Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Cerebus #69 still makes me LOL. I love the insult the one guy says before doing a sailor dive off the building: "The President sucks wet farts out of dead pigeons!"

If I said that aloud, I'd likely to be attacked by MAGA loyalists, if they're not doubled over in laughter.

Well, now. I am spending Thanksgiving weekend in Facebook Jail. I've been put in timeout for two days. I can't post, make comments, or even like other peoples' posts.

So what did I do to deserve this?

Yesterday, I tried to post a PDF of an 'allergen card' I developed for my UU fellowship, based on prior work by a now-deceased member. We use this for potlucks and dinners to identify possible allergens in food that is brought in by a member. Facebook's content enforcement bots saw this as copyright infringement, and took down the post. I tried to appeal the ruling, but all I got was the runaround -- a link to the appeal form took me back to the original post.

Today, I posted about what happened, and included a screen shot of Facebook's message to me. Apparently their content enforcement bots didn't appreciate me making them look bad, so they took that post down as well, and put me in timeout.

There are other allergen cards out there. But this was one that was developed independently. How can I reach a human and state my case, or appeal their automated ruling? Or is Facebook too big to care?

Back in high school, "Do Moogs" became one of my catch phrases. It came as a response to the phrases "Do bongs", "Do bowls", and "Do joints" that I often saw written on some desks. (I stayed clean through high school. If there was any pot smoking done by my fellow students, I was completely oblivious to it, and I was never invited to partake.)

( So what is the philosophy behind this catch phrase? )

There are times I think about getting another bicycle, to run short errands to and from the grocery store, the library, and a few local restaurants.

I don't think I've ridden a bicycle since 1982 or 1983, when I started driving cars.

( The bicycle I had was a Hercules 3-speed English racer. )

Several years ago, when the Keurig coffee makers started appearing on the market, I thought, "Who would spend $100 on a coffee maker?" Then they started appearing -- one in my veterinarian's office, one at my local auto service center, and the folks down the hall at work have a couple of them.

What are the advantages? First, it makes one cup at a time. Pots of coffee are often left uncofnsumed or forgotten, and often boil dry while sittinggi on the warming burner. Second, the coffee tastes better.

And what are the disadvantages? It produces a lot of waste, especially considering the K-cups that get used and tossed in the trash.

( Read more... )

[Also originally posted to the "Growing Up in the Town of Tonawanda" group on Facebook.]

In which I cover more of the things I did that I forgot to include in part 1.

The Youngmann Expressway -- I-290 -- was built in the early 1960s. It was named for a civil engineer who did during construction of the road. I've heard about several people slightly older than me playing on the unfinished highway, as it hadn't opened for traffic. It had already been built and opened by the time I was a toddler, so I didn't get to explore the unfinished highway.

In the early 1970s, the houses on Willowgrove South were being built. Large mounds or hills of dirt were piled up, from the excavation of the house sites, so that the builders could pour the concrete foundations and basements. We called that area "The Big Hills", and we would often ride our bicycles on those hills. These were on standard bicycles, and we didn't wear any protective gear -- helmets, elbow pads, or knee pads. This predated BMX (bicycle motocross) by several years. Those were great hills for bicycling, even though it was risky. Thankfully, none of us got hurt, although a couple of teenage boys tried to mess with me there once.

Across the street from me, there was an abandoned gas station, or what was left of it. The concrete islands were still there, but the gas pumps were gone, and the service station building had been demolished. (I think it was an old Atlantic station that was built in 1957 and closed several years later.) Behind it was a vacant field of mostly dirt and grass. There was also a trail along the houses that went from Parker to Woodstock, which I often used to go to the stores in the Woodell Plaza. The Brighton Fire Department building is on the site now.

In the summer, the town's recreation department would place a wooden shack on the grounds of Glendale Elementary, and the staff would guide and assist us with various crafts -- plaster of Paris molds, spin art, plastic lanyard (which we called "boondoggle"), and weaving looms (on which we made many pot holders).

As I grew older, I started riding through the back entrance of Ellicott Creek Park to Creekside Drive, and Ellicott Island Park. There was a stone building on the south shore of the island, which had been boarded up. The locals called it "the casino", and I could never figure out why. I guess there was a fire that destroyed the structure, but left the stone works. I also rode my bike
down Creekside Drive to the city limit, at which point it became East Niagara St.

I also followed the service road to the town's sewage treatment plant. I could smell when they were in operation; it smelled like Nair hair remover. I often wondered why Paradise Lane, from the Raintree Island subdivision dead-ended, and wasn't built to the service road. That would have provided an additional exit to the subdivision. It was a 200-foot gap that ran under power lines.

I also fished in Ellicott Creek with one of my neighborhood friends. We didn't catch much -- mostly carp, bullhead (a type of catfish), and a rock bass. I once saw some teenagers in a canoe go into the storm sewer that ran under Woodstock Ave. that emptied into Ellicott Creek. I don't know how far they went in the storm sewer.

Another one of my neighborhood friends built a tree house in his backyard, and we spent many afternoons there, chewing gum, reading comic book, sharing stories, or just hanging out.

I have a vague memory of a flood in the summer of 1968 or 1969. I was riding down the side of the street in a plastic boat.

Would I allow my kids to do these things now? Perhaps. We didn't care as much about personal injury, personal liability, and litigation that we do now. We took responsibility for ourselves, even if it meant taking our lumps, and risking getting grounded.

This afternoon -- actually, the past few days -- I was thinking about Thanksgivings past. The days when I would get together with my parents, relatives (often my Uncle Joe), or good friends. Few of us had any of that aspect of the holiday this year, as we mostly isolated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of my close friends -- Heather aka maedbh7 -- wrote about her Thanksgiving experiences over the years. ( I'm inspired to do the same. )

This year, I spent it alone. This isn't the first year I've done this. I had no desire to invite myself to Rebecca's for dinner; that would be tacky. I cooked a 3-pound turkey breast and some side dishes -- stuffing, yams, green beans, cranberry sauce, biscuits, and turkey gravy. I watched a little bit of the Macy's parade, and mostly listed to music during the day. I also talked with my friend Howard over the phone.

Something I've noticed: The people who deny racism, or don't see it as a problem, have likely never experienced it for themselves. They've never been in "the minority". And so they're not aware of that blind spot.

What is their typical background? European-American (or "white"). Christian (I'm including Catholic here). Straight. Cisgender (as opposed to transgender). And most of the time, male.

I'm Italian-American. I do not know the racism my [paternal] grandfather experienced from the time he arrived here to the time he died. Nor the racism my [paternal] grandmother, or her parents, experienced. Between then and the 1970s, things changed, and Italians, or those of Italian ancestry, were somehow reclassified as "white", and therefore, "one of us". I don't recall ever being called "dago", "wop", or "guinea".

I am also Polish-American. I endured the "dumb Polack" jokes of the early 70s. And again, I don't know the racism my maternal grandparents, my mother, or her siblings, had experienced. They lived in the Black Rock neighborhood of Buffalo, a predominantly Polish neighborhood, which was safe territory for them.

Have I ever experienced racism? Yes. I was the lead maintainer of a computer program used by several different system program offices (SPOs) of the Air Force. One org had everyone deployed at the administrator level, instead of one administrator and everyone else at the data entry level, as the system was designed. Their rationale was "We're all administrators here". I advised them to correct this, to select an administrator, so I could reassign the roles. As we were leaving, one of them said to one of my co-workers, "I don't like some foreigner telling me what to do." (I didn't hear this. If I had, I would probably have said, "Foreigner? I'm a US citizen. Have you ever seen an Italian-American before?"

But compared to other people in my life who have experienced and endured much more racism, this is just a drop in the bucket. From the woman of color who was stopped in Oakwood for "following too closely", or the man on color who was stopped on the 315 in Columbus twice by the same cop and advised to get out of town, or a Jewish friend who had someone who was pro-Palestinian denounce a family portrait.

How do we end this? How do we dispel the fear and hate? We just keep talking, trying to resolve our differences peacefully, without resorting to violence or murder.

One of my close friends, Dawn Rose Amadea, passed away this past Thursday, October 31, after years of health issues.

( Read more... )

50 years ago today, the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. (Technically, only Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed while Michael Collins remained in the orbiter.) What was I doing that day? Watching the coverage on CBS, with Walter Cronkite, on a black-and-white TV, and eating cherry chip birthday cake. (Yes, July 20 is my birthday.) It's the earliest memory I have; I can't remember anything from my life before that day.

What I -- or many other people watching -- didn't know how close they came to not making the landing. They had only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, and the folks in Mission Control were holding their breath. This segment from yesterday's NPR Morning Edition recounts those minutes leading up to the landing.

After they landed safely, they were instant celebrities. Neil hated the limelight and mostly kept to himself. He had a farm near Lebanon, OH, and briefly taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati in the 1970s. He passed away in 2012. I would have loved an opportunity to meet him and have a beer with him.