Ramblin' with Roger

Friday Funnies: The Black Comic Book, Pt. 3

I laughed out loud at this one, perhaps because of the linguistic parallel construction.

More on The ~~Colored Negro~~ Black Comic Book by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon.

Note: in the comic strip tradition all the words in the strip are in capitals, but for readability, I’ve deigned to write in standard English. Also the words that are in bold in the strip are in red in this text.

“Mother Eartha”, a 4 page response to “Mary Worth”

Page 1:

Page 2, Panel 1:
Young woman: Oh, Aunt Mother Eartha, my husband has been out of work for months – with no job in sight…
Page 2, Panel 2:
(Shot of the coffee pot, young woman’s hand pouring java into Eartha’s cup)
Young woman: – our unemployment checks stopped coming, the welfare payments are low, our bills keep climbing-

Page 3, Panel 1:
Young woman: -my son’s lost heart and is fighting the system – taking dope rioting….
Page 3, Panel 2:
Young woman (on sofa, in background): – my daughter’s pregnant again and her husband lost his job- oh – oh –ooh

Page 4

IS MISSING FROM THE BOOK! How does this end? I wish I knew! Anyone near the library at Michigan State University want to tell me how this concludes?

***

Dark Racey, a 4-page take on “Dick Tracy”.

There is no table of contents, or for that matter, pagination, the only reason I know the name of the next story is from the citation at MSU. Of course, page 1 of this story is missing as well.

Page 2:

Page 3, Panel 1:
Racy: -Perhaps you suspect someone on your own police force?
Sheriff: This boy’s seen too many movies?
Page 3, Panel 2
(Sheriff firing gun: Bam Wam Fam Jam

Page 4:
(Racy on the ground in a pool of blood, three holes in head and shoulder, word “holes” with arrows pointing to them. Another cop stands at attention.)
Sheriff: See that the murderer gets to the morgue…

This is obvious a take on “In the Heat of the Night”, yet another Sidney Poitier movie, but with a…different outcome. Disturbing, believable, but not particularly funny.

***

“King Coal”, a 4-page retort to The Little King.

Page 1

Page 2, Panel 1
The crowd: Long live the King of Liberalia!
The photographer (in foreground talking to a man in a hat): How magnificent! A black king!
Page 2, Panel 2:
Man in hat: That’s because Liberarians are a great liberal people!

Page 3, Panel 1:
Photographer: Where is the king of Liberalia’s castle?
Man in hat: Over yonder kill.
Page 3, Panel 2:
Photographer sweats up the hill.
Page 3, Panel 2:
Photographer: !

Page 4:
King entering decrepit castle with clotheslines running from crooked turrets to adjoining building and a couple with a baby in clothes with patches.

If you thought taking shots at liberals was a recent activity, think again. A real “gotcha” strip, which I liked all right.

***
“Charcoal Chin”, a 4 page reply to “Charlie Chan”. Was this ever a strip, or just a series of movies?

Page 1:

Page 2, Panel 1:
Charcoal (to son)” – And, as it is added in the great proverbs – “We are all blacks…”
Page 2, Panel 2:
Charcoal (looking at bullet):…we are all Orientals, we are all Eskimos…

Page 3, Panel 1:
Charcoal (to son):…we are all Parisians…we are all New Yorkers-
Page 3, Panel 2:
Page 3, Panel 2:
Son: -And, I suppose, Pop – we are all whites?
Charcoal: Taxi!

Page 4
Taxi driver gives Chins the raspberry. Logo- Bigot & Redneck Taxi Corp. Rates .45 ½ mile.
Charcoal: – To every rule, my son – there is an exception – and, like Confucius say, boy, have you found it!

As I recall, there was a feeling in 1970 that people of color were in the same boat. Don’t think that perception is nearly so true today.
The person cited in the first panel was JFK, of course. A number of comic book (and other) people nearly deified the martyred President, maybe not over who he was, but over who he might have become.
***
“Blackman and Crow”, a 4-page rendition of “Batman and Robin”

Page 1:

Page 2, Panel 1:
Minstrel: ‘Member? [Sings]Wayy down ‘pon the Swa-nee Ri-buh-
Crow: Let’s take him, Blackman!
Blackman: [hums] Hm-mm
Page 2, Panel 2:
Minstrel: ‘Member – [Sings] -in mah ol’ Kin-tucky hooome
Blackman (smiling, singing): La-de
Robin scowls.

Page 3, Panel 1:
Blackman and Minstrel [singing]: Oool’ Black Joooe-
Page 3, Panel 2:
Crow’s hand firing a gun
Gun noise: Crack! Ack! Tack! Lack

Page 4:
Blackman, Minstrel dead on the floor, four bullet holes in the back wall, which has a framed photo, signed Love, Stepin.
Crow: This damn generation gap is something else!!
A diminutive Pogo (looking at deceased): My!

This story seemed to be addressing the struggle in the civil rights movement at the time, between the NAACP/Urban League old-line organizations, and the Black Panthers and other more militant groups. The old-timers were still following the model of the late Martin Luther King, while the younger folks believed, “By any means necessary.”

For me, this was one of the most fully realized takes, possibly because of my deep awareness of the Batman mythos.

The reference of Stepin was to Stepin Fetchit, a controversial black actor known for his stereotypical portrayals of a black minstrel.

***

“Boll Weevil Barley”, a 4-page take on “Beetle Bailey”:

Page 1:
Boll Weevil (to no one in particular, though black versions of Zero and Killer are around): This is a mighty weird comic strip.

Page 2:

Page 3:
Killer-type (turns head): Oop! You had to open your big fat mouth!
Boll Weevil (thinking): ?

Page 4:
Boll Weevil and Killer-type are saluting white Sarge, while black cook looks on.

This again addresses the large percentage of blacks in the armed forces in Vietnam, usually at the lowest levels, as “grunts” rather than officers.

***

“Darkie”, a 4-page variation on “Archie”.

Page 1:
Jughead: Gee, it’s groovy having a new kid in town, Darkie-
Darkie: thanks- it’s groovy being here!

Page 2

Page 3, Panel 1:
Guys in silhouette.
Jughead: Where do you live, Darkie?
Page 3, Panel 2:
Darky: Just down the block, too.

Page 4:
Darky: -Mine’s the one with the white pickets!
Jughead (jaw dropping): !
Pickets holding signs that say:
Out! Out! Out!
Keep Out!
Live with your own kind
Leave white to white
Don’t let them besmirch our town

The use of the name “Darkie” must have been rather controversial at the time, for it was a term used as an insult to black people.

That said, I laughed out loud at this one, perhaps because of the linguistic parallel construction “White picket fence”/”White pickets”. I also love the word “besmirch” in this context, since it was the pickets who were doing the besmirching. Also, Darkie is quite matter-of-fact about the protest, unlike his new friend.

Compare and contrast, as my old English teacher used to say, Fred’s review of Little Archie.

Previously used on February 12 and 19, 2006.

Grammar nerd, moi?

I HATE it when “they” misspell Binghamton, my hometown.

I’ve been called worse things than a grammar nerd. One of my sisters posted on Facebook, “This is you dear brother.”

But am I, REALLY?

1. The little I text I’m willing to use “2” for “to” or “too,” mostly because I’m a worse typist on that device than on a computer. My fingers cramp up, which is one reason I HATE texting.

2. I suppose I am an “honorary proofreader” for AmeriNZ and Jaquandor and SamuraiFrog, and they do the same for me.

3. It is true that I know the difference between affect and effect.

4. I DON’T correct public signs, but I’m sorely tempted. Also, and I’ve done this since I was a kid, I find “End Work Zone” signs uproariously funny. I visualize people picketing the fact that people are working. Now “end of work zone” wouldn’t have that affect, I mean effect.

5. I’m mortified by typos, yet it happens often enough that I just grind my teeth and move on. This, I will attest, is likewise true of some of my blogging colleagues.

6. Oxford comma: generally unnecessary, unless it is. But speaking of commas, I would have put one between “you” and “dear” in the sentence at the top of the page.

7. I’ve been to Grammarly, but don’t follow it.

8. I don’t do a lot of hashtags on social media, and the ones I do are work-related.

9. I find double negatives less cringe worthy and more confusing, especially as an interrogative.

10. I DO edit magazines and newspapers I read. Oh, and when I see one of those funny things on Facebook, and something is misspelled – it’s usually “weird” – it takes me out of it. And I almost never SHARE it, for that reason alone, even when I would otherwise re-send.

Worst problem, of course, is its/it’s. Apostrophes in general are misused.

And I HATE it when “they” misspell Binghamton, my hometown, as Binghampton. I remember seeing that on a map of Pennsylvania, which the city is near. It was spelled CORRECTLY on the New York State map.

Are YOU a grammar nerd?

Haunted computers

SOMETHING is emanating from our house that risked disconnecting not just our service, but the service of a dozen and a half other customers in our neighborhood.

My friend Broome posted the xkcd cartoon above on his Facebook page. He explained that his astonishingly patient wife is “the only one who believes me when I say I experience certain things, people and places differently, like this great restaurant that always serves me uneatable food,…or haunted computers…or…”

I totally relate. At work, I have my computer switched out more often than anyone. I used to believe that I had some sort of electromagnetism that wore down the functionality of electronic devices.

I got an Android tablet from work a few years ago, but in a few months, it stopped working. I bought another one, and it lasted just as long before refusing to charge. My current Amazon Fire is operable so far, knock my forehead.

And it’s not just me, it’s my house.

As I’ve noted, I’ll walk down the street talking on my cellphone fine – assuming it doesn’t read “Low Battery,” which it often does, even when I hadn’t turned it on. Walking into the house, the signal nearly dies. This is a problem when I’m calling Time Warner Cable to report the Internet and phone is out.

Two weeks after I contacted the company, a TWC repair guy came to our house to fix the service that was no longer in need of repair. The bottom line: remember a couple of weeks ago when I joked that I wondered “whether the outage had anything to do with the TWC truck that was in front of our house just before the service went down”? Well, it DID!

Apparently, SOMETHING is emanating from our house that risked disconnecting not just our service, but the service of a dozen and a half other customers in our neighborhood. It could have been the cable connected to an old TV (not the case) or other factors.

Rather than having all of our neighbors losing service, and them contacting TWC, TWC sent a “repair” person up the utility pole to disconnect OUR service! And didn’t even tell us! The guy at my door arrived to fix the problem, assuming I hadn’t noticed the service had been out for a fortnight.

My house and I break cable services, and Android tablets, and all sorts of electronic devices. I’m not computerphobic; it’s just my electrons mucking up everything.

xkcd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

O is for Oscar the cat

Oscar the cat’s sense of smell may be just one explanation.

Oscar the cat lives in the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He is, by all accounts, “notoriously anti-social.”

That is, until, he cuddles up with residents in their final dying days. “After about six months, the staff noticed that Oscar, just like the doctors and nurses, would make his own rounds. Oscar would sniff and observe patients, then curl up to sleep with certain ones. The patients he would sleep with often died within several hours of his arrival.”

The story was even written up in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine back in 2007, A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat by David M. Dosa, M.D., M.P.H. Dr. Dosa believes that Oscar “might be picking up on specific odors surrounding death.”

Some animal behavior experts say the explanation about Oscar sensing a smell associated with dying is a plausible one. “I suspect he is smelling some chemical released just before dying,” says Margie Scherk, a veterinarian in Vancouver, British Columbia and president of the American Association of Feline Practitioners…

“And cats can certainly detect illness.” Dr. Jill Goldman, a certified applied animal behaviorist in Laguna Beach, California says that “Cats have a superb sense of smell,” adding that keeping a dying patient company may also be learned behavior. “There has been ample opportunity for him to make an association between ‘that’ smell [and death]”…

The sense of smell may, however, be just one explanation. Dr. Daniel Estep, a certified applied animal behaviorist in Littleton, Colorado suggests that “One of the things that happens with people who are dying is that they are not moving around much. Maybe the cat is picking up on the fact that the person on the bed is very quiet. It may not be smell or sounds, but just the lack of movement.”

The story of Oscar the cat was not without controversy, as in this review of Dr. Dosa’s 2010 book, Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat would indicate. “The NEJM piece was an essay and in no sense a scientific article, which raises questions about why it was published. If we expected the book to provide something resembling scientific evidence, we are again disappointed.”

In any case, Oscar was still at work, as of this March 2015 Redbook article. Here’s a short video, and Oscar’s Facebook page.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Schuyler Flatts: reburying enslaved people in Albany County, NY

“The bones [of the 14] rested on a shelf at the State Museum for the past 10 years while researchers pieced together what limited information they could using DNA analysis.”

Back on June 5th, 2005, the remains of more than a dozen 18th Century African slaves were found buried at the former Capital Region estate of the Schuyler Family, which was known as Schuyler Flatts. They were discovered during construction work in the Town of Colonie, Albany County, NY off Route 32 near Menands/Watervliet.

Archaeologists studying this unmarked burial ground “discovered 13 sets of remains plus another set of remains was found in 1998.”

In 2010, bioarchaeological analysis was completed by the NYS Museum. The analyses determined that the remains are about 200 years old and represent 6 women, 1 man, 2 children, and five infants.

DNA analysis concluded that four of the individuals are of African descent. (West/East and Central Africa) Two sets of remains are descendants of women from Madagascar (off the coast of Southeast Africa). One individual, who may have been of mixed ancestry, was descendant from a Native American woman (possibly Micmac Tribe: Eastern Canada and the Northeastern corner of the United States).

The burial ground was dated between the 1700s and early 1800s. Historical research indicates that the burial ground was part of a large estate owned by the colonial Schuyler family who owned a number of slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Yes, this would be the same Schuyler family that Alexander Hamilton married into.

From a Times Union story by Paul Grondahl, which contains lots of details about the Schuylers: “In 1790, there were 217 households in Albany County that owned five or more slaves of African descent, a portion of the county’s 3,722 slaves, the most of any county among New York state’s 21,193 slaves counted in that year’s census.”

The graphic below is actually of the enslaved people in ALL of New York State.

Slaves in Albany
Create column charts

“The bones [of the 14] rested on a shelf at the State Museum for the past 10 years while researchers pieced together what limited information they could using DNA analysis. Their names were never recorded and virtually nothing is known about their history.”

The Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground Project is organizing an official interment of the remains of the fourteen, in order for these people to be buried with dignity and respect, even as work is being done to try to find other remains.

Upcoming Events

Public Meeting and Artist Presentation
April 30, 2016 1pm-3pm
New York State Museum (Huxley theatre), 222 Madison Ave, Albany

The Remains Will Lie in State
June 17, 2016 12pm-8pm
Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, 32 Catherine St, Albany

Burial Ceremony
June 18, 2016 11am-12pm
St Agnes Cemetery, 48 Cemetery Ave (off Broadway), Menands

For more information concerning the Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground Project, please contact:
Evelyn (Kamili) King (Peace Out Productions)
Paul Stewart (The Underground Railroad History Project)

About the symbol: Sankofa is a word in the Akan language of Ghana that translates as “reach back and get it” (san – to return; ko – to go; fa – to fetch, to seek and take) and also refers to the Asante Adinkra symbol. Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates as: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”