A Rainy Day

It rained all day yesterday, utterly flooding our backyard. None of us even got dressed. Three sick people muddling through. I sneezed constantly, and for some reason, it really hurt my left ear.

So:
I watched the Oscars. The whole thing. The best line was by Tilda Swinton about George Clooney’s Batman costume.
I listened to lots of music (Chess blues, Pete Droge, James Taylor).
I read about a dozen books and played catch with my daughter, who had left day care early Friday with a 101.2F fever.
I ate leftover birthday carrot cake. The birthday was pretty OK. Strangely, a highlight Friday involved visiting my sick friend, who will forever be known as Cupcake, in the hospital; he’s recovering from esophageal cancer surgery he had on Monday.
I read old newspapers. For some reason, I fell behind a couple months ago and am constantly catching up. The funny thing is that the Times Union has pulled quotes from my blog on their page for The Best of Our Blogs two or three times, complete with my picture, most recently a piece on Daylight Saving Time, and I generally hear it from other people before I actually see it myself.
In fact, I feel that a week off would be great, so I can clean up by blogroll and do other maintenance. I had the time yesterday, but not the energy.

Real content soon. I hope.
***
Happy birthday, KD!

ROG

ROG

How Do You Know Me QUESTIONS

OK, since it’s my birthday week, I’d like you to tell me how well you know me. As added incentive, if you have a blog and post this quiz and let me know you’ve posted this quiz, I’ll do the same for you.

Where did we meet (can be electronically – if so, how did you come to this blog, and if applicable, how did I come to yours)?

Take a stab at my middle name.

Do I smoke?

Color of my eyes.

Do I have any siblings? If so, where am I in the birth order?

What’s one of my favorite things to do?

What’s my favorite type of music?

Am I shy or outgoing?

Am I a rebel or do I follow the rules?

Any special talents?

How many children do I have?

If you and I were stranded on a desert island, what is one thing that I would
bring?

AND for a bonus question, you can share any other factoid you deign to share, as long as it’s about me, and it’s truthful. Preferably not mean.

Also, how much of this do you think is actually true:

– March 7 –
You are kind hearted and very friendly. You love attention, and you are always daydreaming in your own world. People gravitate towards you. QuizGalaxy.com
Positive Traits:

intelligent, ethical, analytical, photographic memory, intuitive
Negative Traits:

overly introverted, eccentric, uncommunicative, selfishness, cynicism
‘What does your Birthdate mean?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

ROG

ROG

Double nickel

G-55. That’s G, as in Green, 55. I get to be a Bingo card call for five more years!

Every year, I take off my birthday from work. So as I wake from my Nyquil-induced fog, planning to start the day attending a daddy or grandfather/child breakfast at my daughter’s day care, I’m taking off my birthday from the blog, and will leave you with the usual thing:

In our local Hearst paper, they always run this poem in August on the anniversary of the death of some founder. I think my tradition will be that I will quote a section from one of my favorite books, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit by Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Canadian theologian who died in 1996. (Copyright 1994, published by The Crossroad Publishing Company.)

I share this passage about birthdays, not only for my sake, but, I hope, for yours as well:

Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory. Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you.” Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. 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.”
…
Celebrating a birthday reminds us of the goodness of life, and in this spirit we really need to celebrate people’s birthdays every day, by showing gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, gentleness, and affection. These are ways of saying: “It’s good that you are alive; it’s good that you are walking with me on this earth. Let’s be glad and rejoice. This is the day that God has made for us to be and to be together.”

ROG

ROG

Not boring

The only thing that sucks more than being sick is being sick around my birthday. I seem to have what half of everyone I know seems to be suffering with. My wife’s been ill, too, and she took an illness-related fall on Tuesday that meant seven (count ’em, 7) hours in the ER; I went with her, and the event involved a number of brief flurries of action, followed by huge periods of waiting.

On the potential upside this week, one of my oldest friends, Karen, who I’ve known for 50 YEARS!, and whose birthday, not so incidentally, is March 9, sent me this Susan Miller astrology chart:

“It’s rare to have Uranus so close to the Sun and moon, and if you were born on March 7 or within five days of this date, [such as Gordon, whose birthday is today] this new moon will help you advance your hopes and wishes in a big way. This will not be a boring month, by anyone’s estimation!

A new moon will coincide with one’s birthday only very rarely – it could be decades until this happens again – so the coming 12 months should be VERY memorable, filled with fresh starts. If you were born on or near the new moon, March 7, you more than other Pisces will feel the full effects and benefits that are about to flow forward.

The best part of this is that the new moon will be in elegant angle to Jupiter, the Great Benefactor planet, now in your solar 1st house of your personality, identity, and all dreams and desires important to you. The 1st house is the engine that drives the whole chart!”

I suppose I should note that March 7 is MY birthday. While I’m not a big believer in astrology, I don’t dismiss it outright either. Anyway, I love that “the new moon will be in elegant angle to Jupiter”; I have no idea what that means, but it sounds purty.

ROG

ROG

Joe Stalin and Elvis Presley


March 5, 1953: Joseph (or Josef) Stalin died four days after what was considered to be a stroke, at the age of 74. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage… It has been suggested that Stalin was assassinated…In 2003, a joint group of Russian and American historians announced their view that Stalin ingested warfarin, a powerful rat poison that inhibits coagulation of the blood and so predisposes the victim to hemorrhagic stroke (cerebral hemorrhage). Since it is flavorless, warfarin is a plausible weapon of murder. The facts surrounding Stalin’s death will probably never be known with certainty.
(For a long time, I used to wonder about the correlation between Stalin’s death and my birth, two days later.)


March 5, 1965: A milestone in Elvis’ personal life. While driving to Los Angeles to begin work on his latest film, the singer tells Larry Geller that he feels their recent religious studies haven’t produced a bonafide religious “experience.” Not long after, Elvis pulls over and runs into the middle of the desert when he sees a cloud formation that looks like Russian dictator Josef Stalin.
As he watches, it turns into a face Elvis interprets as that of Jesus Christ. As Geller recalls it in Peter Guralnick’s acclaimed book Careless Love:
“It’s God!” Elvis cried. “It’s God!” Tears streamed down his face as he hugged me tightly and said, “…I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You got me here. I’ll never forget, never, man. It really happened. I saw the face of Stalin and I thought to myself, Why Stalin? Is it a projection of something that’s inside of me? Is God trying to show me what he thinks of me? And then it happened! The face of Stalin turned right into the face of Jesus, and he smiled at me, and every fiber of my being felt it… Oh, God. Oh, God,” Elvis kept saying. Then he paused and added a peculiar aside. “Can you imagine what the fans would think if they saw me like this?”
“They’d only love you all the more,” Geller said.
“Yeah,” he said, “Well, I hope that’s true.”
Visibly shaken, he resumes the trip, although most of the Memphis Mafia are skeptical about the validity of this “sign.”

There’s probably something pithy to say, but I don’t know what.

***
You may have seen this, but Pete Seeger slammed Joe Stalin last year.

ROG

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial