Why the 70th birthday; and why did they rig the student election?

“THEY get away with all sorts of crap. Why shouldn’t we?”

Way back in 2012, Uthacleana asked:

What’s this “Turning 70” meme you’re promoting, Roger? Doesn’t anyone just turn 59 anymore?! ;-p

(I should note that he. and I, turned 59 that year.)
madein1944
I started doing the 70th birthday thing because the Beatles (Ringo and John by then; Paul and George followed) were all turning the big seven-oh. Other folks I admired were heading towards a milestone. I noted at the time too that three score and ten was noted in the Bible as well (Psalm 90:10).

But it occurred to me only recently that it is also a way to keep track of what I’ve written. My buddy Greg complained when I noted Joe Cocker’s birthday, mostly because he doesn’t like Cocker’s voice. (BTW, that’s the beauty of a daily blog; if I write something not of interest today, maybe tomorrow will be more to your liking.)

Greg then suggested I should have noted Cher. But Cher only turned 68 in May. If I HAD written about Cher in 2014, what would I do for 2016? And would I have remembered that I had already done so? This way I have a couple more years to muse on what I’ll write about since I DON’T have much of Cher’s music.

Now there are people who turned 70 before I started the blog – Sophia Loren, Smokey Robinson, for two – so I’ll peg 80, which is mentioned in the same Biblical verse. And there are people I just plan missed, so I might do a 75th natal day, from time to time.

The best answer to “Why 70?” is that it is an organizational tool. One gets a 70th birthday only once, so I’m likely not to repeat myself too much.
***
I wrote this post about The crooked student government elections at my undergraduate college, New Paltz in 1974. Dan Van Riper wrote:

Amazing that a college student election would be so blatantly corrupted with repeat voting. This is something you don’t see in real elections, as has become clear with all this rad-righty insistence with voting ID laws and limiting access to voting. So why were the… elections so corrupt, or maybe instead I should ask, why were your fellow students so irresponsible? Any ideas?

A few days later, when I had not replied, he e-mailed me:

Seriously, I want to know why the students at your college voted multiple times. What caused them to do that? You must have heard by now that voter fraud in the real world is virtually non-existent:

“There was not a single identified case of impersonation fraud at the polls – people showing up and pretending to be another voter – meaning that Schultz’s own investigation found no cases at all that would have been prevented with his proposed voter identification law.”

The idea that regular folks the voting process so much that they rarely try to cheat is somewhat counter-intuitive. We have been trained expect our fellow citizens to try and hurt each other selfishly at every opportunity, and here they are not doing so. I’m very interested in your opinion on the matter.

The answer, I’m afraid, is I don’t know, which is why I didn’t respond right away. I do have two competing theories, though:

1) The students really wanted all the parties and concerts that the winning coalition promised. This seems possible, but not likely.

2) The students did it because they could. Understand that there was considerable antipathy towards authority figures after the carnage of the Vietnam war, brought into our homes each night; the slow pace of racial justice, fractured by the deaths of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and others only a few years back; and the government lawlessness that was Watergate, as the House of Representatives considered impeachment of President Nixon.

I think the voter fraud was a statement of nihilism. “THEY get away with all sorts of crap. Why shouldn’t we?” So they messed with The System because The System was corrupt and because they could do it easily.

Oh, I suppose there was a third possibility:

3) They were from Chicago, where the motto was: “Vote early and vote often,” and they were taking the joke seriously.

June Rambling: an atheist’s prayers, and stillness of the soul

101 Ways to Say “Died” that appeared in early American epitaphs

Useful phrases for the surveillance state.

Long-lost diary of Nazi racial theorist and Hitler confidant recovered.

George Takei remembers the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, which included himself.

Why three states dumped major private prison company in one month. I’ve long been suspicious of private prisons with them “extracting guarantees of 100 percent occupancy.”

Cereal bigotry, Arthur’s response to the Cheerios ad controversy.

SamuraiFrog feels this is the most eloquent and exact statement about fat-shaming ever. And Lefty’s wanting to shake his disease.

Gay Men, Male Privilege, Women, And Consent.

In the literally OMG category: Christian Domestic Discipline… is a movement that seeks to carry out God’s will. “Which specific plan of God’s? Oh, you know, just that all women obey their husbands fastidiously — a dynamic that CDD thinks is best maintained through doling out corporal punishments.”

An atheist’s prayers.

Awkwardneϟϟ, Ken Jennings at his son’s elementary school for the annual “Festival of the Famous.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: June 18 – A Supercell Thunderstorm Over Texas.

Steve Bissette Working On A Book About Alan Moore, Asks People To Publish His 1963 Stories Online For Free.

Meryl expands on the New York Times Magazine, “Who Made That?” article.

American and British pronunciation of Spanish (loan) words.

How Bugs Bunny saved Mel Blanc’s life.

Shooting Parrots likes to write about roguish folks you’ve never heard of – I’VE never heard of – such as Eugène François Vidocq and Ignáz Trebitsch-Lincoln. Interesting stuff.

To Parents of Small Children: Let Me Be the One Who Says It Out Loud.

Mark Evanier on the wealthy Zukors, the sweet but terrified Stearns, and his compassionate father, who worked for the IRS, part 1 and part 2.

My buddy and former neighbor Diana’s Lean In story.

Melanie: harp lessons, Italian rain, and traveling the world from home. Also, how stillness is a quality of the soul.

I wrote Love and cheating, and what I don’t understand.

Little by little things are disappearing from my house.

According to IMDB, Richard Matheson wrote 16 episodes of the TV show Twilight Zone, which included the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment that was also used in the Twilight Zone movie.

101 Ways to Say “Died” that appeared in early American epitaphs.
to me

There’s a great new documentary out called 20 FEET FROM STARDOM. The movie is about backup singers – those incredibly talented musicians who you rarely hear about but are on all your favorite records. Coming to the Spectrum in Albany on July 5 – I WILL see it.

How a maudlin song became a children’s classic.

Great Coverville podcast honoring Cyndi Lauper, who won a Tony AND turned 60 this month; oh, I might have suggested it. Dustbury celebrates as well.

I’ve been ear wormed by Our State Fair, the opening song from the 1962 film ‘State Fair’, not a great movie, but the first non-kiddie film I ever saw.

In honor of summer, a visual representation of The Rite of Spring.

Tom Lehrer singing about The Elements, then and THEN.

K-Chuck radio: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and cover songs and songs about Superman.

And speaking of the guy from Krypton: Superman was promoted at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. But who played him? It is a mystery! Also, Original ‘Superman’ Co-Star Interrupts ‘Man of Steel’ Conversation in Movie Theater Restroom.

Friend Uthaclena is 60

I’ll just wish my OLD friend a happy birthday.

We met the first day of college. He was an odd sort who tended to hang off the edge of his desk like Snoopy on his doghouse roof. He was even more socially inept than I was at the time, which is saying a lot. He turned me onto comic books at a point that I thought I had outgrown them, at a point when this was not particularly cool.

We fought against wars together, as recently as 2003.

I was in one of his weddings and he was in one of mine.

He’s actually a lot better now socially, thanks in no small part to a stint as a bartender. Most of his work, though, has been in social services. I follow his comments on Facebook but find them incredibly cryptic; one example: “Here we go…”

I usually see him at an annual event that’s been going on, in one form or other for decades, and for which he has been a primary moving force. He wasn’t there this year, though, and I got suckered into doing his part, as though I knew what I was doing.

A couple of years ago, around my birthday, I was in a particular funk about something or other. My wife had conspired with him, his wife, and his daughter to come to visit our house, which brightened my mood considerably. One of the few times I’ve been able to take off on a weekend afternoon was last spring, with him.

He’s currently dealing with some work issues that sound too familiar to me, as both my wife and one of my sisters have experienced it: you have a workload, then management increases it by 70%. They complain that you can’t meet the new goals. But you just can’t, unless you work about 20 unpaid overtime hours per week. Good luck with the forces of evil.

Rather than blathering on, I’ll just wish my OLD friend a happy birthday. Glad we got to talk, effendi.

40 Years Ago: March 5, 1972 – did not see that coming

It was a surprise birthday party for me!

In the Scudder Hall dorm, at the State University College of New Paltz, my room was B-2. I had a roommate named Ron, who was a graduate student; an odd pairing, a freshman and someone doing post-graduate work. But he was a pretty easy-going guy, and I guess I didn’t drive him too crazy.

It was surprising, though, that one day, Ron decided that we really needed to thoroughly clean the room. I didn’t think it looked that bad, but surely I would not have been the gold standard for that kind of thing.

A couple of days later, which was a Sunday, my friend Uthaclena was over at one of the dining halls playing billiards. I must admit here that 1) I love playing pool, but in spite of that, 2) I’ve never gotten very good at it.

After a time, he and I went back to my dorm room. If you have had glasses, you know how it was when it’s a bit cool out, then you walk into a room that’s a bit warmer? Right – the glasses steam up. So I walk into my room, and there are my girlfriend, the Okie (I think – I’m having trouble seeing), and our friend Alice, Ron of course, but wait? Is that my father, mother, and sisters? And who is THAT guy? (It turned out to be the quasi-boyfriend of one of my sisters.) And possibly others, though it was a small room.

It was a surprise birthday party for me! My birthday wasn’t for a couple of days, and so it caught me unawares. But it was great. I was feeling a bit melancholy, my first birthday away from home. And, more than that, they brought a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken ((back when they called it that), and there was enough left over for me to have for a couple more meals.

The event had a profound impact on me. I have subsequently helped pull off a number of surprise birthday parties over the years. Of course, I can still be surprised myself; the very next year, my parents, coordinating with the Okie, puled off another event; I think we went out to dinner. And much more recently, Uthaclena and his wife plotted with my wife to surprise me.

One last thing about the plan two score ago: my father called our dorm room one morning at 7 a.m. Ron answered the phone, and my father revealed the plan. But even as I lay on my bed half-awake, Ron never let on who he was talking to. But it DID lead to a clean dorm room.

Firsts

I essentially inherited both jobs from a guy named Walter Jones, who was the godson of my parents; his grandparents were my godparents.

I used to do these things called Sunday Stealing, but I stopped mostly because the questions started getting a bit repetitive. I found that to be somewhat true with this iteration as well -Have I sung karaoke? – no; have I kissed in the rain? -yes.

But there was a section of firsts that was fresher, so I decided I’d do that, and JUST that.

1.Who was your first prom (or homecoming) date?
Cecily. It was her prom, BTW, though she also went to my prom a few months later.

2. Who was your first roommate?
Ron Fields, a graduate student. His most obsessive habit was writing down EVERY SINGLE thing he spent money on, in these little spiral notepads. Coffee – 25 cents, candy bar – 10 cents. One day, he bought a used car ($1000).

3. What alcoholic beverage did you drink when you got drunk the first time? The first time I drank, I got a little tipsy. It was at a bar on Clinton Street in Binghamton, NY, which, according to legend, had more bars per mile at the time than any other street in the United States. My sister was singing there with a band, so my drinks were free. I was 18 and it was legal for me to drink. I had a Tom Collins, and it was so tasty, I had another. I WAS able to walk home.

4. What was your first job?
My FIRST first job was delivering the Evening and Sunday Press in Binghamton, NY. My next job was as a page at the Binghamton Public Library. I essentially inherited both jobs from a guy named Walter Jones, who was a couple of years older than I was. He was the godson of my parents; his grandparents were my godparents.

5. What was your first car?
I don’t remember the make, because it was really the Okie’s car. I know it was red and had a push-button transmission. I knocked a Dumpster over with it once.

6. When did you go to your first funeral and viewing?
Oh, it was so long ago that I can’t remember. Someone from my church, no doubt. The first one that I can remember was Agatha Green, my grandma.

7. Who was your first-grade teacher?
I had two because I had started school in February, and by September the teacher I had left; maybe she got pregnant, which happened a few times in later grades. Anyway, one was Mrs. Goodrich. BTW, I also had 2 teachers each in second, third, AND fourth grade.

8. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?
From Binghamton to Albany, when I was about 16. I was going to something called the Governor’s Conference on Children and Youth, and I was one of seven representatives from the Southern Tier. We flew in a plane with about a dozen seats, in a thunderstorm; I was terrified.

9. When you snuck out of your house for the first time?
Undoubtedly to see my HS girlfriend.

10. Who was your first best friend?
Possibly Ray Lia, with whom I was in Cub Scouts.

11. Who was your first Best Friend in high school?
Hard to say. Probably Karen and Carol, who I’d known since kindergarten, and saw just this summer.

12. Where was your first sleepover?
Don’t know that I ever did growing up. People slept over at our house, though.

13. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
Probably Norman.

14. Who’s wedding were you in the first time you were a Bridesmaid or groomsman?
Trying to remember. I was in two weddings on successive weekends, for Ray and Pam, and for Uthaclena and she who shall not be named, in October 1976.

15. What is the first thing you did when you got up this morning?
Check my e-mail.

16. First time you tied your shoelaces?
I was REALLY late at this. I had loafers until I was nine, I think.

17. Are you Facebook friends with your first crush?
No, and I have no idea where my first crush is.

18. Who was the first person you met from the blogosphere?
Gordon from Blog This, Pal! who I met when I went to Chicago for a conference in 2008. Well, there may have been some local bloggers from the Times Union site before that; I don’t remember the chronology.

19. What was the first music album that you bought?
Beatles VI.

20. Who was your first celebrity crush?
Annette Funicello.

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