May Rambling #1: Depression; and ABCW’s Leslie gets married

The thing I remember most about the 1964-65 World’s Fair in NYC , as was true of many people, was the Belgian waffle.

music.clockMy April was much better than my March, but between blog connectivity problems (more anon), and back pain that kept me out of work for a couple of days, followed by four days out of town for work training, which compressed other tasks, I didn’t a chance to update the April Rambling since April 17. Moreover, I discovered some links from as much as two years ago I was GOING to use but they fell through the cracks. Meaning that I’ll do another one at the end of the month. Always said that if blogging got too hard, I would not do it. And this, comparatively, is the easy post I need right now.

An article about depression I was going to include in a different blog post. Some of the earlier posts from this blog I liked too. The blogger also linked to the TEDx talk Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me at that moment.” When I imagine many people’s understanding of depression, I think of that famous scene in the movie Moonstuck where the Nicolas Cage character says “I’m in love with you,” and the Cher character slaps him and says, “Snap out of it,” as though that were the answer.

Developed in conjunction with the World Health Association (WHO), this link provides a quick adult ADHD screening test. (I scored in the “likely” range.) But I believe that daydreaming is NOT a disorder; so does Amy. Amy also notes: my faith can’t be pegged on whether This Actually Happened or That Actually Didn’t; I concur.

Why Anthony is a bit uncomfortable with fundamentalist Christians, even though they share many of his theological convictions, in a musical motif.

Was Jesus gay? An Anglican priest says, “Probably.” And The Top 8 Ways To Be ‘Traditionally Married,’ According To The Bible.

55,000 Christians: We’re ‘Appalled By Sarah Palin’s Twisted Misrepresentation Of Our Faith’

Helping Kids Deal with Overcoming Loss. Also, LIKE…Ummm Let’s Learn to Communicate…Dude!!

Sometimes, I just like a blog post because I totally agree with it. SamuraiFrog hates second-hand smoke, and goodness knows, my tolerance is extremely low. Dustbury is put off by visiting folks who constantly have the TV on, even when they’re not watching it; also, the assumption of privilege.

Arthur wrote:

Sometimes I offer…information unsolicited, but most of the time I don’t say anything unless asked rather than appear to be a “know-it-all”. How do YOU decide when to share a fact and when to remain silent?

I say less and less, barring someone potentially coming to bodily harm. That is unless we’re having an interactive conversation about a mutually interesting topic, like the chat I recently had with our departing intern about music, which involved Woody Guthrie, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, and Sly & the Family Stone.

Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer. As though I didn’t know.

Leslie, my most helpful majordomo on ABC Wednesday, got married on May 1 to her Lorne. She wrote about JOYOUS JUMBLE of JITTERS and Lists and Magical Music and being a little nervous about the nuptials and their Odyssey, which began in 1969; let’s PARTY! A shoutout from Reader Wil.

SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia’s Blunder Is Unprecedented.

GayProf is back with University Admini-o-crats.

Man Buys 10,000 Undeveloped Negatives At a Local Auction and Discovers One of The Most Important Street Photographers of the Mid 20th Century. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but great pictures.

The extraordinarily 80s Crossgates promo film, touting the local mall I eventually learned to hate.

Taking Rube Goldberg Seriously: What fictional inventions say about American ingenuity.

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

5 Clearly Fake News Stories The Media Told You Were True.

List of the 101 Best Written TV Series from the WGA, West.

The insanity of political correctness continues.

This Man Somehow Solved The Hardest ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Puzzle Ever! Hey, I got the first word…

The Comics that Corrupted Our Kids!

Rebecca Jade, niece #1, singing I’d Rather Go Blind, the Etta James song.

Tosy: U2 – ranked 90-81.

50 Years Ago last month: the 1964-65 World’s Fair Opens in Queens, New York. Our family did not go until 1965, and the thing I remember most, as was true of many people, was the Belgian waffle. Frog has a sidebar about the Fair.

What 1939 Thought Fashion in 2000 Would Look Like.

Pavlova and friend.

More on the five-second rule.

Knowing my penchant for Chucks, someone sent me this: Chuck Taylors vs. Jordans: Sneaker love goes head to head.

Viola Smith plays drums on “Snake Charmer” (1939). She was one of the first professional female drummers.

Harry Belafonte’s journey to the top.

Neko Case and the case for/against religion.

Apropos of nothing, almost every time I read something about swimming, the Peter Gabriel song I Go Swimming, from the live album, pops into my head, especially that opening bass line.

Book Review: Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust by Ken Scott.

Evanier on coincidence, again. This involves Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin, and a phone call from Sid Jacobson.

Al Feldstein, R.I.P. He was the MAD magazine editor for nearly 30 years, starting in 1956, so I grew up with his iteration of the publication.

What else did I see the late Bob Hoskins in, besides Nixon and of course, Who Framed ROGER Rabbit? (Here’s a bit of music from the latter.) An episode of Frasier, the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), and most recently, 2010’s Made in Dagenham, which I didn’t see until the following year.

Muppet related: Tick-Tock Sick and The Bug Band play The Beatles and Born to Add and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Pöpcørn and Hey, Food.

50 Shades, Chapter 24 and Chapter 25, and Chapter 26. The end, Hallelujah!

The blog is dead, long live the blog.

GOOGLE ALERT (about me)

Be careful what you ask for, Roger! This becomes the music choice when Jaquandor is too busy to pick a “traditional” Something for Thursday. Buying a house WILL do that to one.

Arthur name checks me a tittynope.

Dustbury sympathizes with my new computer purchase. Then the Sooner explains why Oklahoma residents who produce their own energy through solar panels or small wind turbines on their property will now be charged an additional fee.

P is for Pope Francis I

Pope Francis has launches reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank.

As I have noted, I’m a Protestant with an odd fascination with Catholic popes. The accession, in March 2013, of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, 76, to become the 266th head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, especially when his predecessor, Benedict XVI is still alive, intrigued me.

I admit that I’ve enjoyed that he’s made some in the church hierarchy nervous, when he faults the church’s focus on gays and abortion, though that feels more like optics rather than actual change to me. He may be right, though, when he describes ideological ‘Christians’ as a ‘serious illness’ within the Church.

More interesting to me is his suggestion if it’s understood correctly in a secular press, that it’s OK not to believe in God if you have a clean conscience. For a different perspective on what the Pope may have meant, read Anthony Velez, who is studying for the (Protestant) ministry.

Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville had perhaps the best take on the new pontiff in the Huffington Post:
Many traditional Catholics are beginning to feel–as Time magazine columnist, Mary Eberstadt recently suggested–that they have been “thrown under the popemobile.” …

They would be wrong. While Pope Francis has said that “we cannot insist only ” on these culture war issues, most have not noticed that he also added that “the teachings of the Church are clear…and I am a son of the Church…but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”…

And, while traditionalists maintain that we still need to talk about them sometimes, an increasing number of progressives and traditionalists are beginning to acknowledge the possibility of finding a true common ground. If Pope Francis can help us reach that common ground, then his pontificate will truly be the “one we have been waiting for.”

A few years ago,…I titled a chapter in [my book Status Envy], “A Pope Away from a Perfect Life.” The chapter suggested that progressives have always believed that they were a “pope away” from a Catholic Church that would allow full reproductive rights, female ordination, and same-sex marriage.

It is likely that progressives–and traditionalists as well–will still have to wait a while for that perfect life. Besides, Christians know that we all remain “strangers in a strange land” here on earth. There will never be a “perfect life” here. But Pope Francis is simply asking that we all work together to make that life better for each other. Perhaps it is time to start.

Frankly, I’m more impressed that Pope Francis has launched the reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank. In September, “the bank released its first-ever financial report (it is doing quite well, making $117 million last year, more than quadruple the 2011 figure. This year’s number is projected to be substantially lower partly because of the costs of the transparency campaign).” Now, to quote someone else, THIS is a change I can believe in.

This action, tied with his simpler lifestyle, more in keeping with Scripture than some German bishops have been living, gives me some hope that some positive permanent change might come from this papacy.


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

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