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My first television interview caused a scandal

When I was five years old, I appeared on a local (Binghamton, NY) kids’ TV show.

Regarding the wake/funeral I was telling you about recently:

My friend Karen was the youngest of four children. I knew her youngest sibling, who was four years our senior, but the others, who were six and eight years older, not so well.

I get to the wake and decide to reintroduce myself to one of her sisters, at which point she says, “I remember YOU” and launches into this story.

When I was five years old, I appeared on a local (Binghamton, NY) kids’ TV show hosted by a guy named Bill Parker, who was portraying a cowboy or space captain or police officer; he played them all, at some point for Channel 12, WNBF-TV (now WBNG). And I guess I had mentioned this at school because all my friends were watching the live show.

Parker asked at some point what really made me really mad. I said, “When Karen Durkot snaps my suspenders!” At which point, the Durkot household received a boatload of telephone calls. “Did you hear what Roger Green just said on TV about Karen?”

And when Karen’s sister is introduced to my wife a short time after I spoke to her, she tells her this story, almost verbatim.

Here’s the kicker: I have zero recollection of this incident. I was on Parker’s shows, definitely TV Ranch Club, and probably Len Hathaway’s Admiral Appleby show two or three times, probably a function of the fact that my grandfather, McKinley Green, was a janitor at the TV/radio station. And I don’t specifically remember ever wearing suspenders.

So when I tell Karen that I don’t recall this incident, she mockingly notes my multiple appearances on television – “media maven” – as the reason for letting this piece of HER family lore slip from my memory.

P@SSW0RDz

There’s this story about guy who spent $30 on gasoline yet was charged over $84,000 on his credit card. And there are conflicting stories from the gas station and the credit card company as to whether the gas station was paid; the credit card company says yes, and that they need to return the money; the gas station says no, it wasn’t. It’s unclear how this debacle began. Regardless, this guy is majorly jammed up. His paycheck gets deposited automatically into his bank, but he can’t access the money, because the amount was applied towards the $84,000 he “owes.”

This reminds me why sometimes I feel like putting my money under my mattress. Instead, I have a number of bills automatically withdrawn from my checking account, optimally correctly. It seems to me that when something as much of an outlier as a high five-digit purchase that is not the norm would have generated a call to the cardholder. I have in fact gotten such calls; sometimes, it is a legitimate purchase I made while out of time, but occasionally, it was a fraudulent transaction.

Speaking of fraud, I got no fewer than three notices Friday, the 13th, plus another the next day, from Amazon, Twitter, and Yahoo1, and LinkedIn. The Amazon e-mail is fairly representative:
“At Amazon we take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email address and password sets posted online. While the list was not Amazon-related, we know that many customers reuse their passwords on several websites. We believe your email address and password set was on that list. So we have taken the precaution of resetting your Amazon.com password. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but felt that it was necessary to help protect you and your Amazon account.”

What a pain. I have had trouble with keeping track of passwords since forever. At work, I have to change my password every seven weeks. Obviously, I know all the “do nots” of password use. But apparently, some folks in an organization I’m affiliated with do not, because I got this e-mail, coincidentally also last Friday:

“There seems to be some confusion about the reason for password protection on a computer.

“I understand a password to secure the computer from unauthorized use. This would include, for example, unauthorized access to our database. Such access could be t make changes, or gather personal information about our members.

“Thus, writing the password on a piece of paper and displaying it clearly near the keyboard, even if under another piece of paper, would seem to be contrary to the reason for a password.”

Of course, the letter writer is correct. But I have no fewer than two dozen user/password combinations, and I’ve been locked out of databases for excessive tries. So using the same combo or writing the combos down seem, in the moment, to be attractive options. At least until something goes wrong.

Amy wants me to write about health care

 

Amy of Sharp Little Pencil, who, like me, grew up in Broome County, NY, writes:

So Roger, do a piece on health care if you haven’t already, please. My post cited numerous reasons why Americans DON’T want it (as George Harrison would sing, “I, Me, Mine,” also the fear struck in their hearts. Could not believe how many FOX talking points turned up on my blog!! Let me hear about it soon! Love your blog and you, Rog. Peace, Amy

Here’s the problem, Amy. I don’t know how to speak of it in any better terms than others have. From what I could learn more in this article, the fact that catastrophic illness and injury has contributed to most personal bankruptcies. The fact that preventative care will lower costs over time and provide a healthier population to boot. The fact that a larger pool of consumers, historically, has lowered the costs of goods and services. But these anyone can tout.

For me, though, it’s always been about that same Harrison song you quote. And I have told the story before, back in 2009, but I’ll tell it again.

Two days before I was going to graduate school, for the first time, in 1979, that disastrous foray into the School of Public Administration at UAlbany, I was at a friend’s house and somehow got an infection under my toenail. You have NO idea how much this hurt. We are talking root canal level of pain, and I’ve had a root canal.

I had no health insurance, for I had, I would have gone to a doctor. Or probably the emergency room, because, now that I think of it, I didn’t HAVE a doctor, because I didn’t have insurance, so I didn’t see the point of having a doctor. But I WOULD have insurance in a couple of days. So I hobbled through college registration, feeling worse by the minute; if I had had a walker or wheelchair, or pain medication stronger than Tylenol, or whiskey, I would have used it. Only then did I go to the college infirmary.

By this point, the infection was going up my leg; if it had reached my heart, I almost certainly would have DIED, at the age of 26. And that would be a REALLY embarrassing thing to put in an obit; “died of a toe infection.” As it was, I spent the next six days – the first six days of the semester – in bed.

So NOT having insurance altered my behavior that might well have been fatal. I’m sure that if this is true of me, it’s true of millions of others who go untreated for illnesses and injuries until it’s a crisis. Yeah, I think health care is a right, not a privilege. Yeah, my own narrative has colored my outlook about this, but is that not usually the case?

I’ve been painfully aware of every MINUTE I’ve been uninsured since, from November 1988, when I left FantaCo, to March 1989, when I got covered by Blue Cross; from April to September 1990, after I left Blue Cross, before I went to library school; and from May to October 1992, the period between library school and my current job. I was always aware that any accident or sustained illness would do me in financially. You KNOW stress is a contributing factor to poor health, and I was stressed a lot in those uninsured periods.

I don’t understand the opposition to the new healthcare law using terms like “freedom.” Being uninsured is more like a prison.

Oh, and I love you too, Amy. Gotta love someone who knows and loves pirogi!

A is for Adjectives and Adverbs

Native speakers of English “will use the rules without realising they’re doing so while [non-native speakers] will be much more aware of the rules.”

From JEOPARDY! Show #6302 – Tuesday, January 31, 2012 ADVERBS:

It’s the way the crew of the Enterprise “go where no man has gone before”
Though it appears to mean “angrily”, this adverb can mean “extremely”, as when it precedes “in love”
Yea, in truth, really, this archaic 6-letter word doth mean indeed
Othello said, “Then must you speak of one that loved not” this “but too well”
Completes the Tom swifty “Which way is the cemetery?” Tom asked in this serious manner

As always, correct responses at the end of this post.

Some months ago Shooting Parrots was talking about his daughter, who is learning about Teaching English as a Foreign Language, when he wrote: “Until she mentioned it, it never occurred to me that there is a natural order of adjectives.” And I didn’t either. So I ran to my wife, who is a teacher of English as a Second Language. “Did you know about this?” “Of course, I do.”

So why didn’t I? SP explains that native speakers of English “will use the rules without realising they’re doing so while [non-native speakers] will be much more aware of the rules.”
And what ARE the order rules? From HERE:

Opinion – An opinion adjective explains what you think about something (other people may not agree with you).
For example: silly, beautiful, horrible, difficult
Size – A size adjective, of course, tells you how big or small something is.
For example: large, tiny, enormous, little
Age – An age adjective tells you how young or old something or someone is.
For example: ancient, new, young, old
Shape – A shape adjective describes the shape of something.
For example: square, round, flat, rectangular
Colour – A colour adjective, of course, describes the colour of something.
For example: blue, pink, reddish, grey
Origin – An origin adjective describes where something comes from.
For example: French, lunar, American, eastern, Greek
Material – A material adjective describes what something is made from.
For example: wooden, metal, cotton, paper
Purpose – A purpose adjective describes what something is used for. These adjectives often end with “-ing”.
For example: sleeping (as in “sleeping bag”), roasting (as in “roasting tin”)

But the Wikipedia begs to differ, somewhat:

quantity or number
quality or opinion
size
age
shape
color
proper adjective (often nationality, other places of origin, or material)
purpose or qualifier

Surely, quantity must come first, as in Five Easy Pieces.

There are also rules for forming comparative and superlative adjectives. One-syllable adjectives generally add -er or -est. “For adjectives with three syllables or more, you form the comparative with more and the superlative with most.” The adjectives with two syllables are…complicated.

Adverbs are words that modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. There is a lot to say about adverbs, but my favorite is this: “One of the hallmarks of adverbs is their ability to move around in a sentence. Adverbs of manner are particularly flexible in this regard.” Here is a list of adverbs; note that they DON’T all end in -ly.

JEOPARDY! responses (respectively): boldly, madly, verily, wisely, gravely

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

How Did I Become in Charge?

If you would like to contribute to ABC Wednesday, please feel free.

I have mentioned before the Olin family, my mother-in-law’s people, who can trace their roots back to the late 17th century. Every year, there are several Olin family reunions, in eastern Washington state; Ashtabula, Ohio; Southern California; Ontario, generally near Peterborough; and the New York/Pennsylvania group, held near Binghamton, NY most years since 1936. I’ve been the vice-president of the NY-PA reunion the last couple of years, making me only the second Olin in-law in about 40 years to become an officer.

Well, guess who was elected president this month? I’ll give you a hint: he blogs a lot. My mission will be to try to reach out to some folks who haven’t attended lately, extending invitations to other reunion groups.

Around the same time, Denise Nesbitt, who had started something called ABC Wednesday, in which I’ve been participating for nearly three years, was feeling a bit burnt out. Though she has had a trusted assistant (moi), and a number of other contributors, she was feeling a bit tired of coordinating the contributors, putting on the link so that everyone’s links are shared, and making sure the participants follow the simple rules of engagement. So guess who’s now in charge of ABC Wednesday, Round 11? That guy I saw in the mirror this morning. Not incidentally, we will be starting again this week with the letter A, so if you would like to contribute, please feel free; you are most welcome. Make sure your post has something to do with the letter A, link to ABC Wednesday, and, I hope, go visit a few of the sites of fellow abecedarian folks.

Why do I feel like Alexander Haig in March 1981?

Fortunately, in each case, I have a group of folks who have promised to help me through the processes, which I will most definitely need.

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