Ramblin' with Roger

My wife is retiring from her job

Taxing

The big news is that my wife is retiring from her job as a teacher of English as a New Language at the end of the school year.

You’d think since I retired three years earlier, I would have had time to get used to the idea of her being home too. Well, not exactly. Of course, she’s often home in the summer, though last summer she taught in August.

I was home alone from September 2019 until early March 2020. Then my wife and my daughter were doing the education thing at home for over a year because COVID.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I believe it’s vitally important: early on, she converted the spare bedroom into her office, pretty much at my insistence. Previously, she was teaching from the dining room table, which meant I was invading her teaching space regularly. That was not working AT ALL.

Money

Am I anxious about the economics of her retiring? Er, yes, since she had been making more than I had been – I was grossly underpaid – for a number of years. But she does have a pension and other resources.

It’s impossible to know whether she would have left at this point if COVID hadn’t happened. No doubt, students suffered educationally but, at least as important, socially and emotionally from remote learning.

Now she’s musing on what the next phase of her life will be. I’m hoping that she’ll not take on another job for a time. Recently, she suggested we do “spring cleaning.” I’d be happy just doing something with the boxes and bags that have cluttered the living room and dining room, some since my mother-in-law moved from Oneonta to a place near Albany last summer.

Taxman

It’s our 23rd wedding anniversary today. I’ve determined that there are certain actions that help us to get along. One major one is not trying to decipher her filing system. When we get documents she believes are important, she files them away. And she retrieves them because, for whatever reason, I can almost NEVER find them.

This became an issue when she emailed me that the accountant needed to know how much I made in 2021 from Social Security. She emailed me, “I think those forms are in the tax file folder. Look in the drawer in the kitchen under the toaster for the folder.”

OMG, no, no. I know had received the document, and had promptly put it in her mail drawer. The document was NOT in the folder, which I, remarkably, located.

Now, I was able to find the amount of interest we paid in 2021 on our home equity loan, a paper we had likewise received. But because I’m the one who tends to access the electronic info from our bank’s online system, I could recreate the 1098.

Deductions

I called the accountant and told him I could find the monthly net amount I received, but not the gross. We’d been working with their firm for several years since some debacles my wife and I had in filing on our own. He said that he thought this was the first time he had spoken to me, and it was probably true.

(Prior to being married to her, I NEVER itemized our deductions. I still find it exhausting but it’s important to her, so I keep track electronically of my charitable contributions.)

I always found the title of a Paul Simon compilation album a true path for keeping a marriage intact: Negotiations and Love Songs.

Thanks, dear, for the full-body hugs every night.

David Byrne of Talking Heads is 70

This ain’t no party

For me, the great thing about David Byrne is that he keeps growing and changing. This comes across in this 2022 online interview in Parents magazine. It’s entitled David Byrne is Gloriously Odd: How Family Formed Talking Heads’ Lead Man.

He tells the story of Everybody’s Coming to My House, a song on his 2018 album American Utopia. Byrne wrote as though those folks in his place were a bit of a bother. Yet when he got some Detroit teens to perform it, they had a very different read, the joy of everyone hanging out.

I’ve long stated that one of my two favorite concerts ever was Talking Heads performing at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on August 5, 1983. Later shows in that tour, three nights at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December 1983, were turned into Stop Making Sense, the highly regarded 1984 American concert film directed by Jonathan Demme.

I had been a fan of Talking Heads before that. And when the band broke up, I enjoyed many of Byrne’s solo albums as well. But seeing American Utopia, the filmed version of the Broadway production, was a revelation. As he noted in the Parents piece, the plan was to make the difficult look easy.

Watch David Byrne Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions for WIRED. Also, in the recent CBS Saturday Morning interview, he acknowledges that he cannot write songs at present. But he can draw.

Songs

Check out the All Music discography of his solo work and Talking Heads, who are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, class of 2002.

Also, in 2018, David Byrne teamed up with Choir! Choir! Choir! to cover David Bowie’s Heroes.

This list is vaguely in order towards my favorite, but only the top song is secure.

You and Eye – solo
Marching Through The Wilderness – solo. In a review of Rei Momo by William Ruhlmann: “On his first full-fledged solo album, Byrne indulges his fascination with Latin and South American musical styles, employing a variety of native musicians but mixing up the sounds to suit his own distinctly non-purist vision.”
And She Was – Talking Heads

Dirty Old Town – solo
Making Flippy Floppy – Talking Heads, just fun to say
Crosseyed And Painless – Talking Heads Back In The Box – solo

America Is Waiting – Byrne and Brian Eno
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) -Talking Heads
Loco de Amor – solo
Psycho Killer – Talking Heads, probably the first song of theirs I heard

More songs

Take Me To The River – Talking Heads; if I were to do karaoke, it would sound more like David Byrne than Al Green
Slippery People – Talking People; on the Stop Making Sense tour, one of the background singers is Lynn Mabry, who I’ve met. She, among other things, sings backup for Sheila E., as does the niece Rebecca Jade
I Zimbra – Talking Heads, the first song of theirs I loved

Burning Down The House – Talking Heads. Did anyone watching the video believe “I AM AN OR-DIN-AR-Y GUY?”
Life During Wartime – Talking Heads. “This ain’t no party…”
Independence Day – solo
Road To Nowhere – Talking Heads

Lilies Of The Valley – solo
Help Me, Somebody – Bryne and Eno
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) – this song is tied to a specific time (the 1990s), and place (on the way to Cooperstown), and people
Once in a Lifetime – an obvious choice, I know; how it was made (you can ignore the two-minute ad at the end)

Performative Christianity and privilege

tone-deaf and arrogant and rude

Performative Christianity is an interesting term. The Weekly Sift guy mused about the Supreme Court case about “a football coach who led players in prayer on the 50-yard-line after games. His claim is that his prayers are private religious acts protected by the First Amendment’s free-exercise clause.”

WS links to an article by Mark Wingfield in Baptist News Global. Wingfield compares that situation to “Christians singing worship songs on a commercial airline flight.

“The common thread is performative Christianity that operates out of a place of assumed privilege. That is a privilege so taken for granted that the average American Christian has no clue they are swimming in it…

“What Christians may see as a God-ordained witnessing opportunity, the poor seatmate may see as religious assault… What if the roles were reversed and you, dear Christian, were seated next to an evangelizing Muslim or Hindu or Mormon or atheist? Would you afford them the same assumed privilege you claim for yourself? I don’t think so.

“Modern Christians must understand that we live in an increasingly pluralistic society and that assuming Christian privilege actually does more harm than good. If you want to be a good witness for Jesus, this is not the way to do it. It is tone-deaf and arrogant and rude — pretty much the opposite of every virtue of love described in 1 Corinthians 13.”

Save their souls

I was someone who grew up being taught that I was responsible for the souls of all I came across. Don’t I have to proselytize, I mean share, the Good News of Jesus Christ to these “non-believers”? I don’t want them to face eternal damnation! Never mind that these folks were indeed believers, just of Something Else. So I know those people. To some degree, I once WAS those people.

Wingfield feels, and I agree, that the coach “effectively coerced impressionable young athletes to join his midfield spectacle — a clear violation of the First Amendment.” Moreover, in demanding “a public display allegedly to give glory to God… [he was] giving glory to his own ego, not to God.”

Weekly Sift ponders: “I will be more interested in the Court’s reasoning [about the football coach] than in the decision itself. Whatever standard the justices use to find in the coach’s favor, does it apply to non-Christians, or is this yet another special right that Christians have and no one else does?”

Alito and 17th-century jurist

“The US already has the highest maternal death rate of any developed country.”

Who was Matthew Hale, the 17th-century jurist that Samuel Alito invokes in his draft overturning Roe? A good question. Alito prides himself as an originalist.

“In his leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leans heavily on the scholarship of… English judge Sir Matthew Hale to underpin his argument that prohibiting abortion has a long ‘unbroken tradition’ in the law.

“Many legal scholars disputed Alito’s… reliance on Hale because of what the jurist’s writings reveal about his attitudes toward women. Hale is notorious in the law for laying the legal foundation for clearing husbands from criminal liability for raping their wives, and for sentencing two women accused of witchcraft to death, a case that served as a model for the infamous Salem witch trials 30 years later.

As ProPublica noted: “Hale’s influence in the United States has been on the wane since the 1970s, with one state after another abandoning his legal principles on rape. But Alito’s opinion resurrects Hale, a judge who was considered misogynistic even by his era’s notably low standards.”

Boston Globe: “Many historians disagree with Alito’s argument. In an amicus brief submitted in the Mississippi abortion-rights case before the justices, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians counter that up until the Civil War, most states barred abortion only in the later stages of pregnancy and that abortions before fetal ‘quickening’ were legal..”. Quickening, “in English common law, occurs when a mother can detect fetal movement, typically between four and six months of pregnancy.”

Thus it is a self-selected, self-affirming argument.

Women’s health

The Daily Skimm laid out in scary detail the potential ramifications of the ruling.

“The US already has the highest maternal death rate of any developed country. Overturning Roe could make that worse. Nearly half of OB-GYNs in the US may soon be working in the 26 states expected to ban abortion. But if they’re not trained, or if they’re out of practice, or if they’re afraid to use abortion medicine or procedures (think: because they could be sued, or even charged with homicide), curable situations could turn life-threatening or deadly. Think, in the case of:

“Miscarriages: About 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage and women’s bodies don’t always pass fetal tissue completely on their own. At that point, most American women are offered a pill or surgical procedure — essentially, an abortion. In places where abortion is heavily restricted or not performed, those options may not be available for weeks (if at all), resulting in serious health risks and trauma.”

Ignorant lawmakers

“Ectopic pregnancies: These pregnancies are not viable since they occur outside the uterus and can be fatal for the mother. At the moment, no US state has banned or criminalized the procedures and drugs that treat ectopic pregnancies. But some state legislators (see: Missouri) have pushed for that, while others (see: Ohio) have invented fantasy procedures not known to science as a workaround.

“Multiple pregnancies: The more fetuses a woman carries, the higher the risk for everyone involved. This can commonly happen during IVF. So doctors may recommend procedures that remove some fetuses (think: ones that are unviable or have severe health issues) so others — and the mother — can survive. Those reductions are already illegal under Texas’s recent abortion ban, and more states may follow.

“Domestic violence: The leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women in the US is homicide, according to one study. We’ll say it again: homicide. And data suggests her partner is often responsible. For years, research has shown that partner violence gets worse during pregnancy. And for women in abusive relationships, being denied abortion may make it harder to leave — despite the very real dangers.”

The narrative that all of these “unborn children” will be saved to brighten someone else’s life is not supported by biology, sociology, or history. See also, from the Weekly Sift: What Alito wrote and Who’s to blame for overturning Roe? Plus Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

May rambling: Don’t Mourn for Me, Organize!

Neal Adams, George Perez, Nate Hopper

**Virginia bluebells – photo (c) 2022 by Wayne Harvey, used by permission**

What One Million COVID Dead Mean for the U.S.’s Future

Mother Earth: “Don’t Mourn for Me, Organize!” and Earth Now Has a 50% Chance of Hitting 1.5°C of Warming by 2026

Environmental Racism: and the Philippine Elections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Fact-checking “2000 Mules”, the movie alleging ballot fraud “uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended.”

John Green: My Religion and My Banned Books

The Real ID Deadline Is May 2023

Mexico to reroute trade railway connection from Texas to New Mexico due to Greg Abbott’s $4 billion stunt

Florida Taxpayers Sue Gov. Ron DeSantis For Eliminating Disney’s Special District. Also, Disney Copyrights Targeted in Bill Proposed by Sen. Josh Hawley. The librarian in me likes it. The fact that it’s meant to target the “woke” corporation, not so much.

Jon Stewart Warns “Authoritarianism” Is the Greatest Threat to Comedy as He Receives Mark Twain Humor Prize

Concerns over ‘soft’ youth (1942)

The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap

How to build your poetry collection

The 23-game run of 23-year-old Mattea Roach on JEOPARDY!

Air Bud: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Now I Know: Why the Michelin Man is White (and Maybe an Alcoholic) and Polly’s Neighbor Want a Walnut? and The Mystery of the Missing Internet, Rural Wales Edition, and The Moon Over the Rhine River

Voting

On May 17, many entities in New York State are having their annual budget vote and school board election. Here’s the info for the Albany City School District.

Additionally, the Albany Public Library Albany Public Library budget is on the ballot. “The total tax levy includes a 2.5% increase, which is under the NYS tax cap. The proposed increase would mean that the owner of a $150,000 home would pay approximately $5.98 more in library taxes next year. And there are 10 candidates for the four open trustee seats.

Note that the polling places may be different than the primary/general election sites. Check here. This is the first election for which a certain teenager I live with is eligible to vote.

Passing on

Nate Hopper was a member of our church choir. He was talented, friendly, funny, and generous of spirit in the too-brief time I knew him. The College of Saint Rose wrote on their Facebook page that the college senior had “been a member of the Saint Rose family since 2017. He once served as an RA, was beloved within our music community, and was the president of the Golden Notes, Saint Rose’s only co-ed a cappella group. “

Memorial for Alan Hahn, my old college buddy

Neal Adams, Comic Book Artist Who Revitalized Batman and Fought for Creators’ Rights, Dies at 80. Mark Evanier shares a few stories but especially here.

George Perez, Legendary Wonder Woman, Teen Titans Comic Book Artist, Dies at 67. He did a couple of pieces for FantaCo, my old stomping grounds, including the cover for our Avengers Chronicles.

Naomi Judd, of Grammy-Winning Duo The Judds, Dies at 76. Her daughters, Wynonna and Ashley, announced her death due to “mental illness”. Why can’t we say suicide?

David Birney, Actor on ‘Bridget Loves Bernie’ and ‘St. Elsewhere,’ Dies at 83. Bridget Loves Bernie (1972-73, CBS), which I watched, was the highest-rated network show, #5, that was canceled after a single season.

Joanna Barnes, Actress in ‘The Parent Trap’ and ‘Auntie Mame,’ Dies at 87. She appears in both versions of The Parent Trap, which I saw during the pandemic.

A new database highlights African American burial grounds across NY state

MUSIC

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Elliot Del Borgo

When The Battle Is Over (LIVE) – The Sully Band Featuring Rebecca Jade

The Highwayman, written by Alfred Noyes, sung by Loreena McKennit

When I Rose This Morning – The Mississippi Mass Choir

The Lark Ascending, music by Ralph Vaughn Williams, a poem by George Meredith

All By Myself – Eric Carmen

Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien – Franz von Suppé

Show Biz Kids – Rickie Lee Jones

High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Frank Sinatra’s ‘Watertown,’ a concept album set in Upstate NY, gets new life