Ramblin' with Roger

PostSecret questions: Genesis

Genesis The PostSecret guy asked his followers on Facebook for once-in-a-lifetime questions to ask his “dad for an unforgettable interview. Over 700 replies with more than 1,000 questions came back.”

I liked them so much that I purloined them to answer myself. Some of them aren’t suited to this format, but I made most of them work. And the piece became so long that I’ve broken it down into three sections. That means three blog posts, because the blogger is basically lazy. And because I don’t want you to have to read a 1200-word post. See how nice I am to you.

Can you tell me about your best friend when you were a kid and one of your adventures.

That would be Ray. We were in Cub Scouts together, and his mom was our Den Mother. One time when I was about nine, I had a birthday party at my house. I had intended to invite a lot of people. But only Ray and my late pal Bernie showed up. I felt terrible, but they made me feel less bad.

Bernie Massar, Barnyard (1953-2019)

In junior high, sometimes, walking home, I’d go to the houses of Bill, Lois and Karen on Mygatt Street, Carol on Cypress, then Ray, at 7 1/2 Cypress. I’d walk through his yard, walk down the stairs through the Canny’s trucking company lot on Spring Forest Avenue, then down Oak to Gaines Street.

For some obscure reason, I remember this. In a reflection on Penny Lane, he wondered if the line was “standing in the English reign,” as opposed to “rain” and that the Beatles were having a play on words. Her Majesty IS a pretty nice girl.

What is the oldest story you know about our ancestors?

I reckon that would be James Archer, who fought in the Civil War.

Civil War & great (X2) grandfather James Archer

Can you describe a favorite memory about a family member?

My favorite recollection of my dad was when I was at a conference in Savannah, GA in 1998, and my dad drove down from Charlotte, NC for the weekend. He hung out with me and my friends Mary, Donna. and Kellie. We had key lime pie.

Random Memory of My Father: Savannah, GA

If this was to be our very last conversation, is there anything you would want to say to me?

When in doubt, be kind.

Do you have a favorite snack, song, television show, recipe, comedy?

Snack: spinach dip. Song: Bein’ Green. Television show: The Dick Van Dyke Show. Recipe: lasagna. Comedy: Young Frankenstein.

A song that reminds me of myself

What is your first memory?

Augmented by a photo, it was sitting in a plastic pumpkin at the Catskill Game Farm when I was about three.

Did you ever get into trouble as a kid? What happened?

I once threw a snowball at my friend Carol. It was icy, and it really hurt her. I felt terrible. But I don’t think I actually got into trouble. I was an annoying good kid.

A pleniloquence about coronavirus?

Social distancing, Flatten the curve

Yvonne Abraham wrote in the Boston Globe: “The week that the coronavirus changed everything.” And it’s true.

“One after another, the touchpoints of our lives have been falling away. The subtractions came slowly at first: flights from a handful of countries, conventions, political rallies, Little League tryouts. They’ve picked up speed as the week — has it really been only a week? — wore on. We are a danger to each other, our public spaces suddenly menacing.

“Who are we without all of the things that bring us together?

“We’re about to find out, as the coronavirus pandemic separates us, leaving us alone with our trepidation and, if we’re lucky, our loved ones.”

It’s gone from my church congregation sharing hugs and handshakes (February) to expressing love from a distance with a smile, a deep nod and a Vulcan greeting (March 1) to the doors being closed (March 15). While understandable, the transition is really difficult for me.

As an information junkie, I found that I have actually watched less news about COVID-19. This is not to say I KNOW less about it. It’s that the information overwhelms me from so many various venues.

TMI

My travel agent site recommends that I talk to my health care providers, plus “checking the CDC website, understanding how travel insurance works, and keeping informed with our coronavirus updates.” Airlines, hotels, cruises, and tour companies are “relaxing their change and cancellation policies to offer travelers a peace of mind.”

Almost every one of the canceled public gatherings I might have attended provides me with statistics and disease prevention protocols. Meanwhile, there is a battle against the spread of fake coronavirus news articles and unscientific products and advice.

Vanity Fair promised “binge-worthy shows for quarantine”. Entertainment and sports news is filled with disappointed, but understanding, folks, reacting to postponements and cancellations.

There’s a whole new vocabulary. Social distancing. Flatten the curve by staying home. Stop touching your face.

I suppose I should be worried. Someone posted conditions to be concerned about. I qualify on half of them.
If you’re over 50
If you have diabetes
If you have a heart condition
If you are overweight
If you have a compromised immune system
If you are a smoker

But as Mark Evanier noted: “I am not worried about the virus. I’m worried about not doing the right things in a tricky situation… If it turns out that this thing takes a lot fewer human lives than the Worst Case projections, I hope we don’t hear people saying the reactions to it and all these cancellations were foolish and unnecessary.

“I hope they say the fatalities were kept down by swift, smart action and responsible parties erring on the side of caution. And I really hope they say that it was an act of appalling negligence that we weren’t better prepared for this and that we won’t make that mistake again.”

Violating self-quarantine

We’re not going to get through the coronavirus issue unless we think of ourselves as part of a larger community. I most worry about those creatures with the XY chromosome. If you’ve been to most men’s bathrooms in 2019 or earlier, you’ve likely seen guys who wash their hands for two seconds, rather than twenty. Or often not at all.

Worse, from the March 6 Boston Globe: “A New Hampshire man who’d recently returned from Italy and had symptoms of the novel coronavirus had been told to quarantine himself, but instead attended an event last Friday at the Engine Room in White River Junction, Vt. A few days later, he tested positive for Covid-19…” Hey, we have to be in this together.

John Oliver.
Mel and Max Brooks.
He lies, again.
Years of Austerity Weakened the Public Health Response.
My Corona ~ Kevin Brandow (Parody ~ My Sharona by The Knack).
Facebook was marking legitimate news articles about the coronavirus as spam due to a software bug. The company is fixing the posts and bringing them back.

My DNA is more Irish than ever

and Nigerian

I’ve noted before my DNA results. Twice now, I’ve gotten messages that read: “The next time you look at your AncestryDNA® results, you’re going to see some significant changes that might surprise you.”

Here’s iteration #3:

Version #1, from March 2018, had me 14% from Ireland/Scotland/Wales. The second take, from September 2018, showed me 19% Irish/Scottish. “Your DNA hasn’t changed, of course, but the science behind determining your ethnicity is constantly evolving.

“In this update, we’ve more than doubled the size of our reference panel, including more people from different parts of the world, which has helped us to refine your ethnicity estimates. We’ve split some regions and adjusted the borders of others for better precision.”

Now, as you can see, I might be fully 1/3 Scotch/Irish, and most likely from Munster, Ireland. Conversely, England/Wales plummeted from 20% to 2%. Cameroon fell from 26% to 15%, but Nigeria jumped from 1% to 28%. Mali stayed about the same, 6% to 7%.

I find this all quite mysterious. If I dig under the numbers, my ethnicity estimate for Scotch/Irish is 33%, but it can range from 15—33%.

Cousins

These are, of course, imperfect tools. 23andME has me pegged as 25% English and Irish. Since Ancestry now has had me at 2% English, I feel entitled to drink green beer. That is, if I drank beer at all.

And while my relationships to my second and third cousins are getting clearer, my fourth cousins are generally not so easy. For one thing, there are scads of them. And for another, I haven’t yet been able to identify all my third-great-grandparents (yet), so I can’t figure out HOW I’m related to many of these people.

Specifically, I don’t know which of my ancestors came from County Cork. However, I can tell that there’s at least one cousin, initials MM, who is STILL in County Cork, Ireland, where Munster is located. I figure I ought to fly over and say howdy. Well, if one could still do such things.

Nat King Cole Show (1956-57)

NBC-TV

The Nat King Cole Show was the first show to feature a major black star to headline a variety series.

I was too young to remember it. But my parents told me that every black person they knew watched it.

Until recently, I didn’t realize that it was only 15 minutes long when it debuted on a Monday night in November 1956 on NBC-TV. It filled the remaining time allocated to the nightly news. This was barely enough time to sing a few songs. It wasn’t until July 1957, when his slot moved to Tuesdays at 10 that he was allocated a full half hour, which changed to Tuesday at 7:30 in the fall.

The IMBD refers to the Nat King Cole Show as “highly rated.” If by this, it means well-regarded, that would be true. But if it meant big ratings, that is contradicted by most other accounts. The Brooks and Marsh TV book, e.g. said it had only a 19 share when there were only three networks.

No national sponsors

The show originally aired without a sponsor, “but NBC agreed to pay for initial production costs; it was assumed that once the show actually aired and advertisers were able to see its sophistication, a national sponsor would emerge. None did; many national companies did not want to upset their customers in the South, who did not want to see a black man on TV shown in anything other than a subservient position.”

Jim Davidson’s Classic TV Info confirms this. “Had the ratings been higher, national sponsors might have been willing to support the show. But the combination of a relatively small audience and skittishness about viewer reaction kept them away. While crediting NBC with keeping the show on the air, Cole felt advertisers should have had more guts.” Said Cole of the doomed series, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”

“While NBC was willing to keep the show going, Cole decided to call it quits… He didn’t feel comfortable asking his guest stars to work for practically nothing. ‘You can wear out your welcome,” he commented. “People get tired if you never stop begging.'”

And they were quality guests such as Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Peggy Lee, The Mills Brothers, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry Belafonte, Billy Eckstine, Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt, Frankie Laine, Tony Martin, Oscar Peterson, Mel Tormé, and a very young Billy Preston.

Still, Nat said in a 1958 Ebony article, “For 13 months, I was the Jackie Robinson of television.” Nat King Cole would have been 101 years old on March 17.

March rambling: don’t be an idiot

floccinaucinihilipilification

sign at the gas pump
Why India’s Muslims are in grave danger.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Coronavirus advice: ‘Don’t be complacent, and don’t be an idiot’ and Medicare for All.

Everything looks fine until it doesn’t.

Weekly Sift: Coronavirus Reaches My Town.

Why retirement insecurity is the new American epidemic.

Rules for Addressing Panhandlers.

The Inclusive Internet Index 2020.

Does Anybody Know Who’s Electable?

What Are Those Strange Things You See Floating In Your Eye?

Bye, Chris Matthews.

Was Jeanne Calment the Oldest Person Who Ever Lived — or a Fraud?

Cookie Monster breaks the Internet.

Touching a camera for the first time in three months.

James Lipton, animated host of ‘Inside the Actors Studio’, dies at 93.

Max von Sydow, Legendary Seventh Seal Star, Dies at 90.

RIP Earl Pomerantz

My wife’s aunt, Emelia Olin obit.

ChangeRoots.com

What is Bipartisanship, Really

Racism, Retaliation and Othering

Donnybrook

He Bears Full Responsibility for Botched Response to Coronavirus in U.S.

Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller Wrote His Coronavirus Speech That’s Tanking Markets and Spreading Falsehoods and Fear.

The Daily Show video: Pandumbic. Late Night with Seth Meyers: Trump Contradicts Experts as Coronavirus Is Declared a Pandemic.

A limerick by Catbird

There once was a POTUS named trump
Whose mind was as sharp as a stump
“It’s perfect!” he crowed
“Test kits? We’ve a load!”
And now we’re all down in the dumps.

Pressed on the ACA, his rhetoric takes an incoherent turn.

How should Democrats fight against a president who has no moral or legal compass?

Newly obtained documents reveal more Secret Service payments to Trump properties.

He Installs Homophobic Racist Tea Party Birther Who Promised to Send Obama ‘Home to Kenya’ as New Chief of Staff.

Language

What is the difference between appoggiatura and acciaccatura? Appoggiatura is “a type of musical ornament, falling on the beat, which often creates a suspension and subtracts for itself half the time value of the principal note which follows while acciaccatura is a short grace note (theoretically taking no time at all), occurring on the beat occupied by the main note to which it is prefixed.”

Definition of meliorism: the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment.

Words That Describe Incredibly Specific Things, such as erinaceous, jentacular, nudiustertian, qualtagh, and especially floccinaucinihilipilification.

Words Fossilized In Idioms.

Geez, jeez!

12 Regional Slang Words From Across the U.S.

The Origin Of “Piss Poor” And Other Popular Sayings.

Insight of the Day.

Now I Know

The Tampons That Fought Back By Adding a Spine and The Color of Flying Calmly and The Beyond Gold Medalist and A Blockbuster Parenting Move and How Much is a Buttload, Exactly? and The Somewhat-Silent Explosions Made for Dogs and The Snack You Had to Commit a Crime to Try and Why Stop Signs Have Eight Sides.

MUSIC

Philippa Duke Schuyler performing Bach.

Homunculus C.F. by Julia Perry.

Fidelio overture by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Coverville 1298: This Day in Covers: February 25, 1985.

God’s Counting On Me – Pete Seeger.

WHATCHA SEE IS WHATCHA GET – The Dramatics.

Mr. Sandman – The Chordettes. Obit: Lynn Evans Mand, singer of hits with the Chordettes, at 95.

K-Chuck Radio: The Invasion of the Break-Ins.

The Archive Of Contemporary Music — And Its 3 Million Recordings — Is Leaving NY.

Johnny Cash thought his recording career was over. Then he met legendary producer Rick Rubin.