Ramblin' with Roger

20 years a blogger

over 7,300 days

20 years a blogger. Am I out of my mind? Quite possibly. For two decades, every day, I have posted something on this blog or its predecessor, which is now included in this blog.

For a while, it made sense to me to try to get my thoughts down. But now, it’s become a bit of a sport. Can I keep doing this, and should I?

It was 20 years ago today.

The first Monday in May

I decided to start a blog

Stumbled into going whole hog

I’ve told how I started blogging before, but it’s anniversary time, so I can share it again. Back in September 2004, I ran into my friend Rocco Nigro. He says to me, “Are you following Fred’s blog?” Fred is Fred Hembeck of comic book fame but not that much fortune.

I said I didn’t know Fred had a blog, and I had never read anybody else’s blog, so the answer was No. I started reading it from the beginning on New Year’s Eve 2002 to the then-current day. As he went on, Fred used to write very long posts daily. I liked it.

I commented to Fred about things in his blog and started contributing ideas after a while. Specifically, I remember that I told him that Herb Alpert of the Tijuana Brass fame and A&M Records was going to have a 70th birthday at the end of March of 2005, so he wrote about that.

Steve Gerber

I was taken by the initial blog post by Steve Gerber, a Marvel comic book writer who scripted The Defenders and Man-Thing. As I noted early on, he posted on April 4, 2005: “I make my living as a writer. There is only one characteristic that distinguishes writers from non-writers: writers write.

“(That’s why there’s no such thing as an ‘aspiring writer.’ A writer can aspire to sell or publish, but only non-writers aspire to write.) Anyway, writing for a living requires writing every day. Writing every day requires discipline. Discipline requires enforcement.

“I’ve lost the habit of writing every day. I need discipline. I need enforcement. You’re looking at it.

“I intend to post something on this blog every day. If I fail to do so, that failure will be very public, and I’ll be embarrassed by it. I don’t enjoy being embarrassed. So maybe, just maybe, making this obligation will help transform me into a habitual writer again.”

Looking back at this, the peculiar thing is that I didn’t necessarily fancy myself a “writer,” but I did need to write to make sense of the world. So I started writing a blog post, and then I wrote another one.

Logistics

At the beginning of May 2005, there was a bit of pain in the neck. Unless I misunderstood the technology, I couldn’t save a blog post for the first three years to publish the next day when I was on Blogger/Blogspot. Specifically, I was at a work conference in Lake Placid, NY, and I did not have Internet access at the hotel. So I would run down to the public library, write a blog post at lunchtime, post it, and then run back to the conference. This was when I could run. What a chore.

Why?

As I noted, there were two reasons I started writing a blog. I was on this TV show called JEOPARDY; the episodes were recorded in September 1998 and broadcast on November 9th and 10th. I realized that if I didn’t write this down soon, I would totally forget the experience. I documented what I could recall about 6 1/2 years after the fact.

Again, as I noted, the other thing was that my daughter was born in 2004. We had one of those books that cues you to note when her first tooth comes in or when she takes her first step or the like. I had every intention of doing so, but I failed miserably, so I decided to write about my daughter on the 26th of every month, and for 20 years, I have kept that.

I really liked some of the blog posts I wrote for ABC Wednesday, which was initially started by a woman named Denise Nesbitt. One would write based on an alphabetical cue. I did that for about 7 years, once a week; I even ran it for a time.

One of my favorite series of posts was an alphabetical tour of all the groups with some family ties, like the Wilson brothers of The Beach Boys or the Wilson sisters of Heart. I managed to get every letter except two; one I couldn’t find was Q for quirky (ABBA). But I did find the one for X, which was for the group X with John Doe and Exene Cervenka, who used to be married.

In some cases, I find that things I’ve written have triggered people’s interest long after I’ve written them, many of which are about genealogy. So, I guess I’ll keep doing this for a while.

Can’t be everywhere all at once

Frankfort

Despite the movie title, I can’t be everywhere all at once. That seems obvious on two April weekends. The Friday before Palm Sunday, my wife and I went down to south central Pennsylvania to attend a wedding. This took much longer than we anticipated. Leaving around 10:30 a.m., we took I-87 to I-287 and ultimately traveled west on the route that was formerly I-78 before reaching the local roads. We didn’t arrive at our hotel until 6:00 p.m.

The wedding of our niece, Markia, and her fiancé, Brandon, on Saturday was lovely, and the reception was equally nice. I will likely write more about this at some point.

The next morning, we traveled from southern Pennsylvania to the Binghamton, New York area. One of my oldest friends, Carol, along with her brother, sister, and other relatives, was having a celebration of life for Carol’s mom, Lillian Bakic, who died a few months ago. It was at a country club outside the city, which I had never been to.

A bunch of us got up and spoke briefly about Lillian, and I was feeling compelled to do so in part because Karen, who Carol and I have known since 1958, couldn’t make it because, bizarrely, there was a snowstorm in western Massachusetts. In April.

So obviously we didn’t make it to church. It was amusing that both my wife and I had people emailing or texting us, asking why they hadn’t seen us at church. We made it to church despite an ice storm and a threat of a snowstorm in February. We don’t come one weekend, and folks pointed it out.

Split screen

Two weeks later, on Friday night, there was an event at Wizard’s Wardrobe, where my wife works, to celebrate the tutors and other volunteers. I attended last year and had a good time.

However, the Underground Railroad Education Center (UREC) held an appreciation tea for those who have supported the program simultaneously. Congressman Paul Tonko was present and spoke briefly about recovering the IMLS and EPA funds that were allocated but DOGE-frozen.

At least three people asked me where my wife was, wanting to talk with her, needed to call her, mentioned they had seen her around, etc..

Later, my wife said that if I had been at the Wizard’s Wardrobe event and been on their team, maybe their team would have won the contest. There was a category about Beatles songs; the host would play 10-second snippets, and they had to pick the title. One was I’m Happy Just To Dance With You, which I realize could be a slightly tricky title. They also couldn’t name The Ballad Of John And Yoko.

There was also a question about the number of states that have a capital starting with the letter F. I didn’t know; the only one I could think of was Frankfort, KY, which turns out to be the only one. Someone else on their team had suggested Frankfort, but said it was the capital of Tennessee (which is Nashville), which didn’t sound right, so they went with the answer of ‘none’.

I have said this before: if people are bored, they are just not trying hard enough.

April rambling: humanity in motion

Metonymy and metalepsis

To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First. New estimates based on location data from Meta reveal a picture of humanity in motion.

‘60 Minutes’ Calls Out Paramount for Executive Producer’s Exit in Rare On-Air Rebuke; Has ’60 Minutes’ Run Out of Time? Shari Redstone’s Big Decision. The Paramount mogul is stuck in the middle of an impossible choice. Fight djt and blow up her $8 billion Skydance deal, or cave to the president and torch the most valuable news property in her media empire. Tick, tick, tick…

RFK Jr. & HHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Fraserherman: Why, yes, diversity is a plus.

In April in years ending in 5

1775: Ride Paul Ride – The 2025 Showdown between Patriots and Loyalists

1865: Lincoln assassination, end of the American Civil War

1925: The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was published, and Art Deco hit the international stage

1945: Hitler dies

1975: On April 30, “the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was taken by the army of North Vietnam, ending the conflict that had grown out of the Vietnamese war for independence from France and a proxy war for the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.”

1995: The bombing in Oklahoma City on April 19 killed 168 people. There was a woman I knew who worked for an SBDC in OKC. Her building was right across the street from the Murrah Building. She suffered severe injuries from flying glass and other items that acted as shrapnel. She wrote a very moving story about her recovery the following year, which I published in a newsletter. Another aftermath story, about forgiveness, I wrote about here.

The usual weird stuff

Three R’s: Resist. Rebel. Rebuild.

The US intensifies its crackdown on peaceful protests. Forty-one anti-protest bills in 22 states have been introduced since the start of 2025, according to the law tracker.

DEI Programs Are Lawful Under Federal Civil Rights Laws and Supreme Court Precedent

Pope Francis shames the crap out of JD Vance in final acts on earth; Pope dies at 88

A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

Team That Investigates Line-of-Duty Fire Deaths slashed; cuts will also halt a first-of-its-kind study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.

US FDA suspends milk quality tests amid workforce cuts

Law Firms Made Deals. Now He Wants More From Them

Environmental rollbacks would boost pollution and endanger lives

Congress’s Biggest Financial Priority Is “Stablecoin.” What the Hell Is That? Instead of tackling crashing markets, Congress is pushing a crypto sector in which FOTUS’ family is financially involved.

FOTUS Demands Investigations Into Negative Approval Rating Polls

Hegseth blames the ‘deep state’ for his being so bad at his job

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY. IMPEACH. HIM. AGAIN.

FOTUS, dementia, and the duty to warn

Also

Space Monsters #1 Kickstarter: “An all-new horror/sci-fi/fantasy magazine in a cool new format! The initial 200 copies will be serial numbered on the back cover.” by FantaCo Enterprises LLC

A collection of Street Academy of Albany / Harriet Gibbons High School yearbooks

From the Books: John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all memoir about her years running global policy for Facebook

My Mother, the Hollywood Scab

Wink Martindale, Prolific Game Show Host, Dies at 91

Will Hutchins, Star of ABC’s ‘Sugarfoot,’ Dies at 94

Jane Fonda is Far from Finished with Fitness or Activism

Oscars: Film Academy Establishes Stunt Design Award

Metonymy and metalepsis are two concepts that explain how we use substitutions in our speech.

Why are people never smiling in old photos?

The Oatmeal: Believe

Now I Know: Ben Franklin’s One Simple Trick to Save Sailors from Drowning and Maybe There Is an “I” in “Team” and The Childhood Terror That Turned Kind Of Nice and The Fashion Accessory That Prevents False Alarms and The Church of the World’s Oldest Tennis Ball

MUSIC

Lawyers, Guns, and Money – Warren Zevon

Traficano Rap – J Noa, LOWLIGHT

Streets of London by Ralph McTell

Tubthumping -Chumbawamba

Coverville 1530 The ABBA Cover Story V and 1531: The Buzzcocks Cover Story

Love In Real Life – Lizzo

Pump It Up -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Annabel Lee – Sarah Jarosz

Purple Haze – The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Party at Ground Zero – Fishbone

A garden of flourishing paths by Jeffrey Mumford

We Are The World -USA for Africa

Eine kleine nachtmusik

How ‘Star Wars’ Is Changing Its Tune

Movie review: The Ballad of Wallis Island

get the group back together

I was intrigued enough by the trailer for the film The Ballad of Wallis Island that my wife and I saw at the Spectrum 8 in Albany on Income Tax Day; Tuesdays are cheaper. Charles (Tim Key) is a quirky guy who lives alone on a large property on a remote island. He’s a massive fan of the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer (Tom Basden as Herb and Carey Mulligan as Nell).

So, he takes some of his lottery winnings and offers them the opportunity to play a private show at his home on Wallis Island. Do the bandmates and former lovers know that the other one is also coming?

It’s a straightforward concept, but it’s a joy to see the three characters interact; they have great chemistry. Charles is trying to keep the other two happy enough to play together again. He has adapted to his vaguely solitary life, but needed much more.

Nice

It seems almost dismissive to label The Ballad of Wallis Island charming and relatable. One critic notes that “it touches on the passage of time and grief of lost relationships.” The nostalgia of getting together segues into old tensions resurfacing. Another critic: “It was a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and a little bit sweet, all at the same time.”

If you’re a music fan, and the music is nice, you may lean into this idea: wouldn’t you like to be able to have your favorite band get together one more time?

The movie was directed by James Griffiths and written by actors Basden and Key. It also stars Sian Clifford as the shopkeeper. Executive producers – eight are listed – include Griffiths, Basden, Key, and Mulligan, so this is a passion project., as you can tell from this gestation story.

It’s only 100 minutes long, and it has a 97% positive rating with Rotten Tomatoes critics and 92% with moviegoers.

Interacting with Immigration Enforcement Officials

Welcoming, Protecting, and Preparing: A Congregational Guide

**Madison Avenue at Eagle Street, ALB, April 2025**

I became particularly interested in the subject of interacting with Immigration Enforcement Officials in recent weeks. In late March, a speaker at my church discussed their local entity, which holds a Department of Justice accreditation, enabling them to assist with applications for Asylum, Citizenship, Family reunification, Travel documents, Work authorization, and more.

However, the speaker reported that, since January 20, there have been reports of raids in my area at businesses, bus stops, and on public transportation. Fake job offers and phony attorneys are out there to deceive.

Private space

“In the performance of their immigration enforcement duties, an ICE agent may enter any area open to the general public.” So, how is that defined? From the Shelterforce document ICE Is Coming to Your Building—Are You Ready?:

Designate common areas as private spaces: If property, including a multifamily building lobby, courtyard, or other typically common area, is marked as being closed to the public, ICE agents cannot enter without a warrant. “So, for example, if you’ve got an apartment building, and the lobby doors are unlocked, anybody can enter the lobby. But, to go past the lobby, if they need to have a key card, or it’s marked ‘residents only’ or something, then they’re not allowed to enter those types of areas without either [a warrant or] permission from somebody who has the right to give it—that would usually be either a tenant or, if it’s a common area, it could be the owner. But they can’t just go in to the private areas,” Eric Dunn, director of litigation for National Housing Law Project, says.

Signs

“So one step is to make sure that in multifamily-type buildings, any common areas are marked with signage or barriers and fences to make clear which parts are public space and what parts are private areas so that ICE agents can’t just start walking up and down the halls looking for people.” Unfortunately, Trump’s racist rhetoric and deportation actions have emboldened ICE agents, who’ve been documented disregarding private spaces and declining to produce warrants. Additionally, although adding signage—such as ‘Restricted Area: Residents and Employees Only’—is a good idea, Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm focused on civil rights and racial and economic justice, cautions that “signs alone may not make an area legally private.” It’s recommended that building owners work with an attorney to draft legally defensible policies.

Response

If an ICE agent approaches staff in a public area of a facility or work
location, staff should do the following:

Ask the ICE agent for identification (“Can I see your ID, please?”). If the agent provides valid identification, note the agent’s name, title,
badge number, and agency. Take a photograph or make a copy of the
agent’s ID, if possible. Also, ask for and note the name and telephone
number of the agent’s supervisor, if possible.

Shelterforce: “When passing along info, these groups suggest using the S.A.L.U.T.E. acronym to make sure you document all relevant information:

S is for size: How many agents are in the group?
A is for activity: What are the agents doing?
L is for location: Where are the agents?
U is for uniform: What are the agents wearing?
T is for time: What is the date and time of day?
E is for equipment: Do the agents have weapons?”

• If, after presenting valid identification, an ICE agent asks questions of staff about an employee or other individual, staff should state, “I am
not authorized to answer your questions.” The reason for declining to answer is to protect the privacy of employees and patrons.

What to Do if ICE Comes to Your Church

Sojourners has shared a valuable and detailed document. Rev. Minna Bothwell, who pastors the Capitol Hill Lutheran Church in downtown Des Moines, IA, was motivated to create Welcoming, Protecting, and Preparing: A Congregational Guide. “As people of faith,” Bothwell explained, “we are called to provide sanctuary, welcome the stranger, and uphold the dignity of all people, holding both joy and sorrow without discrimination…

“Once I received confirmation that the materials were legally sound, I began sharing them online,” Bothwell said, “recognizing that many faith communities were urgently seeking reliable guidance amid widespread misinformation.”

Also: The ACLU notes, “Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant and how to express them.”

Once again, I recommended an Oscar-nominated short film. “A Lien brings you into the tense, intimate moment of a green card interview that could change three people’s lives forever.” It gets very intense and entirely believable. You can see the film for free here or here. Here’s an interview with the directors.

US citizen told to self-deport: ‘They want immigrants to be uncomfortable here.’ Nicole Micheroni is an immigration attorney and a U.S. citizen born and raised in Massachusetts. Federal immigration authorities wrongfully detain U.S. citizens.

The Kafkaesque Case of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez Is a Warning to Us All. In a clear case of racial profiling, immigration police in Florida unlawfully arrested and held a U.S.-born citizen.

Judge says 2-year-old US citizen appears to have been deported with ‘no meaningful process’.

Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media

From Heather Cox Richardson: “FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at the courthouse this morning in what, as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, appeared to be an attempt to draw attention and to illustrate that judges ‘must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.'”