Ramblin' with Roger

The last time I saw Gladys Crowder

1940-2023

The last time I saw Gladys Crowder (12 Dec 1940-31 May 2023) was at St. Peter’s Hospital about six weeks ago. I had not seen her in a long while, partly due to a series of ailments she had been experiencing. She was a bit groggy as she was talking to her husband, Tim. She did this double-take when she spotted me in the doorway; it was great.

When my father was dying in 2000 – though I didn’t know that until the day before he passed – his doctor said that the body could only stand so many “insults” – that’s the word he used. Gladys had suffered several “insults” in the past several months.

Two days before she died, I had a lengthy conversation with someone about her. It has proven to be very helpful. And yet, even though I knew the day was coming, I was gutted by the news. It’s cliche that knowing the trajectory doesn’t make it easier to accept.

After I heard the news of Gladys’ passing, I called her sister Grace. She instructed me to tell her funny stories about Gladys. But not yet. In nearly four decades, with stints in two different church choirs together and other shared histories, I should be able to come up with something in due time.

These pictures were taken in February 1986 at 224 Ontario Street in Albany, NY. No, I didn’t remember this. I labeled the back of the photos, and I probably took them with a disposable camera.

These people turn 70 in June

Northern Exposure

As part of my continual celebration of 1953, these people turn 70 in June 2023, or in one case, would have. I’m omitting a couple of musicians, who I will note separately.

Diana Canova (1st) played Corinne on the comedy series Soap, one of my favorite characters. This is how she got the part.

Cornel West (2nd) is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary. He has written 20 books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. For a time, the outspoken philosopher was nearly ubiquitous, appearing in everything from the Matrix movies to documentaries and talk shows.

Kathleen Kennedy (5th) is the head of Lucasfilm. The first film she produced was E.T. She “has participated in making over 60 films that have earned over $11 billion worldwide, including five of the fifty highest-grossing films in motion picture history.”

John Edwards (10th) was a one-term US Senator from North Carolina who ran for President in 2004 and 2008. He was on the ticket with John Kerry in 2004 when W/Cheney soundly defeated them. In November 2004, his wife Elizabeth announced she was being treated for breast cancer; she died in December 2010. Rumors of John Edwards’ affair with a former campaign worker began in October 2007. He admitted the affair in August 2008 and acknowledged fathering her child in January 2010.

To infinity…and beyond!

Tim Allen (13th) starred in the sitcom Home Improvement (1991-1999), which I seldom watched, and Last Man Standing (2011-2021), which I never saw. But he was the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the four Toy Story films, all of which I saw.

Xi Jinping (15th) has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012 and president of the People’s Republic of China since 2013. He is considered the strongest Chinese leader since Mao. You might want to check out the articles about him in The Guardian.

Valerie Mahaffey (16th) I know best from two television series. One was the underrated sitcom The Powers That Be, created by Norman Lear. She played Caitlyn, the daughter of US Senator William Powers (John Forsythe) and his wife Margaret (Holland Taylor). Caitlyn is unhappily married to Congressman Theodore Van Horne (David Hyde Pierce). The other series was Northern Exposure, where she played the hypochondriac and very wealthy Eve in five episodes; Mahaffey won an Emmy for the role.

Benazir Bhutto (21st) was Pakistan’s 11th and 13th prime minister (1988-1990, 1993-1996). “She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country.” She was assassinated in 2007 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber. Her legacy is mixed; this assessment seems pretty fair.

May rambling: potential dangers

Demographic Profiles for the New York Counties

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on the potential dangers of social media for children, highlighting its negative impact on mental health and overall well-being.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been fined a record $1.3B by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for violating EU privacy regulations and was ordered to stop transferring user data to US servers.

The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses”

Imagine a Renters’ Utopia. It Might Look Like Vienna

Demographic Profiles for the New York Counties from the Cornell Program on Applied Demographics. Highlights: The median age in New York State was 39.0 in 2020, up 1 year from 2010 (38.0). Between 2010 and 2020, the median age in New York State rose 1.3 years for men (36.3 to 37.6) and 1.0 years for women (39.4 to 40.4).

Visualized: The Decline of Affordable Housing in the U.S.

Andy Warhol Ruling Limits Fair Use for Copyrighted Images, With Far-Reaching Hollywood Implications

These words made it into the African American English Dictionary

At 81, Martha Stewart is the oldest person to be featured in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue

Unprepared Republicans Are Flooding Into the Presidential Race

Life and Death

Wait But Why: 10 Thoughts From the Fourth Trimester

Re: Hank Green’s Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Diagnosis: his announcement; his brother John’s response, Hank’s Press Tier List

Tina Turner by THR, the New York Times, Gloria Reuben, Variety, CBS Sunday Morning profile (2018)

Kareem: Jim Brown and me.

JC Glindmyer of Earthworld Comics in Albany died on May 8 at 65. I had just seen him at Free Comic Book Day on May 6. He was always good to me. Here’s a 2004 profile by Alan David Doane

You can preorder J. Eric Smith’s new book Ubulembu and Other Stories

Ed Ames, Singer and ‘Daniel Boone’ Sidekick, Dies at 95

CBS and Fox Share 2022-23 Ratings Title as On-Air Viewing Continues to Slip

The State of Video Streaming in 2023:

Notes from North of the Border: A Travelogue

Badge #1305, from a . Ford Motor Company radiator manufacturing plant

Thoughts on Grease at 45

Behold the Ritual Clearing of the Tabs

Now I Know: The Convict Who Pulled an Inside Job and Mr. Never Shower and The Cleaner Who Accidentally Became a Russian Mayor and The Fake Town That Became Real (Briefly) and The Worst Way to Target a Lower Stock Price?

MUSIC

Coverville 1442: Adele Cover Story and Coverville 1443: The Paul Weller (The Jam & Style Council) Cover Story and Coverville 1444: The Tina Turner Tribute

We Don’t Need Another HeroWe Don’t Need Another Hero – Tina Turner

Sentimental Me – Ames Brothers

Try To Remember (from “The Fantasticks”) – Ed Ames

The Stable Song by Gregory Alan Isakoff.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban, and the current casts of Hamilton and Sweeney Todd get together outside the Richard Rodgers Theater on W. 46th Street in New York to merge their musicals

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2

The Best TV Theme Songs of the Past 25 Years

Mtzyri – Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov,

DISNEY PRINCESS CELL BLOCK TANGO, a Disney princess parody

The Music Man excerpt in Japanese

Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna – Franz von Suppe

Rent a car in western France et al.

SNCF

My friend Deborah negotiated to rent a car in western France for us, including me emailing my wife’s driver’s license so she could show the dealer. I tried to secure the vehicle myself, but the webpage was terrible. Among other things, it kept slipping back to French, even though it had an English-language option.

Finding a vehicle with an automatic transmission was a challenge. Also, it was fairly expensive compared with US rates.

The downpayment for the trip we gave to AAA to give to Avanti was paid on January 21. I guess we’re really doing this. We booked another hotel for the night after the wedding, and all the accommodations were set.

My wife in the US had never met my friend Deborah. One of the lovely things about technology is that they got to at least see each other on Facebook. They seem to hit it off.

The train

The one unsettled element involves buying train tickets. We’ve discovered that Avanti won’t order them until they have our valid passports.

Our passports expired in August 2020. We didn’t rush to get them renewed since we weren’t planning to go anywhere during COVID. I decided to get mine and received it in March of 2022.

My wife mailed her application on January 8, 2023, which was supposed to arrive at the processor on January 10. (We found out later that it wasn’t delivered until January 17.)

On February 5, Deborah frantically called my cell phone. We were waiting in line at an Indian food buffet. For reasons I didn’t understand, everyone within range of me could hear her, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

She checked with the train service and adjudged that there would be NO train tickets if we did not buy them immediately. The next day, she wrote: “Big problem. I went to the train station today to find out why there are no trains showing for the 18th from Paris to Auray and no trains showing for the 20th from Auray to Paris, and it seems…the SNCF has cancelled all trains for those days to do work on the tracks. Right during the four-day holiday weekend, the Semaine du Golfe, etc.”

Technology

I attempted to navigate the website The Société nationale des chemins de fer français is France’s national state-owned railway company. But I was having a terrible time. I was on the site for 45 minutes, and as it kept switching back and forth from English to French, I was quite literally getting a headache.

Ultimately, Deborah bought us tickets. I gave her my credit card number, but it didn’t work. I sent her 375 Euros via PayPal, which was $422 US.

On March 20, my wife’s passport finally arrived, and I emailed the vital info to AAA. I wrote on April 5 to AAA: “Do we have train tickets?” They wrote back, but neither my wife nor I received it. Finally, on April 12, it was confirmed: train tickets to Auray and then back to Paris.

Deborah worked on getting me a refund for the tickets she bought, complicated by the wonky technology on the part of the SNCF website, which is totally believable.

Unrest

I could not have foreseen protests over French legislation that would increase the pension age to 64 from 62. President Macron said the measures are needed “to keep France internationally competitive amid declining fertility and an aging population.” The pushback started in January but intensified in March.

Alan Singer wrote in March: Macron “used a Parliamentary tactic to avoid an up or down vote on raising the retirement age.” He survived a vote of no confidence, which would have scuttled the bill and forced Macron’s cabinet, but not the French President, to resign.

More protests took place on May Day. “The pension overhaul was approved by the country’s Constitutional Council and officially signed into law, so while Mr. Macron will not find the issue easy to leave behind, there is little chance the protesters will be able to persuade him to reverse his decision.”

Talk about great timing.

Memorial Day: the cost of war

improving coping and problem-solving skills

Perusing a Wikipedia page, I was struck by the cost of war. “Note: ‘Deaths – other’ includes all non-combat deaths, including those from bombing, massacres, disease, suicide, and murder.”

Why I was looking at them is simple. Some people – OK, many people – conflate Memorial Day Day and Veterans Day.

“Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service. In observance of the holiday, many people visit cemeteries and memorials, and volunteers often place American flags on each grave site at national cemeteries. A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time.”

What? Nothing about the “unofficial start of summer”?

Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day. November 11th is a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

In all major American wars through World War I, more people died from “other” than from combat. An article in Military.com notes: “The chances of dying in combat in the Revolutionary War were roughly 1.8%. But “disease was a much deadlier enemy than the British troops… you still had a 4.5% chance of dying from dysentery, malaria, or smallpox.” And “a Great War-era soldier was almost as likely to perish due to trench foot or Spanish Flu as to a German bullet.”

Not painless

I wonder how many of these fighters died from suicide? An article in the Military Suicide Research Consortium notes: “During the final three years of World War II, the Army’s annual suicide rate didn’t budge above 10 soldiers per 100,000, and during the Korean War in the early 1950s, that annual pace remained at about 11 soldiers per 100,000, according to a study published in 1985 by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research…

“The Army’s suicide rate in 2001 was less than half that for all American males (18.2 per 100,000). Since then, the pace of self-harm among active Army troops has more than doubled…”

A 2021 paper from the Watson Institute of Brown University cites these startling statistics.

“Suicide rates among active military personnel and veterans of the post-9/11 wars are reaching new peaks… The study finds that at least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat, as an estimated 30,177 have died by suicide as compared with the 7,057 killed in post-9/11 war operations.” A 2022 report suggests nearly 17 vets commit suicide each day.

Help

A 2021 Fact Sheet from the White House outlines Five Priorities for Reducing Military and Veteran Suicide. One piece notes that “reducing the likelihood that an individual will experience a suicidal crisis requires addressing the factors—such as increased financial strain, lack of housing, food insecurity, unemployment, and legal issues—that may contribute to or increase the risk for suicide. Conversely, improving coping and problem-solving skills and supporting connectedness are protective factors that can decrease risk.”

Sending people off to war means doing all one can to prevent them from dying prematurely on the battlefield or when they get home.

I found a 2019 video memorial to U.S. soldiers killed in the War on Terror. It’s called The Cost Of War.

See also: Heroes, Monsters, and Boys at Omaha Beach on Medium