Occasionally, my web page has gone down. It was annoying, not so much because I couldn’t have my purple prose seen, but because, almost always, I was trying to write some NEW ramblings.
I know the vendor, in fixing the last problem, suspended someone’s user account “for CPU overage,” whatever THAT means.
And I can’t always tell whether it’s a problem with my Internet at home – which has also failed me – or the blog itself. So I email a list of trusted folks and ask them, re my site, “Is it down for everyone or just me?” Unfortunately, almost always, it’s down for everyone.
I do back up my blog every month, or three, but still, it’s a pain.
As it turns out, I noticed that another website was down recently. I wrote on the closed Facebook discussion page, “Is it down for everyone or just me?” Someone wrote This is always a handy check and pointed to down for everyone or just me.com. There are similar sites, such as Is It Down Right Now.
Oddly, when I went to Is It Down, when a blogger I know was down in May, it showed: “[URL] is not down. (it took me 0.02 seconds to check, if it is down for you, go shout at your IT support or ISP). BTW: The status code I got was 502, which means that there is something wrong with URL or site.” To me, that means the site is not working.
At least the first two sites will be, I’m afraid, quite useful in the future.
Every Mother’s Son did have three other Top 100 songs in the US, two from their second, less successful collection, the imaginatively-named Every Mother’s Son’s Back
The band Every Mother’s Son was likely, depending on how you define it, a one-hit wonder. Come On Down To My Boat was the only Top 40 Billboard hit for the New York group, comprised of brothers Dennis Larden (vocals) and Larry Larden (guitar), who had originally performed as a folk duo, plus Bruce Milner (keyboards), Christopher Augustine (drums), and Schuyler Larsen (bass).
The #6 hit on the Billboard charts was originally recorded by a group called The Rare Breed, which apparently was one iteration of a group called the Ohio Express, but that lineage is too complicated to go into here.
The latter version of Come On Down To My Boat appears on Every Mother’s Son’s eponymous first album, which got to #117 on the Billboard album charts. The single went to #3 in Canada and #26 in Australia.
From the Wikipedia: “Because the group was signed to MGM Records, MGM Television… decided to feature the group in a two-part episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., ‘The Karate Killers (The Five Daughters Affair),’ singing the song in a nightclub as a fight breaks out.”
But Every Mother’s Son did have three other Top 100 songs in the US, two from their second, less successful collection, the imaginatively named Every Mother’s Son’s Back, which failed to dent the Top 200 album charts. Put Your Mind At Ease, which has a riff that reminds one of Pleasant Valley Sunday by The Monkees that had come out earlier in 1967, got to #46 in the US, though made it to #8 in Canada. Pony with the Golden Mane only got to #93 US, #41 in Canada.
No One Knows, apparently, a non-album cut from 1968, only got to #98.
“Researchers concluded that ‘less agreeable people are more sensitive to grammatical errors, while more conscientious and less open people are sensitive to typos.’
“Overall, extroverts were more forgiving of both types of errors, and introverts were especially harsh about messages that contained typos. ” Not incidentally, the article is intentionally filled with typos.
Surely, science has proven I must be both disagreeable AND introverted. The very day I read the article, someone wrote on Facebook, in response to a politician he did not like, “Looser!” What he MEANT was “Loser” and I KNEW that, but I felt a bit dismissive of the comment, perhaps because a single invective isn’t very insightful.
I groan, rather than chuckle, when I see the protest signs demanding that immigrants know English, but spell moron “morans.” Go to Google images and type in misspelled tea party protest signs. Here’s an example.
“Previous studies have shown that we tend to judge people who make writing errors as ‘less conscientious, intelligent, and trustworthy.'” True enough; angry people need to get their sines write; I mean, their signs write.
I’ve noticed more errors of fact in online newspapers. Speed gets in the way of accuracy. A story mentioned the “six minutes between 11:49 a.m. and noon.” I wrote to an editor I know personally to get it fixed, not as a taunt, but because it’s good to get it correct. Still, it DID hurt my head, but only slightly.
I’m much more patient with bloggers who produce regularly. Having my own problem with typos is a function of my brain operating faster than my fingers. I have learned to try to have the word NOT in any sentence, because I’m most likely to leave it out, totally changing the meaning.
If someone has written about the American Civil War and writes 1683 – this actually happened recently – I KNOW the guy KNOWS the actual date of 1863, and correct him, privately.
Bless them, The Wife and The Daughter had slept through this incident.
Window
It’s 3 a.m., and I’ve been awake for about a half-hour. My general pattern is that I get up for about an hour, go to the office, read my emails, visit other blogs, maybe check Facebook, then go back to bed.
I hear a BAM! but can’t tell if it’s inside or outside, or really, from what direction. BAM! what the heck is that? BAM! I get up to investigate.
I ascertain that something, or someone, is banging on the window in the second-floor apartment directly across from our bathroom, a distance of about my height, six feet.
CRASH! The distinct sound of breaking glass. I throw on a pair of pants, and go outside, looking down the alley. CRASH! Someone is breaking the window from the inside.
I call 911. There is a non-emergency number, but at this hour, I worry that 1) there is a fire, and someone has to try to get out; 2) there’s domestic violence taking place; 3) there’s a crazy person who’s going to next break OUR window less than a couple of meters away; or 4) who knows what?
The police arrive quickly, but by this time the window breaking has stopped. I alert one officer to where the activity had been. They go in, but she, and her roommates, had gone outside. Some of the other tenants are also outside; at least one of them had been listening to music through his headphones, and was oblivious to the breakage, but heard the cops come in.
Sitting on my porch, I can’t catch much of the conversation, but I do clearly the young woman in question say to one of the policemen, “It’s illegal to break your own window?” Well, 1) it’s really not your window, it’s your landlord’s, and 2) you are, at minimum, disturbing the peace. Specifically, mine.
After ascertaining that no one is imperiled, the cops depart. No one was arrested, as far as I know. Now I’m so adrenalized that I can’t get back to sleep until about 6 a.m.
In the morning, when I can see better, I find large chunks of glass in the common alleyway. One piece, about the size of a standard magazine, was wedged vertically into the ground. This means that if a stray animal had wandered by, it could have been killed.
The implement of destruction was a plastic fan, one the face diameter of a dinner plate. The plastic frame was in the alley, but the motor was wedged between two layers of glass. The screen had been shredded as well. This was a very inefficient weapon to use to smash a window.
At 8 a.m., I called the absentee landlord and relayed the story. He seemed calm but based on arguments we’ve heard him have with his tenants in the past, the meeting with the offending tenant will be loud. He cleaned up the mess before I got home from work Monday night.
It wasn’t until I had hung up with him that I noticed that there are at least three cut marks on the aluminum siding of our house that had not been there before.
Bless them, The Wife and The Daughter had slept through this incident. The previous building owners, who lived there, sold the house to a guy who has subdivided it into student housing, featuring a rolling number of people I cannot keep track of.
Ever since, the Wife has had a dream to buy that house and rent it to model tenants. I have no desire to be a landlord myself, and, best I can tell, the building is not for sale anyway. Oh, and we can’t afford to buy and renovate it anyway.
It didn’t feel like the place I went to at least a half dozen times growing up.
July 11, 2016, Corning, New York
When I was a child growing up in Binghamton, NY, our family would travel approximately every other year about 75 miles on Route 17 to the Corning Museum of Glass, founded in 1951. I remember that it was really cool to see these guys – don’t remember any women – work behind these “windowed wall behind which guests could watch glassworking in the Steuben factory.” Even though we were protected, we could still feel, and see, the heat.
The place my family visited wasn’t anything like this. It looked more a museum, rather than a working factory, with a demonstration of glassmaking – that was done by a couple of young women -that could be done on a cruise ship, which in fact, IS a service that the folks at the museum can do.
We saw what makes glass breakable or shatter-resistant, and viewed some lovely pieces on display. The Daughter made a nightlight, designed like a cat, delivered to our house before we made it back home. It was a fun and educational experience. But it didn’t feel like the place I went to at least a half dozen times growing up.
It wasn’t. “In June of 1972, disaster struck as tropical storm Agnes emptied a week’s worth of rain into the surrounding Chemung River Valley. The river overflowed its banks and poured five feet of floodwater into the Museum. When the waters receded, staff members found glass objects tumbled in their cases and crusted with mud, the library’s books swollen with water. At the time, Buechner described the flood as ‘possibly the greatest single catastrophe borne by an American museum.'” The updated facility has a line on the glass near the entrance of the flood line, about five feet from the ground.
I remember that flood. When I got out of the hospital after a car accident, my father drove me past the Union-Endicott football field. Even from the highway, one could see how much water was covering the surface.
If you go to the Corning Museum of Glass, you can park in the visitors’ center, then walk, or take the short shuttle ride to the museum. The next stop is the Rockwell Museum, which does not appear to have anything to do with Norman. It’s a small museum of American art. The current displays included Celebrating 100 Years of the National Park Service. The permanent exhibit features a history of guns.
My appreciation of this place was enhanced by the swarm of incoming freshmen, plus their student escorts in a bonding experience.
Stop #4 on the shuttle is in charming Corning, where we got hot dogs. Then back to the visitors center.
And both places were free! Well, not exactly gratis, but because we are Supporters of the Albany Institute of History & Art, we also get an annual membership to the North American Reciprocal Museum Program, which gives us “free admission and other benefits at more than 500 museums throughout the United States and Canada.”
Occasionally, my web page has gone down. It was annoying, not so much because I couldn’t have my purple prose seen, but because, almost always, I was trying to write some NEW ramblings. 
