Ramblin' with Roger

Bathroom monitors

Chris Wallace calls the “bathroom bills” a “solution in search of a problem.”

In the United States, we’ve been reading about all sorts of laws passed by state legislatures, in North Carolina and Mississippi, and elsewhere that discriminate against LGBT citizens. Entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams have canceled concerts there, which I find a good and proper thing to do, as Arthur can explain.

I’m against laws that discriminate, of course. But I believe an element of these bills is based on some callow, unsubstantiated fear of transgender people molesting others in bathrooms. Someone commented, cheekily, that more Republican politicians than trans people have been arrested for sex acts in bathrooms.

For me, I would like to suggest a much more prosaic reason to oppose these particular ordinances: they cannot work.

The North Carolina governor has set up a hotline to report anyone not using the correct bathroom. And how is this supposed to work, exactly? Will they borrow some of those discredited TSA screening devices and hire bathroom monitors to check out who has what body parts?

Transgender people are already using the restrooms that correspond to their gender appearance and almost no one even knows the difference. The idea that, suddenly, one has to go by the gender on one’s birth certificate is impractical. Will we require that somebody check IDs before they go into the loo?

Some customers may boycott Target over its transgender-friendly bathroom policy. They have the right to do this, but I have to wonder how many of these people KNOW any transgender folks. Chris Wallace, Fox News host, calls the “bathroom bills” a “solution in search of a problem.”

One of the oddly transformative moments in my life was taking a charter bus from New Paltz, NY to Washington, DC to attend an antiwar rally c. 1972. At some stop very near our destination (Delaware?), we made a pit stop.

We had a finite amount of time, so, as the line to the women’s bathroom started to get long, several of the women started using the men’s room. This was an obviously logical thing to do.

Such simple logic should be brought to the current debate.

The Lydster: Feeling the Bern

I swear I saw Joe Bruno.

On Monday, April 11, not one but THREE Presidential candidates were going to be in the Capital District of New York State: John Kasich (R), Bernie Sanders (D), and Donald Drumpf (R). A day or two before, The Daughter started wheedling me – why didn’t she bug her mother? – to see one of them, the one alphabetically last.

I said no. I said no because I was afraid she might get hurt. She said that no one was going to hurt a little girl, but I noted that she is taller than most adult women. She should watch him on television. (I was also afraid I might get hurt, but I didn’t bring that up.)

Her counter-proposal was to see Bernie Sanders. I noted that he too would be on TV, and he was speaking during the school day.

“But it would be educational!”

She wanted ME to contact her teacher to ask if she could go, but I said she could go if SHE asked her teacher and she said yes; she can be shy in these matters.

Monday morning, I had to get a blood test, which I ended up going to TWICE because I forgot my insurance card the first time. I kept checking my email to see if her teacher contacted me. The Wife came home early – she had an eye test in the early afternoon – and she checked HER email, where she received a positive response from the teacher to MY inquiry.

By this time, it was already noon. The Washington Armory opened at 11 a.m., and the rally was at 2 p.m. I got the Daughter out of school. The Wife dropped us a block from the Armory, because I figure the traffic at Washington and Lark would be crazy, and so it was.

We went to the end of the line, which was down Washington Avenue, across Dove Street, up Elk Street to behind the armory; had we realized, we would have gone the shorter route.

I engaged a young man, 33, behind us in conversation. We decided that this was very educational for the Daughter, because it addressed sociology (the nature of the crowd), history, political science, meteorology (it was very windy, raining briefly; his girlfriend was freezing), and undoubtedly other disciplines.

A green car drove by a couple times, with Drumpf USA, etc. painted in splotchy white, as though he’d used a huge bottle of Wite-Out. It had two huge American flags.

Even as the Armory was in sight, I knew the capacity of the Washington Armory was 3000 for basketball games, maybe 1000 more for something like this, and that we probably wouldn’t get in. This turned out to be the case.

Still, we stuck around. I ran into my friends Dan and Lynne. I bought The Daughter a Feel the Bern T-shirt and a couple buttons.

She started taking notes, as we listened to the activities inside via a couple speakers that kept cutting out. The audio in front stopped playing music, and we heard, “I’m sorry the venue wasn’t big enough.”

BERNIE CAME OUT!

He gave a seven-minute speech on his main topics: end fracking, Medicare for all, free college, climate change is real. “We can’t spend trillions in Iraq while we leave our cities at home.” Some families are spending 50-60% on housing each month. There’s too much police violence. We need a $15 per hour minimum wage.

He noted that movements develop from the bottom up: trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights.

After that, we caught a bus and went home, and watched the last 50 minutes of the speech on TV. We also saw Kasich speak in Troy.

The Wife took us out to dinner; it was quite good. In another room, I swear I saw Joe Bruno, the former state Senate Majority Leader, surrounded by a dozen others.

The Daughter was trying to rush The Wife home, because she (and I) wanted to watch The Donald. He didn’t say anything in that way he generally does: read some reviews. All in all, an excellent day.

The next day, The Daughter confessed that she didn’t REALLY wanted to see Donald, she wanted to see Bernie, but used the DJT request as an opening salvo in what she REALLY wanted. Well played, Daughter, but I would have said yes to Bernie, eventually, even without the chicanery.

P is for photography of the Civil War

Civil War photography changed war from something remote to something with visceral impact.

Photography of the Civil War has fascinated me for many years. Wikipedia says: “The American Civil War was the fifth war in history to be photographed [without specifying the first four], and was the most widely covered conflict of the 19th century.” The most famous photographer of the conflict was Mathew Brady, but there were several other men behind the camera.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: President Abraham Lincoln “called up 75,000 militiamen to put down an insurrection of Southern states,” in what proved to be a painfully optimistic assessment of the length of the struggle. “

“Brady secured permission from Lincoln to follow the troops in what was expected to be a short and glorious war.” Ultimately, Brady instead financed a corps of field photographers who, together with those employed by the Union military command and by Alexander Gardner, made the first extended photographic coverage of a war.

“The terrible contest proceeded erratically; just as the soldiers learned to fight this war in the field, so the photographers improvised their reports. Because the battlefields were too chaotic and dangerous for the painstaking wet-plate procedures to be carried out, photographers could depict only strategic sites camp scenes, preparations for or retreat from action, and, on rare occasions, the grisly aftermath of battle.”

Yes, this picture is likely who you think it is. Check out how to replicate the wet-plate process today.

It is clear that photography of the Civil War changed war from something remote to something with visceral impact.

The Library of Congress has an online collection [which] “provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath.” Some of them are much more gruesome than what you see here.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Keeper of the FantaCo flame

Annamae Hebert was a real mom, in the best meaning of the word, even to me.

The interesting and unexpected result of this blog is that I’ve become a keeper of the flame for things related to FantaCo, the comic book store where I worked from 1980 to 1988, and its early staff. A fellow named Jim Abbott emailed this picture of a sign by Raoul Vezina (d. 1983), the great artiste of Smilin’ Ed.

Jim writes: “I doubt you’ve seen this. It was on the front of 279 Fair Street in Kingston [NY], owned by my friend, the late Bruce Talbott, of New Paltz [NY – my college town]. I don’t know if his widow still has it in her garage or not. Take care.” Thanks, Jim.

In that vein, I should note:

My friend Penny, who is married to former FantaCo employee Broome – he who came in late to work on his first day at FantaCo so he could go on a first date with her – recently went to the hospital for appendicitis and a hernia. There are some complications; still I dare say Penny is faring better than Broome in this process.

FantaCo’s owner, Tom Skulan, lost his dad, Thomas, on April 20. I did not know him well, but Tom and his brother Joe spoke eloquently about his intelligence, eclectic nature, and love of music. Joe posted a version of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony – 2nd movement, which is one of my all-time favorites.

John Hebert, who drew and scripted the FantaCo comic book Sold Out that Tom Skulan and I co-wrote, suffered the passing of his mother Annamae. She was widowed at a young age and was left to raise her son John alone.

Her obit said, “The major highlight in Annamae’s life was when she became a grandmother for the first time at the age of 80.” That was probably true. I’d see her at comic book shows, or at Free Comic Book Day at Earthworld Comics in Albany with John, perhaps with his wife Jodi and one or more of her grandkids.

She was a real mom, in the best meaning of the word, even to me, and very proud of her son. I enjoyed the time I spent with her, as she was quite delightful.

And speaking of passings:

Prince, who died at the age of fifty-frickin’-seven, was a massive part of the soundtrack of my FantaCo days, and well beyond. I own on vinyl this extended, almost otherworldly, version of Let’s Go Crazy, which, naturally, I can’t find online, and I’m OK with that. Here are some articles from the Los Angeles Times, plus my source for an appropriate sign on a Tulsa, OK church. I will probably revisit this topic once I get over the shock and sadness.

I never watched Everybody Loves Raymond very much. But I was a huge fan of actress Doris Roberts, in dozens of TV appearances, plus her regular gig on Remington Steele. But she was tremendous in her single appearance on the first season (1982) of St. Elsewhere, as a homeless woman taking care of another mentally ill homeless man played by James Coco; they both won Emmys for the roles. I have the episode on DVD and need to watch it again.

Music Throwback Saturday: Black and White

Their robes were black, their heads were white
The schoolroom doors were closed so tight
Were closed up tight

Back in February, SamuraiFrog wrote about the song Black and White. It was a big hit by the band Three Dog Night.

I disliked that version, though it went to #1 in 1972. Mr. Frog highlighted a version by a UK reggae group called Greyhound; this was their first single in 1971, a UK #6 hit, and a better iteration.

What I did not know about the song was that it was popularized by Pete Seeger in the 1950s. It was about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision banning segregated educational facilities.

It was written that very year by David I. Arkin, father of actor Alan Arkin, and Earl Robinson.

The lyrics in both the Seeger and 3DN version start off the same:

The ink is black
The page is white
Together we learn
To read and write
To read and write.

But the Seeger version has:

Their robes were black, their heads were white
The schoolroom doors were closed so tight
Were closed up tight

Nine judges all, set down their names
To end the years and years of shame
Years of shame

Both versions:

The slate is black
The chalk is white
The words stand out
So clear and bright
So clear and bright.

Seeger version:

And now at last, we plainly see
The alphabet of liberty
Liberty

The 3DN has changed the middle line to “We’ll have a dance of liberty”

Both:

A child is black
A child is white
The whole world looks
Up on the sight
A beautiful sight.

Obviously, the Seeger version was far more explicit in its intent. Or it was considered too dated a reference to use a decade and a half later.

LISTEN to Black and White

Pete Seeger: here or here
Maytones here or here
Three Dog Night: here

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