30-Day Challenge: Day 20 – A 10+ Year Old Picture

Hard to believe he’s been gone 30 years this summer.


The instruction was to provide an older picture; nothing stated suggests who or what should be the subject. Since my sister Leslie sent me these pictures, along with some of my father, I thought I’d show these.

This is my grandfather, McKinley Green, who I wrote about a few times early in my blogging, here and here and here.

The particulars are lost to me so far, but apparently, McKinley, or Pop as almost called him (the others called him Mac), was my father’s stepfather. He’s not in the picture in the 1930 Census; I’ve seen the records. Yet, my father’s birth certificate, dated 1944, when my father was 18, lists Pop as my father’s father. There was a clear clerical error, however. In the section that lists the age of the parents at the time of my father’s birth, my grandmother’s info is correct, but Mac’s info listed his age in 1944, not my father’s birth year of 1926.

As noted, my grandfather loved going to the track, both for the cars and the horses. Our thing was playing gin rummy, and we played a LOT, especially on Sunday afternoons while watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. And when he was looking for a card, he would often say, “Be there, finakis!” I have no idea what that meant.

Hard to believe he’s been gone 30 years this summer.
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Oh, the baby in the picture above is my eldest niece Becky, my sister Leslie’s daughter.

Joy and Happiness QUESTIONS

I don’t know that Mother Teresa was happy living in squalor.


I was intrigued by a study mentioned here that suggests that people believe they would be happy if they only had 20% more money. Didn’t matter what their status: 20% seemed to be the most popular number.

At least until one gets to a point like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, when they actually not only start giving away their money, they encourage/cajole other billionaires to do the same.

So money, presumably, can make you happy. But does it bring you joy? I distinguish the two; to me, happiness is a more temporal thing. Joy is a state of being rather than a fleeting emotion. Weather with a high of 71F, with low humidity, makes me happy; looking forward to tomorrow – not a specific tomorrow – but almost every tomorrow, brings me joy.

A particular song can make me happy, but music brings me joy, listening to it, singing it. The Mets winning the National League East would make me happy (ain’t happening THIS year); baseball, the intricacies of the sport, brings me joy. Sharing information definitely brings me joy.

I don’t know that Mother Teresa was happy living in squalor, but evidently, it brought her joy in helping others. I think Gates and Buffett are experiencing joy giving away their money. I’ve read somewhere that, as a percentage of income, it is not the rich who are most generous donating to charities, it is those of the middle and lower economic levels who are more likely to help others. So the joy of helping others seems to trump the happiness of self, in some people, I gather.

People can take joy in God or money or family or nature or sex or Xbox, I reckon.

What makes you happy? What brings you joy?

Happy by the Rolling Stones
Being in love can make you happy.
Joy by Lucinda Williams
Losing one’s joy can be devastating

30-Day Challenge: Day 19 – Something That Made You Smile Today

“Good stuff. this is why i love reading blogs other than my full time career as a dentist.”


Spam can be a real PITA, as I know Rose and SamuraiFrog have written about recently. Even with comment moderation and/or the Akismet filter, I probably spend a couple of hours per week scanning my various blogs; among other things, I have to make sure that items in the spam folder are actually spam, as I have found legitimate comments there, usually from people in Asia, for some reason.

Still, when the day (or the week) is beating me up, when REAL comments are getting under my skin – not on this blog, but elsewhere – I have found some spam unintentionally hilarious. And where else can you receive such unfettered confirmation?

Review of the movie Salt: “A thoughtful opinion and ideas I will use on my website. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time on this. Thank you!”
A recent picture of me: “This is all very new to me and this article actually opened my eyes.Thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.” (That’s what my wisdom is for!)
Animal adjectives: “I am without a doubt thankful to you for providing us with this invaluable files. My spouse and I are in truth grateful, absolutely the material we needed.” (Why you and your wife would need a list of animal adjectives is beyond me, but I don’t judge.)
Animal adjectives: “Actually actually very good weblog publish which has received me considering. I by no means looked at this out of your stage of look at.”
Hiroshima: “I knew I was correct. My friend and I placed a bet about which web site was superior. I thought your webpage was much much better produced, but she believed this post on trendy style ideas was much much better. We rounded up 5 loved ones memebers who experienced not seen possibly web site prior to to study them every a lot more than. Majority chose your site. Thanks for maintaing an excellent website.” (I so hate to be the cause of strife with your friend.)
My favorite outfit : “I actually decided to produce a simple video about this, I would be pleased if you would possibly take a moment to look at it and perhaps leave a message about what you think, I left the video url in the “website” field, hopefully you can access it, thank you a lot.” (I am SO flattered, my red sneakers are flattered…)
Current grades: “Good stuff. this is why i love reading blogs other than my full time career as a dentist.” (Dentistry and blog reading go together like…)
My childhood picture: “Thank you for this lovely post, even if it took quite a long time to complete reading. (English is not my native tongue) May I ask where you got your sources from? Thank you!” (My source is my mother, thank you.)
Animal adjectives: “I hope you would not mind if I put up a part of this site on my univeristy blog?” (You go ahead and do that.)

Spam is unfortunately a part of Internet life. I’m trying to make the best of it, and when I can, laughter is my chosen tactic.

MOVIE REVIEW: Charlie St. Cloud

I’m willing to believe almost any near-death experience, but seriously hope that they don’t drag on like this.


Based on a positive review in the local paper by Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wife and I decided to go to see the new movie Charlie St. Cloud at the Madison Theatre, in walking distance of our house, last week. Right before we left, I discovered that LaSalle’s opinion was the minority one among critics. Still, I wanted to give the movie a chance. Also, I had never seen Zac Efron, star of the High School Musical series, in any film.

Here are the good things: the movie STARTS with the big race. Efron shows signs of being a charismatic actor. And the Canadian Southwest, standing in for the American Northwest, is kind of pretty, as is Efron.

Here are the not-so-good things: if you saw the trailer, or even know the title of the 2004 source material, you pretty much know everything there is to know about this movie. Yet, at 1:47, it seems to run interminably long. I think that the basic premise, finding a way to move on after tragedy, is a good, solid lesson. And if this were a 1:30 Lifetime movie, including commercials, it might even have been more worthwhile.

It also has a reverse Sixth Sense feel, which some critics found objectionable but I did not; I’m willing to believe almost any near-death experience, but seriously hope that they don’t drag on like this. Though predictable, I enjoyed the penultimate scene and Ray Liotta as the wise man.

This may play better with the target demographic, though this $44 million film released on July 30 is not close to making back its production costs, as of this writing.

Some day, in a few years, you may be flipping through the channels on your TV and come across Charlie St. Cloud. You’ll probably watch it for a while before pulling out the remote. It’s that kind of movie; not truly awful, just a bit bland.
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I was sorry to see how poorly Scott Pilgrim did at the box office, despite mostly solid reviews. Makes me want to go see it even more before it totally disappears from the cinemas.

30-Day Challenge: Day 18 – Favorite Board Game


I have always loved board games. I used to play them all the time. As a kid, my favorite game was SCRABBLE, which I used to play with my great aunt, and from time to time as an adult, usually with my in-laws.

With children, I love to play SORRY. As Jaquandor explained, this is a game that by the time a kid is 4 to 6, can play an adult straight up.

I found this out when I used to play with my late friend Nancy’s son Jeff when he was about 6 in 1978 or 1979; I would not give him an advantage and he’d beat me almost half the time. Likewise, my daughter is very good at it. In fact, we often play with her stuffed animals as surrogates as well, with each of us essentially playing two colors, and she’ll often come in first and second, or at least first and third.

I’m quite fond of Monopoly. I could tell you what the purchase price and basic rent for every property on the board; unfortunately, it’s a game that really requires multiple players, and that has not been the situation I’ve found myself in of late. For our wedding, we received an Albany-based Monopoly set that I’m pretty sure we’ve never used.

I went through a phase of playing a lot of Trivial Pursuit in the 1980s and 1990s, but some people didn’t like the fact that I won too often – it’s a curse – and I probably haven’t played this century.

The game I play most often at this point is backgammon. It’s a game I learned at a bar appropriately called Bacchus in my college town of New Paltz, NY from my friend Anne. Then I didn’t play for a long time. Now I play my friend Mary at work at least twice a month at lunchtime. It’s a fairly easy game to play, though it takes a little while to ascertain the best strategy. The board often shows up on the back of checkerboards, and the game is available online, so one can hone one’s skills.

Ramblin' with Roger
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