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.

Earth Day 2014

The odd sidebar about Malaysian airplane disappearance is that we learned how trashed the oceans really are.

earthdayI imagine you heard about the UN panel announcing that climate change is real and getting worse:

 

 

Looking at the risks, authorities expressed “very high confidence” that rising sea levels would endanger the U.S. East Coast, and noted that much of the mountain snowpack in the American West is waning. With snow melting earlier in the year, less water is on hand during the arid summers. In Alaska, sea ice collapse is permitting enormous waves to chip away at the coast, the Times reported.

Worldwide, scientists pointed to melting ice caps, intensifying weather conditions, coastal waters that are becoming more acidic, and sea life migration as some of the effects of present climate change.

In fact, the report’s language concludes that climate change has already “caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans.” The Arctic ice cap is vanishing. And wealth, plus climate change, are increasing the cost of disaster cleanup.

The odd sidebar about Malaysian airplane disappearance is that in this story and this one, we learned how trashed the oceans really are.

I’m not just discouraged by one spill of “dirty tar sands oil from a BP refinery in Indiana” leaving “a disgusting sheen on the surface of Lake Michigan — the drinking water source for upwards of 7 million people in the area.” It’s that it’s at least the fourth oil spill to take place in the past month or so. Further, the powers that be want to push for more: “drilling in the Arctic, advocating for the dirty Keystone XL pipeline, trying to stop our government from making more parks, and blocking every single piece of legislation that could help stem the tide of climate change.”

What are others doing? Daily Show used humor in dissecting fracking’s effects in Pennsylvania. I’m pleased that members of Congress have told the EPA to investigate and address water contamination from fracking.

Bill Nye has become the point guy for the cause of climate change. Always liked the Science Guy.

What can WE do? The EPA has 30 tips to help you act on climate. One way to save the environment is to change your type font. It’s 44 years since the first Earth Day, and sometimes it feels as though we’re going backward. I’ll still do my part to reduce, reuse and recycle, my frustrations notwithstanding. The U.N. Climate Change report says the worst scenarios CAN still be avoided, but we must act NOW.

O is for Oasis

Do you recognize the Stevie Wonder song the chorus of Step Out by Oasis echoes?

oasisOasis is a British band of the 1990s and beyond, about which I know relatively little:

1) The group has often been described as Beatlesque,
2) The members have occasionally been accused of copyright infringement, and
3) The band, for a time, included brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, who fought a lot, as brothers in these sagas often do.

I have but one album, and it’s the album that everyone who has but one Oasis album owns, the one that starts with a revisiting of the Gary Glitter song Hello [LISTEN].

Oasis had their first UK number one single in April 1995 with Some Might Say[LISTEN] … Although a softer sound led to mixed reviews, Oasis’ second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was a commercial success, becoming the fourth best-selling album in UK Chart history with over four million copies sold. The album spawned two further hit singles, Wonderwall [LISTEN] and Don’t Look Back in Anger [LISTEN], which also reached numbers two and one respectively. [They got to #8 and #55 in the US, respectively]. It also contained the non-UK single Champagne Supernova [LISTEN] —featuring guitar playing and backing vocals by Paul Weller—that received widespread critical acclaim and peaked at number one on the US modern rock chart [and #20 on the US pop charts].

Here’s Step Out, which was removed from the Morning Glory album and relegated to a B-side. Stevie Wonder now has a co-writing credit; do you recognize the Wonder song this chorus echoes?

Apparently, the band has broken up and Noel Gallagher says the band will NEVER reunite, but that this album will be remastered soon.

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Easter is new

“God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.” But the Greek word used for “justice” ALSO means “righteousness”.

eastereggsOne of the things my pastors, and pastors before them, have often said is that you should be different on Good Friday than you were on Ash Wednesday. It’s not always easy to do that. The texts tend to be SO familiar that one has a tendency to “mail it in,” theologically. “Oh, yeah, that scripture; I know EXACTLY what that means.” I think, remarkably, that I did not “mail it in” this Lent.

Frankly, I’ve been puzzled by people who look at Scripture as though God handed it down in 17th century English. It was helpful that our pastors have been doing sermons on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), getting us to look at things differently. Verse 6 is: “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.” But the Greek word used for “justice” ALSO means “righteousness”. That’s a very different emphasis, and one can use one or the other, and come to different conclusions; alternatively, one can use BOTH terms and see it yet another way.

I used to see the story of the poor widow in Mark 12 putting in her last two coins as merely a sign of her fidelity to her faith. But after having read Jesus for President, I can’t help but wonder if the exploitative temple system that drains the woman’s ability to care for herself ticked off Jesus so much that he ends up driving out the money lenders in the previous chapter.

Here’s hoping that, regardless of your theology, that this is a time for looking at the familiar in a new, and possibly challenging, way.

The newish computer

The first thing I say is: “Where the heck is the Start button?” I had to Read The (Online) Manual to figure out where it was.

The Dell laptop that the Wife had purchased a few years back was dying. Even after buying a replacement battery, it wouldn’t operate without being constantly plugged in, and took FOREVER to start if we turned it off, loading several options very slowly, or often not at all. This meant that one could, say, download a picture to the computer, but not upload it to the blog. One could write a document, but could not save it.

Also, keys started falling off. One was the quote key. (Note to readers: if I wrote don’t as dont in the last few months, it’s not that I can’t spell.) Another was the /? key. There were a couple of others. It became a royal PITA.

So in late October, I ordered another Dell computer on the recommendation of my IT support St. Louis friend, and it arrived a week or so later. It sat in the box. And sat. And sat…

Until March. More about March when I finally answer New York Erratic’s question about the worst time of the past year. (No, I haven’t forgotten.) One of the issues I had though, was that I needed to type the February 24 minutes of the board of the Friends of the Albany Public Library. In spite of everything else on my plate, I realized that I HAD to figure out the new computer so that I could at least check ONE item off the list.
Windows_8_Start
I turn it on, and the first thing I say is: “Where the heck is the Start button?” I had to Read The (Online) Manual to figure out where it was, and that Windows 8 was installed on my computer. (A few days after I turned on the machine, someone told me, “Whatever you do, DON’T download Windows 8.” I imagine many people have since Microsoft is no longer offering support for Windows XP and Office 2003.) Oh, swell.

Anyway, I figure out, kinda, how this thing is supposed to work. I go to the Office suite button. It asks me if I want to buy the product. Do I have to BUY the product separately? Suffice it to say, it took another week before I could FINALLY use the contraption correctly. This involved, among other things having someone uninstall one of the security products I installed because it actually made the computer LESS secure. Product A thought Product B was taking care of the bugs, so neither one actually worked.

All this, BTW, adds to my personal narrative that I’m not particularly comfortable with these computer thingies. Some people THINK I’m better than I am because I know infinitesimally more than they do. It’s like getting a 12-year-old to explain some complex scientific discovery because he might know more than a 10-year-old.

Fridays in Lent: Handel Messiah, Part 2

I’ve performed Part 2 of Handel’s Messiah, which is the Passion/Resurrection section, far less frequently than Part 1.

HaendelOne year for Christmas, I gave my sister the score of the entire Messiah, we sang from it so much in high school. Since then I’ve sung much of Part 1, the section associated with Advent/Christmastime, at least a half dozen times. I’ve performed Part 2, which is the Passion/Resurrection section, far less frequently, except, of course, the Hallelujah, which I sing every Easter Sunday.

Read the Wikipedia piece.

LISTEN to the live performance.

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