Sunday Stealing Archives - Page 3 of 37

Sunday Stealing: Beginning with S

Star Trek v. Star Wars

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!

At The Zeus Excuse, participating bloggers were assigned a letter and asked to list things they love beginning with that letter. Since at Sunday Stealing we love Sunday Stealing, here is –

Things I Love Beginning with S

1. Soul music, particularly the sounds of Soulsville, USA, i.e., Stax Records out of Memphis, TN. I wrote about Stax here (2007). I have pushing for Stax co-founder Estelle Axton to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2015. Steve Cropper, the STAX guitar virtuoso who died in 2025, got an obit.

2. The Statue of Liberty, which I’ve seen while riding the Staten Island ferry. The meaning needs to be amplified regularly. “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I used to have a little statuette in a previous office.

3. I was going to say Soup. Then I came into this debate about the difference between soup versus stew, chowder, and bisque. Gumbo, e.g., I consider a stew. That said, cream of mushroom and New England clam chowder are my favorite soups. BTW, I had forgotten that Campbell’s has dropped the word Soup from its corporate name.

Dueling universes

4. The Star Trek v. Star Wars debate. I haven’t come into contact with it recently, but these two tribes used to fuss about which universe was more “authentic,” whatever THAT meant. For the record, I’ve seen far more Star Trek.

I’ve only seen Star Wars movies (renumbered) 4, 5, 6, 1, and 7. No, I’ve never seen any of the small-screen stuff. I did collect the Marvel Comics Star Wars series back in the day.

But I’ve seen Star Trek: TOS, and the 1st five films; most of the Animated Series; all of The Next Generation, though no movies; most episodes of DS9; many episodes of Voyager; the 2009 reboot movie; and random other episodes.

5. Sleep. Sometimes, I stay up too late, because my brain needs to offload NOW. So, increasingly, I take that joyous thing called the afternoon nap, usually for about an hour. I never use an alarm clock, because it is evil.

6. Sunday Stealing, of course!

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Sunday Stealing Gets Strict

SB LV

This week’s meme was stolen from Eleanor Bloom. Back in 2007, she posted it with the requirement that answers be limited to one word. She blames “The Man” for this, but he took his blog down, so if you’re compelled to express unhappiness at anyone for this restriction, direct it at Eleanor. (I’m just the messenger.)

Sunday Stealing Gets Strict: One Word Answers ONLY

One One

1. Where is your cell phone? Nearby

2. Tell us about your hair. Disheveled

3. What’s your favorite thing? Melomania

4. What room are you in? Office

5. Where did you grow up? Parlor

6. What aren’t you good at? Taxes

7. Your favorite drink? Shake

8. Where do you want to be in 10 years? Alive

9. Your mood. Variable

10. Last time you cried. Requiem

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Super Bowl

Since this is Super Bowl Sunday, I thought I’d post some related links.

The newest members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame are quarterback DREW BREES, running back ROGER CRAIG, wide receiver LARRY FITZGERALD, linebacker LUKE KUECHLY, and placekicker ADAM VINATIERI. Craig was among the Finalists in the combined Seniors/Coach/Contributor group; the others came through the Modern-Era Players category.

How does Pro Football Hall of Fame voting work? Explaining eligibility, rules, and more about the selection process.

Sports Illustrated: “As evidenced by the stunning snub of [Bill] Belichick and his eight Super Bowl rings (six as a head coach, two as a coordinator), the system doesn’t work. According to multiple voters…, the voting system has been a concern since it was implemented for the class of 2025. Some voters brought these concerns to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but ultimately had their worries dismissed in favor of studies conducted by the Hall, which stated the math would work out.

“Frankly, the math hasn’t worked for years. The backlog of deserving Hall of Fame players is growing increasingly and alarmingly long. With more teams and larger rosters over the past quarter-century, it’s becoming more difficult to keep up.

Solution

“Of course, as with everything, there’s a fix.

“Starting in 2027, the Hall of Fame should allow four to six players from the modern-era pool to be voted into Canton, increasing both the minimum and ceiling by one. These players would be selected from a final group of eight, with the 50 voters tasked with naming their top six choices.

“Instead of needing 80% of the vote, the threshold would be lowered to 65%. In theory, if there are three slam-dunk choices receiving unanimous support, there would be 150 votes remaining for the other five candidates, giving the voters a reasonable shot at inducting five players per class.”

Also, from Charity Watch, an entity I’ve given money to for years: Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday: Revisiting Football’s Charity Scandals

Sunday Stealing: Old School Meme

genealogy

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.

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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.

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