Ramblin' with Roger

Why Joe Biden, you ask?

SCIENCE!

My progressive friends have been asking a particular question to anyone who will listen for months. It is “Why Joe Biden, other than the fact that he isn’t Donald Trump?” Two responses, but maybe it’s the same one. 1. Isn’t that reason enough? 2. Because Joe Biden is… normal.

For instance, Joe Biden believes in science. Is he better in this regard than Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker or Pete Buttigieg or Jay Inslee? Probably not. But he is SO much better than the other guy. Scientific American broke with a 175-year precedent to endorse Biden.

“We do not do this lightly,’ the editors write. ‘The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science.’

“The editorial board does not mince words… They write that the ‘most devastating’ example of Trump’s rejection of science is his ‘dishonest and inept’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed 194,000 lives in the United States and counting. The president’s attacks on medical care, government scientists, environmental protections, and public health research have severely weakened the nation’s ability to respond to the greatest challenges of our time, most notably COVID-19 and climate change…”

Most telling are the Bob Woodward tapes for his book, Rage. If Trump didn’t believe that COVID was dangerous, I would think that the man didn’t understand science. It’s clear, however, that he did recognize the danger but underplayed it, undercutting the scientists. His insistence that he, in his words, “overplayed” COVID is, as usual, a lie.

Look at the march of fires in the western US. The tropical storms/hurricanes in the Atlantic may run out of names may have to use the Greek letters for only the second time. But the “stable genius” said that the temperatures will magically fall, just like he pronounced that COVID will disappear in the April 2020 heat.

Evolution

With a candidate in public office almost continually since 1973, there will be inevitable positions that you – and he – would look at differently today. Surely, Joe Biden’s role as Senate Judiciary chair during the 1991 hearings for the confirmation of Clarence Thomas was not his finest hour. He has acknowledged that. (The other guy admits no faults whatsoever about anything, and is never responsible for any bad outcomes.)

Even in that first Senate race in 1972, Biden favored support of “the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, and health care.” He was clearly ahead of his boss, Barack Obama, in 2012 when it came to marriage equality.

I acknowledge I’m nervous about the debates. As Vanity Fair notes, his opponent is a “bulldozer to norms… It is very hard to reprogram yourself to [disregard] any semblance of reality.”

Feet to the fire

Since Biden is, by the description of my friends, the centralist/moderate/corporatist candidate, there will need to be pressure placed on him to fulfill some of the more progressive agenda, assuming he wins. Of course, some of the early work will involve undoing the damage done to the basic institutions of the country. Think reversing environmental dumps. Getting more people insured.

And repairing the postal service. From a recent LA Times story: “New rules requiring U.S. Postal Service trucks to leave exactly on schedule and curtailing extra trips disrupted mail service for millions… Trucks traveled empty, mail piled up, managers falsified records, and some packages were turned away at swamped facilities.”

Some of the “fixes” involve NOT hiring political contributor hacks to government roles. Biden’s been around long enough to recognize the value of basic standards, not to mention decency IMPOTUS likes to say he’s draining “the swamp” but instead, he seems to be the ringleader of the bog monsters.

I make no apologies for voting for Joe Biden. He wasn’t in my top five choices. He’s an imperfect candidate. But as a pundit I know wrote, “He’s like a 2007 Prius that keeps chugging along. It’s nothing flashy but gets you where you want to go.” And that’s good enough after four years of intentional chaos.

Attestation and other curiosities

it’s a good thing I know our license plate number

Attestation seems like a very fancy term, maybe a serious disease. It is actually “a legal acknowledgment of the authenticity of a document and a verification that proper processes were followed.” When I digitally enter my Census timesheet, I have to attest that I worked those hours. Before my wife goes to school, she has to promise that she’s taken her temperature and is well enough to come in.

We both need to wear masks to work. As noted, my head is bigger than hers, bigger in fact than most people’s. She apparently didn’t notice this at first and randomly assigned the first masks to us and our daughter randomly. But now she can tell, just by looking, which mask belongs to whom; I cannot.

It always reminds me of The Price is Right

We got A NEW CAR! Most of the summer, my wife admittedly obsessed with the price of used RAV4s. This editor’s letter in the August 28 issue of The Week actually mirrored her experience.

“Every dealer I spoke with had sold out of decent and affordable used autos…” This is a function of the pandemic, but also “some of the cash they might have splashed on vacations or restaurant meals is instead going to new wheels.”

That was certainly true of us. We had a vacation budget that went unspent. So the used vehicle is instead a current one. My wife bought it out of town for logistical reasons, so I never saw it until four days after she purchased it.

YouTube

I only recently discovered that my wife is also a fan of finding helpful hints on YouTube videos. I’ve been watching them for years – here’s one on changing the battery on a CVS bathroom scale, which is similar to one I used.

The recent requirement I had involved not just recording on Zoom, which I figured out. My question was to FIND my #ZOOM RECORDINGS, which I needed to retrieve so I could read to our Sunday school class.

Cellphones

On my cellphone recently, I received a text that read “[Tik Tok] **** is your verification code, valid for five minutes. To keep your account safe, never forward this code.” Since I’ve never been on Tik Tok, I will assuredly abide by this.

Speaking of cellphones, I got some bogus company calling my Census phone to say it was needing to update my system. Spammers are everywhere. I ignored it, correctly.

I’m rich!

Surprise money. I got a check from Wells Fargo for $159.13 for some fiscal malfeasance that they had undoubtedly committed. I’ve gotten these types of checks before, but usually, they are for $7.81, or at the most $24.59.

The good old days

I was looking to find a list of the current members of the Cabinet because, geez, who can keep track? On Google, page one, there’s a pulldown list that lists Barack Obama’s cabinet, fueled from this page. I have a… certain disdain for the current batch, especially Bill Barr. But you knew that, didn’t you?

Lydster: older music she knows

Destiny’s Child

destinys child While there was some music that I made sure my daughter knew about, most of it she learned on her own. And this includes tunes from well before she was born.

Some months ago, she would put on a mix of soul music from the 1990s when she took a shower. It was heavy on Destiny’s Child, which she seems to enjoy more than more recent Beyonce.
Waterfalls – TLC
Survivor – Destiny’s Child
Motown Philly – Boyz 2 Men

But I ask her HOW she knows other songs, most of which are even older, she says, “Everybody knows them.”
Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon and Garfunkel. This might have been a function of a school assembly.
American Pie – Don MacLean
You’re So Vain – Carly Simon
Lean on Me – Bill Withers. incidentally, I had somehow never heard the Club Nouveau version until after Bill Withers had died
Take Me Home Country Roads – John Denver. This was on some kids’ album by someone else
Stayin’ Alive – BeeGees. She probably learned about CPR in school. But she knows no other songs by the group

More older music

My Sharona – The Knack
500 Miles – the Proclaimers. This surprised me a bit.
Purple Rain – Prince, about the only song of his she knows.
Under Pressure – Queen and David Bowie
We Are the World – USA for Africa
La Bamba – Los Lobos
Macarena – Los Del Rio. It WAS massive.

There’s also a lot of classic Motown she’s familiar with. Some she learned at school, some from me. Of course, she had learned The Beatles from me, and even danced to Strawberry Fields Forever some years ago.
I Can’t Help Myself – Four Tops
Dancing in the Street – Martha and the Vandellas
Help – The Beatles

We have something in common. There are songs we both know better as Weird Al parodies than the originals, and in fact, learned the original as a result of the variation. That may be true of another popular song.
Like a Surgeon – Weird Al
Like a Virgin – Madonna
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Bethlehemian Rhapsody. I asked her who was most famous to multiple generations, and one of her first picks was Freddie Mercury.

She turned us on to Hamilton: Alexander Hamilton. But I first played Hey, Ya – Outkast for her.

“Partly truth and partly fiction”

complicated

Les.Roger.backporch2 — Les and Roger Green, 1953

The more I learn about my late father Les Green, the more I want to know. “He’s a walking contradiction. Partly truth and partly fiction” is a line from a Kris Kristofferson song. His life was very complicated.

Did he know that the Reverend Raymond Cone was his biological father? Surely, the pastor was not in dad’s life. What kind of teasing did he have to endure?

Or was his lineage hidden from most people? In the 1930 Census, when he was three and a half, he was listed as the son, rather than the grandson, of Samuel and Eugenia Walker. And he was mistakenly listed as Wesley Walker, an error that wasted some research time and money by my sisters and me.

Agatha Walker and McKinley Green were married in April 1931. How and when did they meet? And why were they separated for the latter half of the 1930s? According to the 1940 Census, Agatha Greene and Leslie Greene – the surnames were misspelled – were back with Samuel and Mary.

There is a picture of a group of Boy Scouts and their dads in a 1942 Binghamton newspaper. Les and McKinley are included in the group. But it wasn’t until 1944 when Les was 18, he got a new birth certificate, with McKinley listed as the father. It notes McKinley’s age in 1944, rather than in Les’ birth year of 1926. But Agatha’s age is properly 24, her age when Les was born.

Race matters

I’ve mentioned my father’s ambivalence about serving in post-war Germany. It was due to the racism, not of the German people but of the white GIs. He also experienced colorism from his future in-laws, the Yates, since he was much darker than they were.

If he was a bit of a standoffish father early on, could it have been a result of the miscarriage my mother experienced in April 1951? It would have been a boy. Maybe it’s why he made sure that I was named for no one else. Yet he named his first daughter after himself.

He may have been the most gregarious person I’ve known in a public setting. Yet, sometimes at home, he was dubbed by my sisters and me, as the “black cloud” who seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. This was true mostly when we were growing up, but we experienced it as late as 1997.

Some people are who they are almost all of the time. I think our mom was like that. Then there was our dad, who was…complicated. We wish we could ask him questions about all of these things. But the items about his youth, for instance, we really didn’t understand until he passed.

Les Green would have been 94 tomorrow.

Bicuspid, nothing to do with teeth

Bi means two

bicuspid aortic valve When I had to have a physical for the military draft in October 1972, I told the doctor that my pediatrician said I had a minor heart murmur. The doc double-checked me and pronounced that he wouldn’t have even noticed had I not mentioned it. (No, I never was in the military. Long story.)

My primary care physician (PCP) has noted for years that I’ve had a regularly irregular heartbeat. But this year, something in some tests she ordered concerned her enough to request some more. Then I met with a cardiac surgeon who started talking about surgery. What? Still, he ordered a CT scan and echocardiogram.

Let me say here that at that moment, I’m convinced I’m about to die. My blood pressure is abnormally high at both the cardiologist’s office and at the tests. The only time my BP before was over 150 systolic was before my hernia operation in 2015. But as it turns out while there is a slight thickening of the aortic wall, it was something that needed to be monitored but not yet treated, surgically, for about five years.

Bicuspid aortic valve

But it wasn’t until I got to my PCP a couple weeks later that she told me that I have a congenital bicuspid aortic valve. What does THAT mean? “The aortic valve — located between the lower left heart chamber (left ventricle) and the main artery that leads to the body (aorta) — has only two (bicuspid) cusps instead of three.”

OK. “A bicuspid aortic valve may cause the heart’s aortic valve to narrow (aortic valve stenosis). This narrowing prevents the valve from opening fully, which reduces or blocks blood flow from the heart to the body.” Hmm, that must be plain English for what those tests showed.

“In some cases, the aortic valve doesn’t close tightly, causing blood to leak backward into the left ventricle (aortic valve regurgitation). Most people with a bicuspid aortic valve aren’t affected by valve problems until they’re adults… Some may not be affected until they’re older adults.” Lessee, I guess that includes me.

“Some people with a bicuspid aortic valve may have an enlarged aorta — the main blood vessel leading from the heart. There is also an increased risk of aortic dissection.” I heard mention of that! Meaning?

Waiting to exhale

“An aortic dissection is a serious condition in which the inner layer of the aorta, the large blood vessel branching off the heart, tears. Blood surges through the tear, causing the inner and middle layers of the aorta to separate (dissect). If the blood-filled channel ruptures through the outside aortic wall, aortic dissection is often fatal.” Oh, joy.

“Aortic dissection is relatively uncommon.” That’s good. “The condition most frequently occurs in men in their 60s and 70s.” Ah, my demographic! “Symptoms of aortic dissection may mimic those of other diseases, often leading to delays in diagnosis. However, when an aortic dissection is detected early and treated promptly, the chance of survival greatly improves.”

I suppose this means I ought to get one of those tags noting my bicuspid aortic valve. Otherwise, I may get treated for the heart attack I’m possibly not having at the time.

Let’s not get ahead of myself

People “with a bicuspid aortic valve will require regular monitoring for any changes in their condition, such as valve problems or an enlarged aorta, by doctors trained in congenital heart disease (congenital cardiologists). You may eventually need treatment for valve problems such as aortic valve stenosis, aortic valve regurgitation, or an enlarged aorta.

“Depending on your condition, treatment may include aortic valve replacement” or other surgeries. The point is that I will need “lifelong care from a congenital cardiologist… including regular follow-up appointments to monitor for any changes in your condition.”

Oh, and “a bicuspid aortic valve can be inherited in families. Because of this, doctors often recommend that all first-degree relatives — parents, children, and siblings — of people with a bicuspid aortic valve be screened with an echocardiogram.” In this case, my sisters and my daughter.

Yes, I’m still a bit weirded about this. Worrying is unhelpful, I suppose. But YOU tell my subconscious that.