Happy 50th birthday, Schoolhouse Rock!

Thanks to a Facebook post, I learned that January 6 is not just another "day of infamy."

On January 6, 1973, sometime between a couple of ABC cartoons, a ditty called "Three Is the Magic Number" premiered. 

It was the very first segment of what we know as Schoolhouse Rock, the ABC series that taught millions of 1970's children about English, math, history, and science. 

It lasted from 1973 to 1984, and in 2009, a DVD of the Schoolhouse Rock episodes came out. I had a copy and played it for my then ten-year-old son. I'm not sure how much he learned from it (maybe more than I think) but I remember the DVD for a recording of the song "Electricity" by the group Goodness. 

A fast look at Wikipedia told me that Schoolhouse Rock started when an ad executive saw his son was struggling with learning his multiplication tables -- even though he could memorize song lyrics. So he hired a musician to write a song to teach multiplication. That song was "Three Is a Magic Number." 

A co-worker of the executive heard the song, created visuals for it, and eventually pitched it as a TV series.

The rest, as they say, is history -- singable history, in this case.

I was nine years old when Schoolhouse Rock premiered. To this day:

• when I count the number of stitches I have on a knitting needle, I count them three at a time to the tune of "Three Is a Magic Number" ("Three, six, nine /Twelve, fifteen, eighteen . . .")
• my husband will still recite the very last part of "Interjections!" ("Darn, that's the end!"
• I find myself thinking of the lyrics of "A Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing" to remind myself of what a noun is
• if I want energy, I remember, "Verb! That's What's Happening"
• "Conjunction Junction" is an earworm.

I know there were other songs about the other parts of speech, but I do not remember them as well. 

"America Rock", another segment of Schoolhouse Rock, burst onto the scene in 1975. This was the series that taught kids how a bill became a law, what the 19th Amendment meant, how the American Revolution happened, along with the arrival of the Pilgrims.

And -- and -- the piece de resistance, "Preamble". I cannot, ever since I heard the song, recite the Preamble to the Constitution without hearing the song in the back of my head, "We the People/In order to form a more perfect union . . ." 

Throw in Science Rock and Money Rock -- segments I am not as familiar with -- and you have a perfect curriculum, all set to music. 

Looking back on the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons, you can spot some of the '70's influence: the bell-bottom pants on the Wonder Woman-esq main character in "Suffering Until Suffrage", the afros on the Black kids in "Verb! That's What's Happening", the Nixon-esq politician in "I'm Just a Bill" running down the hall yelling (albeit in a Southern accent), "He signed you, bill! Now you're a law!"

In thinking about "America Rock", you could make the case that their coverage of American history is problematic: the arrival of the Pilgrims glosses over their treatment of the Native Americans who were there first; "Elbow Room", about the Western expansion, also ignores how Native Americans were pushed off their land. There is nothing about slavery or the Civil Rights movement. Nothing about the wars we were in. And other sordid parts of American history that we still don't want to or like to talk about.

But the idea -- of setting education fundamentals to music and seeing what happened -- worked. 

The earworms in my brain, and in the brain of just about every other '70's kid, prove it.

Happy 50th birthday, Schoolhouse Rock!

Just my .04, adjustment for inflation.

Can I have the recipe for that, please?

 Between church this morning, a needed afternoon nap, getting my son to *his* group on time and then getting to our new small group on time (our church small group of four just merged with a small group of about five), and dealing with the rain, my writing “practice” tonight is going to be a short one.  I use the blog a lot not only for reflecting on events in my life and current events in the world, but also for just practicing writing. 

While coming home during a heavy rainfall (my husband was driving, not me!), I was scrolling Twitter on the iPhone and came on this tweet:  “The pastor’s two older kids (age 3 & 4) sang ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ today and I’m still laughing about ‘with angelic roast proclaim’.” The kids sang it today because the family had been sick during their Christmas service and they ended up singing today during their church’s announcements. 

I tweeted back, “Angelic Roast sounds like something I need the recipe for.” So I’m wondering if a) there is such a dish as “angelic roast”, or b) is that something a chef could create a recipe for? It would go wonderfully with ambrosia (considered “the food of the gods”) for dessert. :-) 

(Someone in the thread commented, “I’ve had some angelic roasts, so this works for me.” I suspect the tweeter is talking about a different kind of angelic roast, so that will be another story for another time.) 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Okay, we can breathe now . . .

On Monday night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, #3, collapsed on the field during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals. 

Most of us have seen the terrifying picture of Bills and Bengals players kneeling in a circle around him, shielding Hamlin from view as the NFL’s medical team performed CPR on him. 

On arrival at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Hamlin had to be resuscitated yet again. (When I heard that, I feared the worst.) 

The doctors sedated Hamlin and placed him on a ventilator. 

By Wednesday, we were starting to hear positive reports of his improvement.

When he awoke on Thursday, he was still on a breathing tube but able to write on a clipboard, “Did we win?” 

The response:  Damar, you won.  You won the game of life. 

A doctor reported that “not only are the lights on, he’s home.”

The world started letting out the breath it had been holding.

By Thursday evening, Hamlin was breathing on his own, and on Friday morning, the Buffalo Bills released the welcome news:  He’d talked to his teammates via video. When he came up on screen, the team stood up and clapped for him. Bills player Dion Dawkins said afterwards, “We got our boy, man! That’s all that matters.” 

Hamlin told them, “Love you guys,” and made what is a signature gesture for him, both hands coming together and forming a heart. 

Today, he posted on Instagram.

He thanked everyone for their support, for their love, and asked for prayers for the long road ahead. 

For someone who’d had to be revived twice at the beginning of the week, it’s a remarkable recovery.  

On Sunday, the team will take the field - without Hamlin - against the New England Patriots. I’m wondering what they will be thinking. The good news about Damar Hamlin may be the shot of adrenaline the team needs to beat the Patriots. Or, it’s possible that the mental roller coaster they’ve been on may have taken a negative toll. 

Commentators and journalists have talked about the effect of Hamlin’s injury: first, that “life is more important than football,” how traumatizing it was for players to see his collapse, the fear that he might not make it . . . and now, the relief that we feel since he’s awake and able to communicate.

A toy drive he’d started, with a goal of $2500, has received around $8 million. 

Players, fans, and others associated with the NFL are posting “Love for Damar” with the number 3. Some teams have outlined the number 3 on the 30-yard line in the Bills’ team colors of red and blue. 

But even though so much of the news sounds positive, Damar Hamlin is still in critical condition. And while I was checking the Internet for this post, I found in a CNN article that Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest, which is caused by electrical disturbances that cause the heart to stop beating properly. What Hamlin suffered was not a heart attack or heart failure. I had not known there was a difference between “heart attack” and “cardiac arrest”. Thank God the medical personnel got to Hamlin in time. Now the doctors want to know what caused that cardiac arrest. 

Damar Hamlin is not totally out of the woods yet. He has, as he himself says, a long road ahead. 

But now, the world can finally let out the breath it’s been holding all week. 

#lovefordamar

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Two years

Where were you two years ago today?

Is January 6th, 2021 a date that lives in your mind, like 9/11? 

Or for my parents’ generation, November 22, 1963?

Or for my grandparents’ generation, December 7th, 1941?

It should.

Because two years ago today, a group of people, waving American flags, Trump flags, Confederate flags, and even Christian flags, started with a demonstration in front of the Capitol building — after listening to speeches by Donald Trump and others imploring the audience to “fight like hell” to take their country back. 

So they went to the Capitol.

Inside, Congress was going through their Constitutionally mandated responsibility to cast their electoral ballots.

The 2020 election season would soon come to a close.

But not without a fight. And it turned out to be a literal fight. 

We should not forget that there were people who stormed barricades, pushed past police officers, and eventually gained access to the Capitol building and marched to the door of the House of Representatives. 

Does anyone want to think about what would have happened if they had gotten in? 

Does anyone remember that someone brought a noose and a scaffold, and that one of the slogans the mob was screaming was, “Hang Mike Pence!”?

Does anyone remember that portions of the Capitol building was wrecked, and that part of the wreckage included bodily waste smeared on the walls?

I know there are people who argue about whether or not January 6, 2021 was an insurrection or not. I’m not going to fight with people. 

Today, in the same chamber, as I write this, Kevin McCarthy has lost 13 ballots to become the new Speaker of the House. Since the Republicans now have control of the House, it should be easy for them to elect a Speaker.  Right?

Uhhh, apparently not.

It’s 9:57 p.m. as I write this, and in three minutes, the House will reconvene for round 14. At this point, I fully expect to start hearing the fight theme from “Rocky” playing and Kevin McCarthy entering in boxer shorts and wearing boxing gloves. 

Until a Speaker is elected, the new House cannot be sworn in and they cannot do any work. According to CNN Politics, this is now the longest speaker contest in 164 years.  The last time a speaker contest went this long was in 1859, two years before the Civil War started.

There are a group of Republicans that are determined that McCarthy NOT be Speaker, but as I’m writing this, I just saw a tweet saying that the House is reconvening and that finally, on the 14th ballot, McCarthy should win his speakership, the House can be sworn in, and work can finally start. 

I fear that another January 6th could happen after the next Presidential election. All you have to do is scream loud enough, “The election was stolen!” and if you can get a large enough following with enough influence, you could very easily duplicate the events of January 6th.  

I hope not, but I’ve become very cynical and jaded, especially in the last decade and particularly in the last six years. Politics and news used to be fun for me to watch and listen to. Now I can barely stand it. 

Let’s hope the House chamber has lots of coffee. They will need it.

And let’s hope that maybe the American electorate has more common sense than I give it credit for having!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Row, row, row your words, gently on the page . . .

This is another night where I will just be writing stream of consciousness again. I don't know if I am entertaining, boring, or torturing my poor little blog audience. I do okay when I have a particular subject I am writing about. I can knock off a blog entry in about an hour or less. 

Tonight I am writing to write. This is practice writing, so I guess anyone that reads this will have to take this as an equivalent to a musician practicing their scales. I took piano lessons as a child but never had the discipline to practice as much as I should have. And I am the daughter of a man that learned to play piano by ear. My dad did enjoy playing boogie-woogie on the piano; I think he was a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis. 

Where the "writing off the top of my head" ability came from, I have no idea. There are no writers in my family that I am aware of. Except for my late Uncle Jerry, and the two books, dissertation, and many academic papers he wrote would probably be a good cure for any insomnia I have. (I just looked on Amazon. One book is called Thermal Management Handbook: For Electronic Assemblies; one is Hybrid Microelectronics Handbook.) His dissertation title included the words "neutron-irradiated silicone", and when I found that title on a computer at my first library job and showed it to my reference desk partner, her response was, "Sure!" I love my Uncle Jerry. I would also probably not understand his writing. 

My mother never wrote anything, but she was the one who read to me. My father was not a book person; he enjoyed the newspaper, news magazines (and a copy of Field and Stream), and news programs. My mother read a lot of mystery and suspense. So did my grandmother. My sister takes after our father in that she prefers magazines to books. I prefer books. 

Well, there's my consciousness stream for the evening. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Writing to meet a goal

 Today is one of those days that I’m writing just because I said I was going to write every day, no matter what. So I’m not really sure what I am writing about. This may be just a stream of consciousness entry, where I write down whatever comes into my head and it may or may not make any sense. 

• Our church’s (very small) Young Adult group decreased by one as we held a good-bye dinner for a young lady that is leaving. She is Brazilian, and tomorrow she will take a non-stop flight from here to Rio to see her mother . . . and then hop a plane to Ireland, where she plans to study English. I think it’s funny that she is going to Ireland to study English. She’s young, unmarried, knows at least two languages, if not more, and has a kind and adventurous spirit. She’d also like to travel while she’s in Ireland. Now’s the time for her to do it!
• The 118th House apparently showed up wearing their Bozo the clown outfits. They’ve taken six ballots, and they still have no Speaker of the House, which means the new 118th House members cannot be sworn in yet.  It’s the first time in 100 years where there has been more than one ballot to elect a Speaker. Kevin McCarthy wants the job. There are those that don’t want him to have the job. Frankly, I think the House is acting like a bunch of two-year-olds, and I apologize for the insult to two-year-olds.
• We have not seen rats or mice since we returned home from Florida. Which probably means that I will find a trail of rat poop somewhere tomorrow morning. 
• I am officially back at work; I finished proofreading 221 pages and promptly got another assignment of around 250 pages which is due back Friday. I will be working all day Thursday.
• Because of all the holidays my husband has taken, all of the traveling we have done, and the fact that the calendar has rolled over, my own internal calendar is shot. It will probably take me a week or so to get a feel for what day it is . . . just in time for Martin Luther King Day to show up and wreck my internal calendar again. (No shade meant for MLK, who definitely deserves his day of remembrance. I’m just having a rough time remembering what day of the week it is!)
• I’m still stuck on giving my antagonist in my work in progress a reason not to shoot my protagonist. This is one of those things that drives writers crazy.
• And I still need to close out our financial books for the last year.
• As members of the Peanuts gang would say, “Sigh.” Or maybe, “Good grief!” would be a better exclamation!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Sudden death

 Last month I experienced the sudden death of two people.

One was a Facebook friend who’d I’d been around for 20 years.

The other was a cousin of mine.

And we almost saw it happen again last night.

The first person, Kathy, I “met” during the days of Yahoo Groups. I joined a group made up of people who’d all read two books, Karen and With Love From Karen, both written by Marie Killilea. Marie’s daughter Karen was born in 1940 and a year later, diagnosed with cerebral palsy. It took her parents 23 doctors and two and a half years to find proper help. I read both books when I was 13 and was captivated. We in the group swapped stories about the effect the books had on us and swapped stories about each other. I joined the group right before my son was diagnosed with autism and the group was a support to me during that time. 

Kathy was one of the first people to say hello to me when I joined the group. Later, she formed another online group for people who loved books as she did. She was such a fan of the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. She loved God and was enormously proud of her family. 

She died in her sleep in mid-December, while she and her husband were on their way to a cruise to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. One of our mutual Facebook friends messaged me and when I saw the words, “Kathy is dead,” I was stunned. The only comfort I can find is that she went to sleep and woke up in heaven. 

I saw an enormous outpouring of love and memories for her on Facebook. I thought of three people who would be totally heartbroken (in addition to her husband): her best friend, and two other dear friends she met on Facebook. 

She lived a life that will be remembered, and you can’t ask for more than that.

The other was my cousin Bill, who I wrote about yesterday. His sudden death came when he went to burn some brush and the wind blew up. He either suffered smoke inhalation, or a heart attack, or both, and died. His funeral was yesterday, and since he broadcast high school sports for a number of years,  it was appropriate to hold his funeral in the Harlan County High School gymnasium. From the number of comments I saw on Facebook, Harlan County lost a legend. 

Last night, a young Buffalo Bills football player, Damar Hamlin, tackled a Cincinnati Bengals player, Tee Higgins.  They both went down and got up. Nothing remarkable. It’s normal, and expected, to see tackles in football games.  Right? 

Except two seconds after he got up, Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and this time, he did not get up.

The medical personnel raced onto the field, and both Bills players and Bengals players formed a human wall around Hamlin, shielding him from the audience and from the TV cameras. 

Hamlin was given CPR on the field in those agonizing moments before the ambulance arrived.  

Bills players - and Bengals players - cried, and many of them knelt in prayer for their fallen teammate. 

After an hour or so, and discussions with players and between both coaches, the game was suspended at 5:58 of the first quarter. They will not resume this game this week. Which I think is good. If the teams had tried to play again, no one would have been able to concentrate. All they’d see is the body of their fellow player, lying on the ground, his arms outstretched, receiving CPR so that he could just survive. 

I’m watching a clip of the Monday Night Football broadcast from last night. One of the speakers said he’d never seen an ambulance come onto the field. I have, one time on TV, where someone had a neck injury. (I cannot remember who was playing or when it was.) They did bring the ambulance onto the field and take the player off. 

However, there’s never been a situation where a player collapsed, on live TV, and had to be given CPR before being loaded into an ambulance. 

Damar Hamlin is currently in critical condition in the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He is alive. 

But we could have seen sudden death on the field last night.

The idea of sudden death scares me. Of waking up and finding my husband dead next to me, or of losing my son, or sister, or niece. I think it scares me because death is something that is out of my control. There is a verse in the book of Proverbs that says “no man has power over the day of his death”.  I get scared of being the one left behind having to deal with an estate. It also scares me to be the one to die and leave others to handle my affairs. 

What do I say? What is there to say in the face of sudden death? Of a relative? Of a person you only knew through a computer screen? Of a young athlete? 

“I’m sorry,” sounds so trite. “Thoughts and prayers,” sounds tired and overused. 

Life is precious when you are looking into the face of sudden death. 

That’s all I know to say.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.