NTodd Has A Blog?

I'm So Old

I remember watching this stuff when it premiered on Tracey Ullman 34 years ago today.

Monday Poetryblogging

Crossing the Atlantic:

The ship goes on

as though nothing else were happening.

Generation after generation,

I go her way.

She will run East, knot by knot, over an old bloodstream,

stripping it clear,

each hour ripping it, pounding, pounding,

forcing through as through a virgin.

Oh she is so quick!

This dead street never stops!

Anne Sexton.

#throwbacksunday

Roughly 9 years before he wrote his first keylogger.

I Miss the 90s

Sadie was amazed to learn we not only had microwaves back then, but even when I was a lad (albeit with analog dials).

Seeing Double

In addition to getting into video editing, Sam has thrown himself into building our family tree.  I guess he's taking on the mantle of Family Historian from me, which is cool.  Anyhoo, I was poking around what he'd put together, and learned some new stuff about my great grandfather, Abram.

Back in the day, I blogged a little about the Pritzkys' arrival at Ellis Island after ditching the tsarist pogroms, as well as about their conversion to Christianity.  For example, this from The Missionary Review, January 1923:

And this from Missionary Review of the World, December 1922 (my grandfather Boris, looking like a Vulcan, is the kid seated to Abram's right):

The "recently returned from Russia" is of particularly interest because it's directly tied to some family lore that Sam has been able to corroborate.  At the Statue of Liberty Heritage site, we confirmed that Abram had indeed just returned on September 23, 1922. 

Twice.

I first must note that my great grandfather traveled back and forth to the Motherland at least 7 times between 1922 and 1927.  In 1922, there is this anomaly wherein Abraham Pritsky is listed as having arrived on 2 separate pages of the President Fillmore's passenger manifest (149 and 182), with one of them corrected to "Abram Boris" (both with the same Brooklyn address).

On top of that strange double entry, we found that Abram applied for an emergency passport in Poland sometime between 1922 and 1925 (the exact date is not readily apparent).  One of the stories I heard growing up was that Abram used his missionary work as a cover to smuggle his brother (and perhaps other family) out of the Soviet Union.  I now suspect that happened during his inaugural 1922 trip, obtaining a 2nd passport, his brother using an assumed identity.

Sam and I were musing about how lucky it was there were no computers back then to automatically flag this issue and catch the Pritskys in their fraudulent act.  How different our family history might be in that case.

In conclusion: abolish ICE.

Mystery of Godliness

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

"We've had a Main B Bus Undervolt."

Happy Apollo 13th Day!

055:55:19 Swigert: Okay, Houston...

055:55:19 Lovell: ...Houston...

055:55:20 Swigert: ...we've had a problem here. [Pause.]

055:55:26 Fenner (GUIDO): FLIGHT, GUIDANCE.

055:55:27 Kranz (FLIGHT): Go GUIDANCE.

055:55:28 Lousma: This is Houston. Say again, please.

...

055:55:28 Fenner (GUIDO): We've had a Hardware Restart. I don't know what it was.

055:55:30 Kranz (FLIGHT): Okay. GNC, you want to take a look at it? See if you see any problems?

055:55:35 Lovell: [Garble.] Ah, Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus Undervolt.

[The legendary line delivered by Lovell is "Houston, we've had a problem" and not the familiar "Houston, we have a problem" made especially popular by the Tom Hanks movie. The writers of the movie have admitted that they had to use the line expected by the viewers, instead of the historically accurate one, for the sake of drama.

This of course has perpetuated the line in the popular consciousness, putting it into the top three of misquoted movies alongside "Play it again, Sam" and "Beam me up, Scotty!" Overall, "Houston, we have a problem" surely counts among the most famous spaceflight-related quotes alongside "A small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" and "That's no moon, that's a space station!"]

I love that editorial note so much.  The funniest thing to me, besides quoting Star Wars, is that Ron Howard et al didn't worry about historical accuracy of the famous line (delivered so much more dramatically by Hanks than Lovell), all while employing such awesome fx that nobody knew it was fx, even astronauts. 

Where Was I Radicalized?

Hey, I'll still quote our Founding documents, because at least they're aspirational and it's fun to proof text against MAGAts, but at this point all of the "favorite Founders" I used to have have been reduced to case studies of racist assholery, object lessons in moral failure.  Like Thomas Jefferson, high in our national (and once in my personal) pantheon, who wrote lofty paeans to liberty whilst raping Sally Hemings and profiting from his children's enslavement.

But hey, when he wanted to blame somebody for his own failings, he went big, laying slavery at the feet of King George III in his original draft of the Declaration:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die...

Then he had the temerity too whine about the British inciting these MEN to rise up against their oppressors (which did not go unnoticed by the British).  Oh, and he blamed South Carolina and Georgia for removing this section.

So I've become a lot more radicalized as I've grown old, particularly over the last few years, right here at home, by Black Americans continuing to be murdered with impunity, White Supremacists walking the hallowed halls of our government, incessant crying over essential truths laid out by the 1619 Project, etc.

Anyway, happy birthday, you dick.

Светлый праздник

Orthodox Easter is still a couple weeks off, but it was a good day to blast this piece out the window.

 

PS - I got to play the trombone solo once at a concert with the Perrysburg Symphony Orchestra, which was pretty heady stuff for a teenager.  1st chair had to miss one of our performances, so I got bumped to 2nd, who gets the part!

Paging Friends of Bill W

The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.

— Daily Reflection, April 10

 

Happy 82nd birthday to The Big Book!  That picture up there is a page from my 4th edition, marked with my scribblings from reading sessions with my sponsor.

 

As I've noted before, I'm not one to be overly invested in AA literature, but I do find examining it to be a grounding exercise, much like reading the Qur'an or poetry.  I'm not looking for revelation so much as interruption of default thought processes and habits, providing space to pause and reflect.

 

Selah.