’ve despised for decades.

If the Bills win tomorrow, I’ll continue to support them in the Super Bowl. If the Bills lose, I’ll be cheering for the NFC team.

Don’t bet on it, at least online

But I won’t be wagering on any of it. Zvi Mowshowitz had previously been heavily [and successfully] involved in sports betting.” As he notes, The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed.

“When sports gambling was legalized in America, I was hopeful it too could prove a net positive force, far superior to the previous obnoxious wave of daily fantasy sports.

“It brings me no pleasure to conclude that this was not the case. The results are in. Legalized mobile gambling on sports, let alone casino games, has proven to be a huge mistake. The societal impacts are far worse than I expected.”

He links to others who are likewise loathe to tell others what they cannot do but make the same argument.

“You should need to go to a physical location to place fully legal bets of a non-trivial size, or at least interact with a human or bear some other cost or risk.”

Start Making Sense

Tribute to Talking Heads

In mid-December, one of my pastors emailed me: “I’m wondering—do you like the Talking Heads? I have two tickets to “Start Making Sense: A Tribute to Talking Heads “for Sunday, 12/29, at 7:30, which I would love to give to someone who would like them. Would that be you?”

It might be. I wrote about them here and several other times. I saw them perform on August 5, 1983, at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in upstate New York. It was one of the two or three greatest concerts I had ever seen.

But what about Start Making Sense? The program at the Cohoes Music Hall notes the group “celebrates the entire Talking Heads’ catalog with a seven-piece band meticulously executing the sounds and iconic live visual elements in every performance. Together, these skilled and dedicated musicians enjoy bringing the unique, infectious energy of a Talking Heads live show that you know and love to the stage.”

I said yes to the tickets, though I was/am wary of tribute bands. My wife agreed to go with me even though she had to get up early the following morning. It was good that she and I had gone to see the movie Stop Making Sense in 2023, about the 1983 Talking Heads tour, because she was not nearly as familiar with the TH oeuvre as I was.

Our seats were in the front row of the balcony, which was a great place to watch the show. While some people were sitting on the lower level, many stood and danced up front.

Deja vu?

The show began like the 1983 Talking Heads concert, in which the lead singer (Jon Braun) performed Psycho Killer with the boom box. Next, a couple of songs with the bass player/singer (Jenny Founds) and the drummer (Jesse Braun), then the guitarist/singer (Brian Davis). Soon, others (Colin Miller – Percussion & vocals; Alex Ayala – Keyboards & vocals; Kate Desisto-/ Vocals) joined on stage.

I wondered whether this would be a replication of the movie, but then they did a song from after that period. There was a Tom Tom Club song in the second half, and then the lead singer came out in a large suit.

On their website was this message: “To all you listeners… This is an appropriate title — Start Making Sense. This band makes plenty of sense to me and is a great representation of Talking Heads’ music. So listen up and go check them out!” —BERNIE WORRELL, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member and keyboardist for Talking Heads and Parliament / Funkadelic

Many audience members had seen them in the past decade and a half, including in Cohoes, yet I had been unaware of them. They were very good.

The group will tour Australia from January 23 to February 1. Then, they will embark on their Spring tour with the Ocean Avenue Stompers, “playing the music of Talking Heads, David Bryne, and more with a full Horn Section!!!” The first show will be at The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ, on March 28.

Here’s a Reddit link, plus some videos on their Instagram feed, including a pair of COVID-era concerts.