Sunday Stealing Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing: Old School Meme

genealogy

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week’s questions come Kwizgiver, who was invited to play by a blogging buddy named Paula. Now you’re invited to play along, too.

The Old School Blogging Meme

I am passionate about …

Pop music from roughly 1955 to 1995. There are earlier and later pieces I like. Just yesterday, one of my sisters started singing, “Dizzy, my head is spinning, and I instantly said, “by Tommy Roe,” because I knew virtually all of the songs on the charts in 1969.

2) Information literacy, a curse of a librarian

3) Making sure that people don’t take American Christian nationalism as the standard for most US Christians, and certainly not my value system

4) Accessibility

5) Apparently, this blog

I’d like to learn …

It hasn’t changed. I want to know who my mother’s father’s mother’s parents, almost certainly from Ireland, were. Margaret Collins Williams died in 1931.

2) Who is my father’s mother’s father’s parents? Samuel Walker, I still remember, as he died in 1963 at the age of 90.

3) Where was John Olin, who came to what is now the United States in the latter third of the 17th century from Great Britain, born, and when?

4) American Sign Language, though the rudimentary lessons I’ve taken didn’t stick

5) Better time management, or failing that, the ability to say ‘NO’ more often.

Words

Things I say a lot …

Words I intentionally mispronounce. Some of it I find funny, like refrigigator.

2) But others I say because their spelling would suggest a different pronunciation. Epitome is ep-i-tome, facetitious is face-tee-us

3) M-m-m-maybe

4) Math is everywhere

5) A seven-letter word beginning with A, usually while watching the news.

Places I’d like to travel to …

There are so many, and relatively so little time. The places I’d like to go in the US would have to include the Grand Canyon.

2) There are almost 20 states I’ve never been to. I’ll pick Oregon, for no particular reason.

3) Ireland – I have relatives that I don’t even know who they are

4) Nigeria – ditto

5) New Zealand, because

Oh, the picture. It is the remains of my old K-9 school, Daniel S. Dickinson, which they sadly tore down in the early 1970s. Apropos of little, Steely Dan.

I’m rooting for the Seattle Seahawks over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX on Sunday, February 8, because the Pats have been in a record 11 games, winning 6. The ‘Hawks have been in 3 games, winning 1. New England beat Seattle in SB XLIX, 28-24, in February 2015.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Sunday Stealing — 3×5

beige v eggshell

Back in 2007, Donna from Just Me was tagged by her blog buddy, Shaz, to answer a long and lovely list of three things. We’ve pared it back to 5.

3 x 5

Three things I love (Remember, these are things, not people):

Music reference books. Most of them are from Record Research and were compiled by the late Joel Whitburn.

2. My multitudinous photo albums from 1972 -2012, even though I seldom look at them.

3. The streets of Albany, which are weird.

Three things on my desk:

Moisturizing lotion, which I don’t even use in the office.

2. A CD player I just bought. I got it from Best Buy, in part because, if it dies in the next two years, they’ll fix or replace it.

3. An empty Diet Pepsi bottle that I occasionally fill with water.

Three things I can’t do:

Hang a picture on the wall straight without trying it about five times.

2. Paint over something when the old and new colors are too similar, such as painting over beige with eggshell. I can’t see the difference. I’ll paint over yellow with blue, or green over orange.

3. Figuring out technology right out of the box. I have two bins of electronics stuff, most of which I can’t readily identify.

Good

Three things I’m good at:

Paying attention. I seem to see things, especially people, that need tending more than most.

2. Anticipating the behavior of pedestrians and other cars when my wife is driving. And before you ask, she likes it.

3. Remembering scads of musical references based solely on hearing them.

Three things I want to accomplish:

Probably, I need to use lifehacking, or something. Ugh… Or cloning, which I can get behind.

I still want to write that book.

2. I’m in the process of getting reimbursed for medical expenses, a task I didn’t complete at all in 2025.

3. Get back to genealogy, which has fallen off the table. There are a whole bunch of 16th and 17th-century folks from England who end up in my Ancestry “hints.” I have north of 700 hints I should follow up on.

Sunday Stealing Remembers the Good Old Days

Domingo Samudio

We’re going into the new year by looking back. Randy at GeneaMusings encourages us to reminisce. So the group remembers the Good Old Days.

When I Was Young

I used to say that I didn’t really like to wallow in nostalgia. But now it’s more of a mental exercise. Can I remember that stuff anymore?

1. Tell us about a time when your family got a newfangled invention (your first air conditioner, color TV, VCR, microwave, computer, etc.).

Our family got a color TV in either Christmas 1969 or Christmas 1970.

The only times I remember seeing color TV before that were some summer nights c. 1962/63. My sister Leslie had a best friend, Christine, who lived next door to my maternal grandmother.

They, I, and maybe my baby sister would be at Christine’s house watching this piece of furniture. It was usually the Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza on Sunday nights on NBC. ABC and CBS weren’t broadcasting in color until 1966.

So when we got our color TV, I remember seeing The Wizard of Oz for the first time in color. I had watched it a dozen times before that, but I never saw Oz that way before. I finally got the “horse of a different color” reference; the equine used to be different shades of gray.

Pharaohs?

2. Is there a particular song that sparks a childhood memory?

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that there are HUNDREDS, maybe THOUSANDS of songs I can identify from when I was 4 to 18. And most of them generate a memory, many of which I have written about.

I don’t think I’ve ever written about Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. I liked the song a lot, especially the countdown: “Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro.” Here’s an oddity: per Billboard magazine, it was the number one song of 1965. However, it never reached number one on the weekly Billboard charts, though it did top Record World.

It wasn’t the song as much as the outfits I was struck by as a kid. These guys weren’t Middle Eastern/Egyptian, were they? No.

Regarding the lead singer, “most sources refer to Domingo Samudio’s ancestry as Mexican-American. However, a 1998 Chicago Tribune article described Samudio as of Basque/Apache descent. In a 2007 conversation with music writer Joe Nick Patoski, Samudio described his grandparents fleeing the Mexican Revolution and settling in Texas, where his family supported themselves working in the cotton fields.”

Learning

3. What is something an older family member taught you to do?

My paternal grandmother taught me canasta, and my paternal grandfather taught me gin rummy. My father’s cousin Ruth described my father at her home, feverishly trying to figure out my name and initials shortly after I was born.

4. Back in the day, what name brands would we have found in your family’s kitchen?

Joy dish detergent, Kellogg’s/Nabisco/General Mills cereals (I LOVED cereal), Fro-Joy ice cream (a truly inferior product), Pyrex bowls, General Electric (refrigerator, maybe?) Our stove/oven was ancient, and I have no idea what brand it was. Maybe my sisters recall.

5. As a child, did you collect anything (rocks, shells, stickers, etc.)?

Stamps, baseball cards, LPs. coins. I was really put out when some kid, the child of my parents’ friends, purloined some of my half-dollars.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Sunday Stealing Feels Frustrated

Loving You Has Made Me Bannans

This week’s meme is inspired by Christina at Call Me Patsy, who turned to answering these questions when she felt frustrated by a project she was working on.

Frustration – Joan Armatrading

Questions to Answer when You Need a Break because Sunday Stealing Feels Frustrated

1. What would you rather be doing right now?

Sleeping, actually. I had oral surgery on Wednesday, and the residual pain, while not severe, is exhausting.

I’m Only Sleeping – The Beatles and I Go To Sleep -Pretenders

2. What is always on your grocery list?

Bananas. My wife and I usually have them with oatmeal for breakfast. She likes them browner than I. And my daughter would eat them when they are practically green. So you can’t purchase too many at a time.

Loving You Has Made Me Bananas – Guy Marks

3. Have you ever used a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?

I have a vague recollection of doing so, not in this century, in a kitchen. But I did, for a very brief time, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, SELL fire extinguishers. I wasn’t very good at it, although I believed in the product, because I hated door-to-door retail sales. Even more, I despised strong-arming my friends.

Fire – Ohio Players

Text

4. How many times did you text yesterday?

Once. I attended a party, and my daughter drove me because the bus runs infrequently on weekends and holidays. My daughter texted me a couple of hours later to see if I wanted a ride home. Since the next bus was in 47 minutes, and the party was starting to break up, I said yes. But my wife ended up picking me up because she had just come home from a different party.

I hate texting. I’m not particularly good at it. The idea of always being available is appalling to me. If I’m home, I don’t even carry my phone unless I’m playing NYT Connections or contacting a doctor. This is why we still have a landline—that and to call my cellphone when I inevitably misplace it.

Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me – “Weird Al” Yankovic

5. Would you prefer a slow-paced, relaxing vacation or one filled with new sights and experiences?

I think I need to alternate. One day of busyness, followed by a day of relaxation.

Vacation – Connie Francis and Vacation – the Go-Go’s

Sunday Sunday: F.A.B. winter 2025

January birthdays

This busy holiday weekend, we’re going to keep this simple. We stole this from a blogger named Idzie, who called this the F.A.B. (film, audio, book) meme.

F.A.B. winter 2025

F. Film: What movie or TV show are you watching?

I watched the CBS piece Rob Reiner: Scenes from a Life. Mark Evanier said about it: “Someone — probably many someones — did an extraordinary job putting it together in not enough time. They not only got access to a lot of Reiner’s closest friends, but they got them to share very personal, unique insights into the man…

“I know how easy it is to lapse into clichés and say generic things about how wonderful the deceased was, how the world will never be the same, etc. This was not that. It was a portrait of a real person painted by people who knew that real person and who said things specific to that real person. “

I totally agreed with that assessment. Also, “Remembering the treasured films of Rob Reiner from CBS Sunday Morning by Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz

BTW, I wrote about the Reiners here.

A. Audio: What are you listening to?

Besides Christmas music, which I will play until January 6 or until I run out, whichever comes first, I’ve been listening to musicians whose birthdays are in early January:

Joan Baez: Simple Twist of Fate

David Bowie: Panic In Detroit

Jim Croce: Operator

Roger Miller: You Can’t Rollerskate In A Buffalo Herd

Donald Fagan: The Royal Scam – Steely Dan

Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock

Soupy Sales: Though I’m Just A Clown, On Motown Records!

Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells A Story

Michael Stipe: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – REM

Stephen Stills: Woodstock – CSNY

B. Book: What are you reading?

I’m catching up on The Week magazine and the newspapers.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.