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Some songs I like from the 1970s

I could link to the entire oeuvre of Stevie Wonder or Paul Simon from the decade.

Songs I like from the 1970s I’m going pick a few tunes from the 1970s, the decade far most represented in my record collection, the physical manifestation of which I still own.

The caveat is that I wrote nearly a dozen posts just about the music of 1971 not long ago. I’m trying to avoid folks I’ve written about relatively recently, such as Fleetwood Mac or David Bowie.

I could link to the entire oeuvre of Stevie Wonder or Paul Simon from the decade. It always makes me laugh to recall Paul thanking Stevie for not releasing an album that year in his Grammy acceptance speech for Still Crazy After All These Years.

Loves Me Like a Rock – Paul Simon (#2 in 1973). My favorite solo P Simon song.
As – Stevie Wonder (#36 pop AND soul, 1977). My favorite Stevie song
Tell Me Something Good – Rufus (#3 pop AND soul, 1974). Written by Stevie Wonder.
Staple Singers – Respect Yourself (#12 pop, #2 RB in 1972). “If you don’t respect yourself…”

Lucky Man – Emerson, Lake and Palmer (#48 in 1971 and #52 in 1973). When I was in college, I used to be able to do, just with my mouth, a fair representation of the synthesizer at the end of this song.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Genesis (1974). I heard this song on WQBK-FM in Albany a lot, six or seven years after it was released.

Dirty Work – Steely Dan (1972). David Palmer, lead vocal.
More Than a Feeling – Boston (#5 in 1976). Yes, I did buy that eponymous album.

Gloria – Patti Smith (1975). Lead song from the Horses album.
Uncontrollable Urge – DEVO (1978). The first cut on “Q. Are We Not Men…”
A Message to You, Rudy – The Specials (1979, #10 in the UK)

The final song from the 1970s is The Jungle Line -Joni Mitchell (1975). It’d be easy to pick something (or EVERYTHING) from Blue or Court and Spark. I opted for this cut from The Hissing of Summer Lawns. It was an album a Joni fan I knew did not particularly enjoy. I told her, “Well, then give the album to me!” She did not.

Retiring is an exhausting process

chores involving Social Security, Medicare…

I was surprised to discover that retiring, which I have been looking forward to, is an exhausting process. Maybe I thought it’d be better because my employer has engaged a company to make it “easier.”

The company, which I will call Noah, had a representative contact me a week before our scheduled phone meeting. He said, “Hey, do you want to put your medical providers in the database? It’ll help you decide what coverage to get after you retire.”

“Sure.” I’m always willing to let other people do tedious work for me. Later, I put in my medications in the system. Then a couple weeks after that, I got an email from Noah, requesting that I put the list of medical providers in the database.

I go to into the system, and sure enough, the provider list is no longer there. Stuff happens, no big deal. I try to re-enter the list of doctors. No luck.

I call Noah, and that rep can’t enter the information either. This guy tells me he’ll have someone call me when it’s fixed, probably later that day. A week and a half later, I finally get the message. I STILL need to enter that info.

Oh, and I have chores involving Social Security, Medicare, my current insurance company, my credit union (for automatic deposit), and a bunch of other things. If I were RETIRED, I’d have time for all this.

Another rant, related only in that I wanted a working DVD player for retirement. I ordered one online in March. We put in a disc, which plays great. But it doesn’t eject, yet the screen says the slot is empty. After too much of a back-and-forth, I’m STILL waiting for a box to ship it back to get repaired.

All of this is an exhausting process. What will I do when I finally DO retire? All the things I’ve postponed the past month to do “later.”

The lasting trauma of war

avoiding protracted war in the first place

Normandy landing I never saw the movie Saving Private Ryan. Didn’t think seeing the apparently realistic depiction of hundreds of soldiers being shot during the D-Day action at Normandy was something I wanted to experience.

Even 75 years after D-Day, we’re still learning about the campaign. Classified maps and documents reveal the careful planning that went into the invasion, “as Allied commanders orchestrated how to begin liberating Europe from Nazi tyranny.”

Not incidentally, today, members of the Albany (NY HS) Marching Falcons marched along Omaha Beach from Vierville-sur-Mer to St. Laurent-sur-Mer, two towns liberated during the Normandy invasion by American and Allied forces. They’ll also participate in the wreath-laying ceremony at the Normandy American cemetery.

Most World War II veterans didn’t talk about the war, at least not in their twenties or thirties or forties or fifties. But as they got older, some of them were willing to share their stories, no matter how gruesome and devastating. The storytelling is more important than ever. Out of 16 million US veterans of WWII, fewer than a half million were still alive in 2018, with about 348 dying each day.

Meanwhile, for our more recent veterans, Civilians Are Blind To The Lasting Trauma Of War. “Shortly before Memorial Day weekend, the U.S. Army posed a broad question to veterans, prodding them to talk about how serving America ‘impacted’ their lives. [They]…offered a stream of stories that comprise a very different picture [than expected]: suicide, depression, PTSD, poverty, drug addiction, living with physical disabilities and a sense of abandonment from the Army itself.”

There are ways that folks can give back to veterans. The harder task would be finding Ways You Can Support a Veteran Living With PTSD. Veterans have a suicide rate 50% higher than the general population.

“In recent decades, we’ve seen a widening experiential divide between civilians and soldiers in American life. The U.S. has one of the largest all-volunteer armies in the world, and while that may sound good on paper, it’s really not.

“Volunteerism means that military service is vulnerable to stratification by class and race.” Those distinctions, of course, also existed during the draft for the Vietnam war, but the broader point remains true.

“Addressing war’s lasting trauma — and avoiding protracted war in the first place — should be a defining issue in politics right now.”

James Holzhauer didn’t “throw” JEOPARDY! game

J-Archive wagering calculator says he did it right

To no one’s surprise, I was happy to see Emma Boettcher, a user experience librarian from Chicago, Illinois beat James Holzhauer, a professional sports gambler from Las Vegas, Nevada (whose 32-day cash winnings total $2,462,216) Monday on JEOPARDY! If you want to see that game, watch it here, only through June 7, 2019.

I am bemused by all these recent fans who decided that he “threw” the game because he was homesick or tired of playing. Some thought his style was “blah”, but that was a function, I think, of good competitors, including Jay Sexton, a senior research engineer from Atlanta, Georgia.

James hit the Daily Double on the first clue, thus was unable to forge a large enough lead at the end of the first round. Then, in the Double JEOPARDY! round, Emma, not James, hit the first Daily Double, bet it all, and took control. She also hit the second Daily Double, won $3000, and never relinquished her lead.

Was he tired? Maybe. But it would have been the first game of the week – they generally tape five shows in one day.

James explains his Final JEOPARDY! wager. If you go to the J-Archive wagering calculator, here are the recommendations:
James: “Try wagering $1,399, which is as much as you can put up against Emma without being usurped by a doubled score on the part of Jay.”
Emma: “Wager $20,201 to cover James.”
And that’s exactly what each of them did. James wagered based on what his score was in the game. He knew he would lose if she got it right so he bet small in case they both got it wrong and Jay got it right.

Usually James had an insurmountable lead in a game, which allowed his massive bets. Still, James’ Coryat score, his score if all wagering is disregarded, was $23,400, with 25 right, and 0 wrong answers. Emma’s was $18,800 (21-0), and Jay’s was $11,000 (13-1).

I am disappointed that the CBS Evening News did a spoiler, as did other outlets. But it’s hard to keep a secret for something that happened in March with 250 people present.

in any case, James Holzhauer will be back for the Tournament of Champions in November.

Addendum from friend Carol:

A man asked me about my vitiligo

an acquired depigmentation disorder

I got vitiligo about 15 years ago, as I first talked about here, then here and here, and most recently, here.

It is “an acquired depigmentation disorder, manifests as white macules on the skin and can cause significant psychological stress and stigmatization… [and] affects about 1% of people worldwide.”

What prompted my revisiting the topic was that a gentleman asked me about it a couple of months ago while we were waiting in a bus stop. He said, “Excuse me, but do you have that skin thing?” “Vitiligo.” “Yeah, that’s it.” This happens two or three times a year, in conversations with people I did not know. It doesn’t bother me.

He was a black man, roughly my age, discussing his son who is in his thirties. He said that it really messed up his son’s head. And, as one sometimes does with a total stranger, I acknowledged that it did a number on me for a while.

Specifically, I’m still not all that great at looking at photographs of me from five or ten years ago. I was so cautious about staying out of the sun, that whatever melanin I had in my face seemed to have gone away altogether.

I look specifically at group shots that included me, and I cannot identify myself except that, well, that’s where I usually stand. In a black-and-white photo in my church newsletter from probably a half dozen years ago, there’s a guy wearing African garb, talking with his hands in the Rose Room of my church. I recognize the clothes but not the fellow wearing them.

Pretty much as a direct result of that specific photo, I became somewhat bolder in getting sunlight. I still avoid long exposure and use sunscreen. OK, I’m not as good with that on days that are cold and overcast as I should be.

So I related heavily to this man’s son’s trauma. In my experience, while white folks also have vitiligo, black folks seem more weirded out. In retrospect, it messed with my psyche far more than I admitted, even to myself, at the time. It was OK for me to look older and grayer and heavier, but this was different. I probably should have seen a shrink.

I have this thrill seeing models in Glamour magazine with vitiligo. In some TV ads, the first image was a young woman with the condition and, implicitly, she was seen as beautiful. In ways you root for people that are on “our team”, this made me happier than I could have imagined.

For ABC Wednesday