Ramblin' with Roger

The library asks, in three parts

Managing Chronic Illness

I have three library asks today for you folks in the Capital District of New York State.

Please join us for a meeting to discuss the future of the Tuesday Book Talks that have been taking place at noon at the Washington Avenue branch for many years. The conversation, taking place on MONDAY, MARCH 13 AT 5 PM at the WASHINGTON AVE AUDITORIUM will address questions about the venue, the time of day, and how to promote the events better. More details can be found here.

We’re looking for speakers for May and June. Those events WILL take place at the usual time noted above. We want authors to talk about their books, or speakers who wish to review other people’s books. Contact me at this post or by Facebook or email.

Upcoming talks

Feel free to promote these events on your social media.

March 7 | Author Talk | Frank S. Robinson, JD, discusses and reads from his book, The American Crisis: Chronicling and Confronting the Trump Shitstorm.

March 14 | Book Review | Milkweed Smithereens by Bernadette Mayer. Reviewer: Bob Sharkey, poet & member of the board, Hudson Valley Writers Guild.

March 21 | Book Review | Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum by Edward T. O’Donnell. Reviewer: Joseph Krausman, poet & long-time member of the Friends of APL.

March 28 | Book Review | African American Freedom Journey in New York and Related Sites, 1823-1870: Freedom Knows No Color by Harry Bradshaw Matthews. Reviewer: Roger Green, MLS, retired librarian, NY Small Business Development Center, & board member, FFAPL.

April 4 | Book Review | A Song Flung Up to Heaven by Maya Angelou. Reviewer: Donald “The Soul Man” Hyman, teacher, actor, singer, writer, TV host/producer, & veteran.

April 11 | A tribute to the late poet Charles Simic, who published over 60 books, won the Pulitzer Prize, & was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, by Gene Damm of FFAPL.

April 18 | Author Talk | Patricia A. Fennell, MSW, LCSW-R, scientist & clinician, discusses her book, Managing Chronic Illness Using the Four-Phase Treatment Approach: A Mental Health Professional’s Guide to Helping Chronically Ill People.

April 25 | Book Review | Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions, a graphic autobiography by Steve Martin & Cartoonist Harry Bliss. Reviewer: John Rowen, former president, Friends of APL.

Yes, that’s me in the March 28 slot. And yes, it’s the same presentation I gave at my church earlier this month.

While I’d like you to attend all of the talks, I will specifically plug my friend Patricia on April 18. And my buddy Donald on April 4 is always entertaining

Lydster: messages from my daughter

homework

Sometime between 2016 and 2020, my daughter gave me several strips of paper with messages on them. I rediscovered them when I was in the (lengthy) process of straightening my office.

They reminded me of a similar present I received from my friends for – I believe – my 16th birthday. I think they’re still in this house somewhere.

My daughter wrote:

We watch the news. I think the watching, but also conversing about both the stories and the coverage choices, helped inform her social conscience.

You help me leave for school. First, I made sure she was awake. I used to take her on the bus to preschool before I went to work. Later, I made sure she had food, money, and homework, especially in the lower grades.

When she first went to middle school, I helped her navigate how to take alternate buses so she could avoid the rowdies on the designated buses. But by eighth grade, she decided that the loud bus was more tolerable than spending the extra time to take two buses.

You help me with my homework. In particular, history and math. As I recall, math was complicated even in fourth grade because of the wording of some of the questions. While I remembered a lot of AP American history, there were details that I had never heard. I tried to help her with AP Statistics, but I couldn’t recall it well enough, so I got her a tutor.

Hey, Ricky!

You and I Love Lucy. In 2016, my wife, my daughter, and I went to the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY. She took a bunch of photos, a few of which showed up in my blog post. She got a Lucy cup. Subsequently, we bought the box set of I Love Lucy episodes, which she watched for several months.

You tolerate your life. I’m not positive what this meant. It’s true that I was unhappy and dissatisfied at work in the latter years but needed to get to retirement age so that I could quit. I didn’t often directly tell her, I don’t think, but indeed she overheard conversations I had with her mother.

I was delighted to come across these messages.

Compassion, Int’l: Sunday Stealing

tulips

This week’s Sunday Stealing is Compassion, Int’l, which refers to this organization. What the quiz has to do with the entity, I am uncertain.

1. Do you ever have funny dreams at night?

If by “funny,” they mean weird, strange, bizarre, then yeah. And I can have them when I take a 30-minute nap. I remember them for a time but forget them if I don’t write them down. That said, one recent one involved my late father.

Just last night, I played handball, two on two, but we played with full-sized cars that bounced instead of balls. (I used to play racquetball regularly from 1983-2010.)

2. If you could make a law for your country, what would it be?

A salary ratio so that the rich don’t continue to get richer.

3. What would you do if you were invisible for a day?

I’d sneak into some corporate entity and sneak out their documents proving their culpability in, e.g., polluting the air or water or creating other risks for people and/or animals. Then I’d leak ’em to the press. (Or should I post them on my blog first? Hmmm.)

4. If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be?

Elon Musk. And I’d give away 90% of his/my money to worthy entities feeding the hungry, fighting disease et al.

5. What would you like to change about yourself?

I want to eliminate some pain.

6. What is your daily routine?

Currently: I get up, post my blog to Facebook, do Wordle, Dordle, Quordle, and Octotordle, vote for my niece Rebecca Jade in five categories, vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame candidates, and check my email. Weigh myself, and take my blood pressure and pulse. Feed the cats, then feed myself. Then it depends.

Perfection

7. What would your perfect day be like? What would you be doing?

Seeing a movie at a cinema, watching a play, or singing in the choir, and then getting a massage.

8. How old were you when you learned to read?

IDK. I don’t recall not reading.

9. What is the most interesting thing you know?

I don’t know that it’s INTERESTING, but I know all of the US Presidents, in order and year of inauguration

10 What makes you nervous?

Being late to take a plane or train.

11. What is your favourite flower?

Tulips. It’s an Albany thing.

12. Have you ever ridden on a horse or any other animal?

Yes, on June 9, 1975, I rode a horse. It was the day after I had my first hangover. Not recommended.

13. What time do you go to bed?

11 p.m., or maybe later if I have projects to finish.

14. What time do you get up?

7:15 a.m., when the cats want to be fed.

15. What is something that is always in your refrigerator?

Eggs, 1% milk, cottage cheese, grapes, and apples.

Fellow Pisces, friend Mark

comic books

There are very few people for whom I can tell you the date we met. Friend Mark is one of them.

On Sunday, September 12, 1971, my parents dropped me off at the State University College at New Paltz (NY). There was a meal in the basement of Bliss Hall, and I met Mark while standing in line.

We discovered we were both staying at Scudder Hall, he in 110, me in B2. We hung out in each other’s room a lot that year. He would perch on his desk like Snoopy sometimes did on his doghouse, looking like a vulture.

The next night at a mixer, he introduced me to his high school friend, the Okie, who I would marry.

I discovered he collected comic books. For a time, I thought this was strange, but eventually, I started buying my own at the convenience store in nearby Highland. Eventually, we frequented the Crystal Cave, an actual comic book store in downtown New Paltz, where we met future FantaCo dudes Raoul Vezina and Tom Skulan.

In the spring and fall of 1972, he and I went to several antiwar demonstrations in New Paltz, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, and New York City. He was part of the auto brigade that tried to block the New York State Thruway; I was in his car. He was present when I got arrested in May.

At least once, he tried to teach me to drive on that same Thruway stretch between New Paltz and Kingston, but he said it was a terrifying experience.

SPAC

He and his then-girlfriend MK52 were in the car on August 22, 1974, when the Okie, by then my wife, chastised me for the 110 miles (177 km) from New Paltz to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center when we were going to see Joni Mitchell.

I was the best man at his October 1976 marriage to MK52. When I was adrift in late 1977, I ended up staying at their apartment in Schenectady, NY, from December 1977 to March 1978.

In the early 1980s, Mark worked part-time as a bartender. This helped him to appreciate sports and dance music far more than he did when I first met him.

He, along with his cousin Lawrence, started a Mid-Winter tradition almost every February for decades, usually at Mark’s or his friend Barry’s house. The photo is from an event a few years ago. I’ve been to at least two dozen of them over the years.

Mark was a groomsman in my final marriage in May 1999, despite hating wearing a tux. For the record, he looked nice.

In the buildup to the Iraq war, there were massive antiwar demonstrations in over 600 cities all over the world on February 15, 2003. I came down on a bus from Albany to New York City, where between 100,000 and 500,000 people showed up. Somehow, I ran into Mark and his child, who had come down from the Mid-Hudson.

Friend Mark and I see each other regularly; generally, he drives up to Albany from the Mid-Hudson. We talk and solve the problems of the world in a few hours.

There’s undoubtedly other stuff I’ve either forgotten or do not wish to incriminate one or both of us.

All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

World War I

The current iteration of the film All Quiet On The Western Front is the third World War I film I’ve seen in the last four years. I watched 1917 in January 2020, and the documentary footage of They Shall Not Grow Old a year earlier.

There’s a bit of surface similarity between Grow Old and All Quiet. In each case, the potential recruits, from Britain and Germany, respectively, are led to believe that going off to war will be an adventure. They’re so cheerful marching off to battle. But they soon discover they’re mired in a slog of trench warfare.

All Quiet is a remake of the 1930 film of the same name, which I have never seen. The original won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, Lewis Milestone, and was nominated in two other categories. The new film is up for nine Oscars, including Best Picture.

The characters even share the same names. Felix Kammerer plays Paul, the Lew Ayres role. Albrecht Schuch is Kat, played initially by Louis Wolheim. I did not know there was also a 1979 TV movie with Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.

At some level, the charge by the soldiers, which happens thrice, looks almost exactly the same in the new film. Perhaps it’s to show what is explained in the epilogue, that tens of thousands of soldiers were killed to gain or lose only a few hundred meters of territory. This caused me slight confusion for a time.

Recycled

Even in the “quiet” moments, one sees the horrors. The uniforms are stripped from the dead soldiers and shipped to a factory where women sew up the holes created by bullets and bayonets. Often, the names of the previous wearer have not been removed until after the recruit notices the old nametag.

Still, nothing showed the utter pointless insanity of war more than a segment near the end.

The new All Quiet On The Western Front is an excellent movie worthy of its BAFTA win. But it inevitably has lots of wartime violence, some of it up close. Occasionally, the participants consider their actions’ emotional and moral consequences. Then there’s the next skirmish, and a soldier has no time to think.

The eyes. The image that will linger in my mind is often the blue eyes of the living and the dead on faces caked with mud.