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Sunday Stealing: Pinterest

Henri Nouwen

This week’s Sunday Stealing is called Pinterest. I don’t know why.

1. When did you last sing to yourself?

Five minutes ago. I often sing to myself.

2. If you’re male, would you ever rock black nail polish? If you’re female, would you ever rock really, really short hair?

It’s not my style. I have no specific problem with it, except that it would involve far more effort in getting ready than I’m willing to expend.

3. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

Writing a blog post every day since May 2, 2005.

4. What is the first happy memory that comes to mind, recent or otherwise?

Undoubtedly, it involved listening to music, or singing music. I’ll pick the last time I heard I Only Have Eyes For You by the Flamingos. I love that song so much I could weep. Or maybe I did.

5. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?

Surely, I’d spend more time on the genealogy stuff for my sisters and daughter.

6. Do you have a bucket list? If so, what are the top three things?

I may have once had a bucket list, but I found it an albatross. So I abandoned it.

7. How do you feel about tattoos and piercings?

I’ve evolved on them. I used to find tattoos unappealing. But as I see more people wearing them, I’m more comfortable with most of them, though I’d never want one myself. BTW, you can’t give blood for some months if you get a tattoo. I’m fascinated by people with full-body tats; it’s like viewing a totally different culture.

Rolling Stones or Pharrell Williams

8. Do you feel you had a happy childhood?

More or less. I had good friends, some of whom I’m still in contact with.

8. When did you last cry in front of another person?

Probably in the past month, in front of my wife

9. Who in the world would you most like to receive a letter from, and what would you want it to say?

Maybe someone I wrote about in my blog that they liked what I wrote about them.

10. What is your nighttime routine?

Dinner, watch the recorded news, watch the recorded JEOPARDY, check my email, take my medicine, and brush my teeth.

11. When was your last 3 am conversation with someone, and who were they to you?

It was my daughter, who had just come home after seeing a midnight movie.

12. if you were about to die, and you could only say one more sentence to one person, what would you say and to whom?

A friend who has ghosted me to say, “I love you anyway.”

13. What is your opinion on brown eyes?

I have brown eyes. I’m in favor.

14. Pick a quote and describe what it means to you personally.

I have posted a section from theologian Henri Nouwen’s book Here and Now: Living in the Spirit several times on my birthday. Here it is. One section: On a birthday, we do not say: “Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.” No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being among us.”

15. What would you title the autobiography of your life so far?

Information without the Bun, which was the title of my now-defunct Albany Times Union blog.

Wakanda Forever non-review

Namor

I saw the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever back in November. Yet I didn’t review it because, in some ways, I found it almost unreviewable.

It was challenging to separate the death of T’Challa from the passing of the first film’s star, Chadwick Boseman. Even before the film was released, ABC-TV was plugging the stars, writers, and director on a primetime special, saying they were trying to make sure they honored the late actor. It succeeded at that.

Think Christian ran a spoiler-laden but touching piece, Mourning Chadwick, Mourning T’Challa, back in November, which you should read unless you haven’t seen the film. Back in 2020, the publication ran Chadwick Boseman’s Sacrifice.

Also, there was a pre-review by Joshua Adams, who made a point of NOT reading any analyses of the new film. He commented that “some of the reactions towards the support of the first film left a bad taste in my mouth.” Specifically, “all the people (across the political spectrum) who implied or asserted that Black Panther was only popular because of black identity politics.” While I had not thought about it before, I got that feeling too.

The other factor is that I went to see Wakanda Forever at the neighborhood Madison Theater. The marquee did not reflect that the film was even playing there. As a result, I was the ONLY person in the theater. I’m not much for private screenings because I like getting the audience’s reactions.

Namor

The one part of the film I will comment on is the introduction of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía). He’s not exactly the villain, as he’s trying to protect his homeland. The emperor of Talokan, a hidden undersea kingdom, offers to fight with the Wakandans against the folks threatening both of their cultures.

The Mayan ancestry backstory worked for me. It was compelling and as logical as a narrative about a secret group of underwater humans could be.

They are not the blue people that Bill Everett drew in the 1940s and again in the 1970s. I’m a huge fan of that Sub-Mariner published by Marvel and its predecessor. As I’ve noted, the comic book universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe are destined to be different, and I’m all right by that.

I read a reprinted column that the late Greg Hatcher wrote about Batman, where he counted eight different iterations, and that was just between 1964 and 2005.

Back to the film, maybe it was the lack of an audience in the cinema, but I started to find the fight scenes, which were well-choreographed, not so interesting, except for the one-on-one near the end. still, it was well done, and I’m glad I saw it.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received decent reviews, 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s done over $446 million at the domestic box office.

Series of everyday annoyances

change of policy

I noticed a series of everyday annoyances. Some were small and brief, but still…

ITEM: I wrote this letter to a local newspaper to which I subscribe. I’ll call it Teeyou.

I have been a subscriber for many years. Our family believes that supporting local media is important for the democratic process. And we like helping our delivery folks, who have been very amiable.

Still, I am quite irritated. The subscription price went up from X to X+$8 [per month]. I know this because my DISCOVER card email noted today, “Your recent recurring charge seems a little outside your normal spending with this merchant.”

I tried calling you folks… to see what other options are available, such as delivery for Sunday only, Sunday and Thursday only, or only online, but I couldn’t navigate that menu.

So I tried to access you on the website. I get to the Link Subscription. “Your print subscription includes unlimited digital access. To get started, set up a digital account below.”

[I explain how its portal sent me into an interminable loop] I go through this process AGAIN and AGAIN. You FIND my subscription, but I can’t get any more detail.

Given that I could cancel the thing for a month and then get my daughter to subscribe for $1 for six months, the processes are rather enraging.

PLEASE let me know what the other subscription options are.

But, but…

Here is the reply:

Thank you for contacting Teeyou. Reviewing the information provided, I noticed you had a rate change on 11/16/2022… Rate increases happen due to production and employee costs at least once a year as is on the back of your bill [I don’t receive a bill] or on the second page of your newspaper. However, for being one of our valued subscribers, the system allowed me to lower the rate to [slightly below the price before the increase]

Please confirm if you agree to the new rate so I can apply the changes to your account.

Thank you for being a valued subscriber,

Customer Service Management

Note that they NEVER actually answered my question about options.

ITEM: As I noted, St. Peter’s Hospital and CDPHP, the insurance company that my wife and daughter have through my retirement, were at loggerheads over reimbursement. My former employer’s people assumed it would be resolved. The problem was that I had to decide by November 30, one way or another. I decided to change to another policy on that last day. And on December 3, the entities resolved their differences.

ITEM: Our mail was not delivered at least four times since Halloween. Thrice it was doubled up, with so much mail cascading from the mailbox that it looked like waterfalls. The fourth time, our postal delivery person was delivering on Sunday. BTW, I recognize that our regular guy is fastidiously trying to get letters and packages delivered.

ITEM: The urgent care company I wanted my daughter to visit last month encourages going to their website. But I couldn’t use it after they closed for the day; one can’t even make an appointment for a future date. BTW, they also say one can just show up, but experience tells me that would be a three-hour wait.

ITEM: New York State law requires vehicles using their windshield wipers must have their lights on. But this black car heading towards us didn’t, and it wasn’t easy to see. As it turned out, it was an Albany police car. I hate when that happens.

Lydster: Learning from my daughter

television

There are always things I’m learning from my daughter.

She has been following online Maxwell Frost, the newly-elected member of Congress from Florida. I knew who he was because I had been getting contribution requests from his campaign.

He was supposed to be sworn in on January 3. So he wrote about that the day before. But as the drama over selecting a Speaker of the House of Representatives dragged on, no one could be sworn in. So Frost reposted that January 2 post, followed by the word “SIKE!”

Quickly, he was scolded by some folks who thought a Member of Congress should know how to spell Psych! But, as my daughter noted, people of her generation have been spelling it as SIKE forever.

Did I mention that Frost is the first Gen Z Congressperson? “At 25, [he] will be the youngest member of Congress. He’s also in debt after maxing out credit cards to win Florida’s 10th Congressional District seat.”

Influencer

My daughter told me that Andrew Tate was arrested. I said, “Who’s that?” “He’s a former kickboxer and TikTok influencer.” I muttered, “I don’t care about some social media influencer.”

But a couple of days later, after I read about him on Reuters and other mainstream sources, I knew WAY more about him than I wanted. He is a brutal misogynist. The Romanian anti-organized crime agency DIICOT alleges he created with his brother and others “an organized crime group in early 2021 ‘with the purpose of recruiting, housing, and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialized websites for a cost.'”

His feud with Greta Thunberg revealed that he was in Romania when a box from Jerry’s Pizza, a Romanian chain, was in his video response to her, which facilitated his arrest.

So my daughter, once again, was ahead of my curve.

Dick Wolf

During her winter break, my daughter watched a bit of television. Two shows were in the Dick Wolf franchise, Chicago Fire and FBI International. She seems to like to watch and dissect them.

In the one episode I watched, Chicago Fire had characters lying for no good reason. For instance, one firefighter tells a pregnant woman married to another firefighter that she’s “fine” seconds before she is rushed to the hospital. In another scene, the woman in a couple avoids telling her Significant Other she’s buying a door with another firefighter, which becomes obvious two scenes later.

The FBI scene involves the officers coming up to a suspect and saying, from ten feet away, “FBI.” The suspect runs away and eludes capture. Now I know what “hate-watching” is because my daughter does it.

I love learning how my daughter’s mind works.

Lucinda Williams is turning 70

Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You

On January 26, musician Lucinda Williams will turn 70. The Associated Press called her “arguably one of the music world’s most articulate and introspective performers.”

I first heard her perform in the mid-1990s in Washington Park in Albany, NY. The next time I saw her was at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as part of the 1998 Newport Folk Festival. She had played at least twice in my area in the past decade, but I missed her programs.

She put out one of my Top Ten albums of the 1990s, Car Wheel On A Gravel Road. I’ve subsequently purchased about a dozen of her CDs, including some of the music she put out during the pandemic, covers of the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, and Christmas songs, among others.

Lucinda Williams experienced a health scare, a stroke, on November 17th, 2020. “Doctors discovered a blood clot in the right side of Lucinda’s brain, which affected the function of the left side of her body. They treated her for the blood clot, and she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility where she spent nearly five weeks, until December 21st, when she was discharged.

“Luckily, Lucinda suffered no aphasia, meaning the stroke did not affect her speech or ability to sing. It has affected her ability to play guitar, and walking is still a little difficult for her.”

But she was back on the stage by mid-2021. She opened for Jason Isbell in 2021 and Bonnie Raitt in 2022.

In the book

Now she’s about to put out a memoir. “The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has a deal with Crown for ‘Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,’ scheduled for April 25. Williams… will look back to her wandering childhood, when she lived in 12 different places by age 18, and trace her rise in the music business…

“’For decades now, I’ve shared my innermost thoughts and experiences via my songs,’ Williams said in a statement… ‘After years spent toying with the idea, I’ve decided to finally tell my stories more fully. But this won’t be a sugar-coated memoir; I want people to really see the truth of my life.’” I’ll probably buy it.

I listened to all of her music I had to put together my favorite or her best songs. Nah, Here’s the NPR list, which contains the title song and Joy from that album. The list from The Boot has those and a couple of songs from World Without End that I was considering. Holler County has a different song list.

Here are just a few covers of her songs. There are a lot of them.

Changed The Locks – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Passionate Kisses – Mary Chapin Carpenter

Joy – Betty Lavette

Something I recently heard again:

You’re Still Standing There – Steve Earle with Lucinda Williams