Roger Answers Your Questions, Tom, LisaF, Arthur, and Scott

In May 1980, when the semester was over, Tom nagged me to work at the store.

Lisa from peripheral perceptions, who has very nice toes, writes:
You may have already been asked and answered this one, but…How and why did you get into blogging?

The HOW question I answered, among other places, here, specifically in the fifth paragraph; curse you, Fred Hembeck! The WHY I’m sure I’ve answered, but, to reiterate, it’s mostly because I was composing things to write in my head, I didn’t have a place to put them, and the subsequent noise in my brain got too loud; I blogged to stay (relatively) sane. Now it’s so I can “meet” people like you.
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Thomas McKinnon, with whom I worked at the comic book store FantaCo, said:
Hey Roger
Tell us the story of how you met Tom Skulan and started working at FantaCo.
I have never heard the story.

Well, those are two very different things. I’m going to go back to the old days of comic book collecting when you had to get your comics off the spinner racks at the local convenience store. I started collecting comics by early 1972 (Red Wolf #1 was cover-dated May 1972, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire June 1972). My friend and I were at college in New Paltz, NY but we had to go to some little hole-in-the-wall store on 44/55 in Highland, the next town over, to get our four-color fix.

At some point, maybe as early as 1973, a guy named Peter Maresca started a comic book store called the Crystal Cave, buying from a direct market distributor (Seagate? Bud Plant?) It was right across from a bar called Bacchus. It later moved a couple of blocks.

The chronology fails me here, but at some point, Tom Skulan, Mitch Cohn, and Raoul Vezina all worked at the Crystal Cave, so I met them all there. Tom also put bicycles together at Barker’s department store just outside the village limits.

At some point, Peter closed the store and sold the comic inventory, I believe, to Tom. In any case, I would see Tom at these little comic book shows up and down the Hudson River periodically. Then on August 28, 1978, he opened FantaCo at 21 Central Avenue in Albany, with Raoul as the front guy/graphic designer in residence, the same function he served at the Crystal Cave.

I was living in Schenectady by that time, and lost my job at the Schenectady Arts Council in January 1979; the federal funding was cut off. So I couldn’t afford to buy comics for a while. I’d take the hour-long #55 bus from Schenectady to Albany, sometimes do some work in the store, and get store credit in return so that I could feed my addiction.

I did some work on the first FantaCon in 1979. I know I helped schlep stuff into the Egg convention center, and worked the front door and/or the FantaCo table.

In August 1979, I moved to Albany, to attend grad school at UAlbany (or whatever it was called at the time) in public administration. It was a disaster, in no small part because I developed a toe infection two days before registration and literally almost died; I spent nearly a week in the college infirmary and never really caught up. But it was also very cutthroat competitive, unlike my later time at library school, which was very cooperative, and it did not suit my personality at all.

So in May 1980, when the semester was over, Tom nagged me to work at the store. I told him that I didn’t want to work at the store; I needed to go back to college in the fall. But I COULD use a summer job. So I was hired on that basis, primarily doing mail order, and didn’t end up leaving until November 1988.
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Scott from the on-hiatus Scooter Chronicles – come back, Scott! – wonders: What is your take, if any, on the DC relaunch, with 52 new storylines and rebooted famous characters?

First, I know it’s inevitable that characters will get reimagined from time to time, in part a function of them not aging as the rest of us do. Still, the whole renumbering and reinventing the whole line smacks of both a frustrating disrespect for its own history and commercial desperation. If I hadn’t stopped buying new comics, this ploy might have motivated me to scrap the entire line. In other words, I HATE it.

That said, it appears that a couple of titles featuring female characters are specifically problematic.
***
A fellow political science major in college, Arthur@AmeriNZ, asked about a story. AP Reporter Responds To Chris Hayes Panel Debate On Racism Of Droppin’ G’s From Obama Speech
On Sunday morning’s Up with Chris Hayes, the panel discussed the contrast between the way Politico reported President Obama’s speech before the Congressional Black Caucus and the Associated Press‘ reporting. Unlike Politico, who used the official transcription to pull quotes, the AP’s article reflected the President’s folksier delivery by quotin’ him without the dropped g’s. Karen Hunter called the AP’s treatment racist, John McWhorter disagreed, and Hayes got a laugh by saying, “I can go both ways on this.”

My first instinct was to say that, if that same news organization would drop the G when quoting, say, George W. Bush (which seems to be the case), it’s a non-issue, but would be if Obama were dealt with differently. However, it is NOT because, as McWhorter argued, “Black English is becoming the lingua franca of American youth, and that ‘America, including non-black America, loves that way of speaking.'” Yuck.

Hunter says she teaches “a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar because you don’t want them to sound ignorant. For them to do that, it’s code, and I don’t like it.” That was an interesting point. I’ve seen literal transcripts in the newspaper, often in criminal cases, sometimes with the (sic) or “as stated” designation, and I’ve been of two minds on that, how that might color the public’s perception of the case.

I guess I agree with Hayes when he suggested, “journalistically speaking, the AP’s transcription gave a more accurate impression of the flavor of the speech.” Especially when the President clearly intended to be dropping his Gs for the particular audience to whom he was speaking. Or speakin’.
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You have more questions? Just ask away!

Art from Sold Out #1 by John Hebert; story by Skulan, Green, and Hebert

Roger Answers Your Questions, Amy

The earth MUST be the center of the universe, because God made the earth – or something like that. Suggesting otherwise was heresy, the Church said; science is WRONG.

Amy from Sharp Little Pencil – sometimes that instrument is VERY pointed, and my “favorite Apalachin girl who went to Vestal,” writes:

Hope all in your camp are all right, Roger. Three “hundred-year floods” in five years for Binghamton. Gee, Rick Perry, do you understand global warming NOW? It’s not a belief system; it’s not an “either, or,” it’s a fact, Jack.

My sister chides me about global climate change like it’s Darwin vs. Adam and Eve, and this thought just came to me. Part of the “religiosity” (ha ha) of Tea Bag/Fundies is that they truly blur the line between faith and fact, as though if you plug your ears and say “La la la” loud enough, it will go away; and worse, that people who don’t share your “beliefs” are somehow unworthy of citizenship in the US.

Take THAT ball and run with it, Roger!!! I’d love to hear or read your thoughts on this. Thanks, Amy

First off, I think that there are too many people who, through ignorance, some of it willful, I must say, decide that if it snows in the southern United States, or New Zealand, this somehow disproves global warming. One need only look at the two words: GLOBAL, over the whole world; WARMING, the average temperature of the planet is rising. Snow in Atlanta is the weather; the collective volume of hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts, and heavy rains is the climate, and it sure the heck seems to be altered, and not for the better. And I don’t believe that it will flip back, at least not without a radical change in our behavior. Check out the NASA Global Climate Change blog and be depressed.

I’ve read the Bible a few times, at least thrice all the way through, and I am at a loss to figure out just how a largely human-made climate change is a threat to a belief in a loving Saviour. Of course, I feel the same way about evolution or gay marriage re faith, so I’m a heretic to some anyway.

The issue I might compare it to is heliocentrism. The earth MUST be the center of the universe because God made the earth – or something like that, right? Suggesting otherwise was heresy, the Church said; science was WRONG. Most of us, except the flat earthers, know how THAT debate turned out. God can’t love us if we’re on the third rock from a second-class star? Huh?

Oh, and my last point: I’ve said this recently, but I’ll repeat it – the blurring of the line between American patriotism and Christianity I find rather disturbing. OK, very disturbing.

My reading of Jesus is that he spoke truth to power, not one to embrace the position and power of the status quo. There is a fundamental [intentionally used] belief out there that the United States is uniquely and singularly endowed by the Creator with powers and abilities far beyond those of “normal” countries. And I think that is hubris. Though, to be fair, I myself have wanted the United States to BE more that shining light it says it wants to be, which means taking care of our planet, no torture, no extraordinary rendition, more equitable distribution of income, no executions – especially of likely innocent people; talking to you, Rick Perry, as well as the state of Georgia. You will recall that those folks in the Bible who decided to build a tower to heaven were thwarted in their plans. Hubris, plain and simple.

What were your favorite and least favorite moments, growing up in the Binghamton area?

My favorite, I suppose, was meeting Rod Serling, when I kinda/sorta got to introduce him at a high school assembly.

My least favorite? The first that came to mind is when Curtis E. LeMay came to town. I don’t know if it was the time he came to the American Legion in Johnson City (right next to Binghamton, for the non-locals) when he was running as George Wallace’s Vice Presidential candidate on October 23, 1968, or some subsequent visit. There were about 200 demonstrators outside that first Legion event, according to the AP report, equal to the number of Legionnaires inside listening to the general, infamous for his statement about bombing North Vietnam “back to the Stone Age,” a quote he thought had been misconstrued. What bugged me at the event I attended was the vague scent of tear gas, unwarranted given the peaceful (though loud) nature of the protest.

PS I left a reply for you (finally) that asks you to email me regarding your thoughts on the Pledge…)

This is in reference to a comment I made on her blog – that I can’t immediately find – about how annoyed I was that “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance, and just in time for me to go to grade school.

I don’t have a problem pledging fealty to country, though that “liberty and justice for all” part has bugged me periodically. And I don’t mind pledging fealty to God. But when they get mixed together, then I have difficulty. The United States is NOT a theocracy; see my comment above. Moreover, the addition of “under God” to the Pledge just seemed a silly overreaction to the Red scare; it wasn’t in the original, composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892, for a good reason, I’m guessing.

The friend who sent me the visual above said, “I’m forward this picture,” entitled One Nation Under God by Jon McNaughton, “which I find blasphemous in so many ways, even though I’m not at all religious…” Well, I AM religious, for lack of a better word, and I find it just as blasphemous. (But to really “appreciate” it more fully, you must see it on his website, complete with narrative.) Sometimes I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses got it right; in the section regarding nationalism:
“Jehovah’s Witnesses are not allowed to salute the flag of any nation, recite the pledge of allegiance, stand for or sing the national anthem, run for public office, vote, or serve in the armed forces.” You know, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. And/or separation of church and state. And would I REALLY miss voting, given the system’s brokenness?

Ask Roger Anything: Equinox Edition

Sometimes you just have to embrace the spam.

What the title says. You (i.e., YOU there) get to ask me ANYTHING. And I HAVE to answer. Honesty, though evasiveness is allowed.

Just recently, I got a question from a previous iteration of this meme:

Hey there, i read your blog site often and i individual an equivalent one particular we was just wanting to know if you get plenty of junk e-mail remarks? If you are how do you avert this, any sort of tool and also the things you can encourage? I am a great deal of lately it truly is cruising people crazy hence any kind of assistance is greatly loved.

So this was a spam comment about getting junk e-mail. I LOVED it! It made me laugh out loud.

But in answer to the query: yes, I do get a lot of junk mail. I have the Akismet thing that comes with my WordPress, and in less than 17 months, I’ve gotten about 75,000 spam comments. This is why I approve of all my comments.

That said, I don’t get a lot of rude, weird comments here. I HAVE it on the Times Union site. But ever since I said to one guy in particular, in my comments, “Please go away,” he has, and so have all the other stalkers. Who knew it’d be that easy?

And as I’ve indicated before, sometimes you just have to embrace the spam. I mean, I know the nasty spam comments are not really directed to me. But I do like to pretend that the complimentary notes are actually real. Case in point:
I enjoy you because of your entire work on this web site. My mother takes pleasure in participating in internet research and it is easy to understand why. I learn all about the lively ways you present effective tricks through your web blog and in addition encourage contribution from visitors on the theme while our girl is undoubtedly studying a lot of things. Take pleasure in the rest of the new year. You are always performing a wonderful job.

I mean, why WOULDN’T I want that to be honest, to be sincere? Alas, it’s from some dating site trying to get traction.

Anyway, the answers to YOUR questions will appear soon, assuming you have any. Oh and for the record, I usually participate when others initiate this, as Jaquandor did recently.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Tom the Mayor and Jaquandor

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists.

Jaquandor, the Buffalo area’s finest blogger, asks:

1. Are there any words you dislike, just because of the sound of them and not necessarily the meaning?

Used to be that German words I tended to dislike as too guttural. The K sound would get stuck on the roof of my mouth. But I’ve mellowed, and nothing immediately comes to mind.

2. Are there any subjects you really want to know more about and yet never seem to get around to learning about?

Oh, yeah, dozens, everything from various sciences, such as astronomy and botany; to languages, which I do not seem to have a talent for, starting with Spanish and Latin. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I probably won’t do anything about it unless I give up something else, and evidently, I’m not willing to do that.

3. Are you surprised that gay marriage passed in New York? (I am, a little….)

Heck, yeah. It failed miserably some 600 days earlier when the State Senate was controlled by the Democrats. OK, “controlled” is probably an overstatement, since it was pretty chaotic. The last two governors supported it, and it didn’t matter. And it passes with a Republican-controlled Senate? More like shocked.
***
Tom the Mayor, once a mail order whiz at FantaCo, among other attributes, asks:

Are all the members of your church as Liberal as you are? could you be a good Christian, yet disagree with the beliefs of your church’s leaders?

Tom asks simple questions which I will complicate in answering.

Somehow, as a result of singing in my old church choir at my grandmother’s funeral in May 1983, it got me to decide to start attending church again, after more than a decade of mostly not going. But I couldn’t just go back to a church like the one from my childhood, which I loved then, but found that my theological development was not in tune with that church’s theological positions.

So I went church shopping.

When I first attended Trinity United Methodist Church, it was June 13, 1982. I remember this quite well because the day before, I was at an anti-nuke rally in New York City. The minister, the late Stan Moore, said something quite positive about the rally in his sermon, and this endeared him, and the church, to me. While the shopping continued for some months, I decided I wanted to be there by the end of the year, though I didn’t actually join until December 1984.

In that congregation, I did have leadership roles, first as vice-chair, then chair of the Administrative Board, which was the church’s meeting of the whole, then chair of the Council on Ministries, which was the chairs of the major service committees. I left, not because of theology, but autocracy, involving a change in church structure under a subsequent minister which made it less accountable to the congregation.

I started attending First Presbyterian in the spring of 2000 and joined in 2002. At some point, I was an elder there, but didn’t enjoy it; I think I’m all meetinged out.

So to your actual question: if by the church, you mean the congregation, most of them are as liberal as I am, though by no means all of them. I remember having a conversation with one of them at the (late) YMCA, where you used to work. He mentioned that one of the Clintons, Bill or Hillary, was having a book come out, and he, who reads the New York Post, a conservative tabloid, every day, said he was sure that I would be buying the book from that “liberal”. I surprised him by stating that I didn’t think the Clintons were liberal at all.

If you mean the Presbyterian Church USA, our congregation is definitely more liberal than some. But of course, this depends on your meaning of liberal. If feeding the hungry, clothing the needy is “liberal”, then it’s almost the whole denomination that is liberal. If it’s something such as the role of gays in the life of the church, the Albany Presbytery, which represents our church, is more progressive than others. But given the fact that the PCUSA denomination in 1997 created MORE restrictive language re participation of gays as ministers, elders, and deacons, then in May 2011 agreed to less restrictive language, not many people bolted the church when either event occurred.

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists. The fact that our Presbytery was at odds – no, too harsh, disagreed – with the PCUSA on gay ordination for over a decade was surprisingly not a big deal.

Oh, one other thing: I wanted Trinity UMC to take more of a stand on gay rights issues when I was involved there in the 1990s. It was downplayed because the church had “made a proclamation” back in 1979 or 1975, or whenever, which preceded my tenure there, and that seemed, to some, to be enough. So it’s not just a matter of beliefs; it’s acting on the beliefs, regularly. My current congregation participates in the Gay Pride parade annually, with our rainbow tapestry hanging from the bell tower as well as over the entrance, as an ongoing, living, breathing statement of faith.

Did I actually answer the question?

A Solstice Sensation: ASK ROGER ANYTHING

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.

Because I have no idea what I should be writing about that I’m not writing about – my psychic powers have been gravely diminished by global warming – periodically, I request that you fine folks Ask Roger Anything. That’s A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. And I have to answer. Honestly.

Now, I might try to obfuscate, but as anyone who lived through Watergate knows, “It isn’t the crime that’ll get you, it’s the coverup.” Now what that has to do with the price of caviar, I do not know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe the fatigue has made me goofy – or there really IS music playing in my head – and only your questions can put me back on the straight and/or narrow.

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.

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