rob vincent dot net

Hurricane Earl is scheduled to whip up a froth in the ocean not far from my house this evening. Not only am I skipping NYC2600 because of this, but I’m now focusing on getting as much of my pile of computer-based work done as possible before the power and/or the Internet service goes out. If I fall out of touch for a little while, this would be why. I’ll likely still be able to text-message my Twitter if that happens, so any necessary “I ATEN’T DED” posts will probably show up there first.

On the brighter side, please join me in wishing my best friend and co-conspirator Grey Frequency a happy birthday! Happy birthday, Grey! I heard you like nature, so I got you a big spinning knot of it. Right now it’s in the ocean for safe keeping, expect it to arrive this evening. :-D

Story time, kiddies!

In 1986 I was eight years old, and in third grade. The Statue of Liberty was constantly in the news: it was turning 100 years old, and was nearing the end of a long restoration effort.

That year, many of our school projects focused on the Statue, her role in local and national history, and the concepts for which she stood as a beacon to immigrants seeking their fortune in the United States. One homework assignment my class was given was such a project: an essay entitled “Miss Liberty and My Family.” We were instructed to interview our families as research, and write up a summary of the role Miss Liberty (literally or figuratively) played in how we got here, and what the liberty she represents means to us now. Later we each read our essays in front of the class; I always liked that part.

Before you ask, there were no Native Americans in my class that I knew of, though in retrospect it’d have been interesting to hear their essays.

Newsday, a local newspaper, had set up Miss Liberty-themed art and essay contests throughout Long Island’s schools. I wasn’t aware of this, I thought I was just doing another piece of homework. So, it was entirely a surprise some time later when I was told I won the essay contest for my age group.

I vaguely remember being up on stage in a small ceremony in front of my classmates and my family. I was presented with a $100 savings bond, whatever the heck that was; the best I could ascertain was that even though I wasn’t allowed to have that money yet, I’d surely be rich with it one day. I later received a laminated copy of the newspaper page with my name in it, and several copies of the special newspaper section that had all the winning essays and drawings from students of all ages across Long Island; it was finding those in a cabinet that prompted this post.

Anyway, all that TL;DR was the setup. Here’s the essay, written by eight-year-old me after talking family history with my mom and grandpa for an evening, presented verbatim as printed by Newsday in June of 1986.

Miss Liberty and My Family

     My Italian great grandfather and great grandmother were farmers in Italy. He came here for almost 2 years. Then he owned a whole apartment building because he worked very hard and became a jeweler. He sent for his wife. They lived in Brooklyn and had 13 children. My Portuguese great grandmother was a farmer and my Portuguese great grandfather was a fisherman. They got married in America. They lived in the Portuguese area of Boston, then the Portuguese area of New Jersey, then the Italian area of Brooklyn. That’s why my great grandmother learned Italian before she learned English. My great grandfather became a citizen by agreeing to serve in the army. He was in the Tank Corps in World War I.

     Liberty is freedom to believe in your own politics and religion. Liberty is good as long as there are laws to put order into our society. Because of liberty, we may vote for our own President and hope to get the person we want and hope the person will be honest.

Incidentally, that Italian farmer/apartment building owner/jeweler and his wife are the dashing couple you see atop this page.

I’ve followed in some other bloggers’ footsteps and set up a Formspring. Through that site you can ask me anything you like, completely anonymously if you prefer. I don’t even get your IP address. Any question will get some sort of response.

Since I implemented Gravatars on this blog’s comments, the default icon for posters who don’t have Gravatars has been a generic default I recolored to match my site. I’m wondering if there’s something more interesting and suitable I can use as a default av instead. Any ideas?

My old anti-spam human-verification plugin has died, so until I find something else all new commenters will be moderated. If you’ve already had a comment posted here before, or after you’ve had your first moderated comment approved, you should be able to comment immediately in the future. Apologies for the hassle, but the flood of spam comments I’m deflecting behind the scenes make it necessary.

On the brighter side, I’ve set up us the OpenID commenting. If you’ve never used an OpenID but have an account on any of these common services, you can use their OpenID service to login here. If you’re unfamiliar with your provider’s OpenID functionality, check your provider’s support area. If you’re unfamiliar with OpenID itself, here’s some knowledge.

Additionally, in case you weren’t aware, if the email address you comment with has a Gravatar it will show up on your comments here rather than that Default Silhouette Guy.

I’m still mulling over the sad end of a sports story I’d been following closely despite my general distaste for professional sports.

The Lacrosse World Championships were being held in England earlier this month. The Iroquois Nationals, a team from the Iroquois League of Native American tribes, found themselves unable to leave the country to play in the championship because they didn’t have US passports. They only had the passports issued by their own sovereign nation, which the Iroquois have been using to travel without incident since the 1970s.

What followed was a bit of an uproar as they were suddenly stranded in New York City, having to scramble for hotels and meals at the last minute. While their scheduled pre-tournament practice time, and eventually the tournament itself, was passing them by, they were stuck here at the mercy of a bureaucracy which had taken leave of its senses.

The officials’ concern appeared to be that the Iroquois’ passports lack modern security features, machine-readability, or RFID. They were repeatedly told to get US or Canadian passports instead (the Iroquois territory straddles the US/Canada border) which the Iroquois steadfastly refused to do as a matter of principle. The fiasco brought up all sorts of issues about the right of the sovereign Iroquois nation to issue their own passports and have them respected.

Finally, the US government relented and issued one-time waivers which allowed these guys to get on the plane to England on their own passports, but then England refused to let them in on their passports.

In the end the Nationals missed their game (and it does appear to be their game; lacrosse’s roots are traceable back to the Iroquois’ ancestors) and their shot at the championships because they valued their own national identity and principles more than they wanted to appease disrespectful paper-pushing bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic for the sake of their place in the tournament.

The Iroquois Nationals have been nothing but class acts through this whole mess, and continue to shine in the aftermath. They released a statement praising the teams and officials behind the championship, and declaring their intentions to appear at future tournaments.

This is why I have a favorite sports team, and why I wish them the best for all their future tournaments. The World Lacrosse Championships are only held every four years, and it’s unknown where they will take place, but if it’s at all practical I think I’d like to go and see this team play in 2014.

Have I really not blogged here, or even touched this partially-launched site at all, for three months?

I know I’ve been busy, but frankly I’m a bit disappointed in me over this.

More later, I’m busy touching this partially-launched site just now. Apparently the newest iteration of WordPress doesn’t like my theme based on the old default theme at all, so I’m rebuilding it kinda-sorta from scratch off the current default. Expect all sorts of weirdness and half-broken themes today, with a slight chance of rain towards the evening.

Just imported the posts from my old blog address into here. Eight years’ worth of posts transferred smoothly! Now, to figure out what to write in the rest of this new site which doesn’t involve shamelessly cribbing stuff from myself-of-the-past.

Speaking of the all-new me dot net, please excuse the rubble. Not everything works yet, a lot of things are placeholders, and I’ll probably find a lot of new ways to break stuff over the next couple of days, but in the end I believe I’ll be the proudest I’ve been of my web presence since I discovered GIF animating and MIDI embedding in 1997.

Woke up this morning to a notification; apparently classic Doctor Who actor Peter Purves had begun following me on Twitter. Intrigued, I clicked over to @peterpurves and saw what could well have been his brand new Twitter account. Among other things he’d followed a bunch of Twitter accounts with “Doctor Who” in their names, including my spoof “Doctor Who Facts” one.

Clicking the contact link on Mr Purves’ own site (which the Twitter profile links to) I sent a polite note asking whether the Twitter account might be genuine. He was good enough to respond:

No it is nothing to do with me
Peter

In a subsequent email, Mr Purves wrote:

By the way, that picture of me is also very old, and is not one I use. I do not use twitter or facebook or any social networking site – I really cannot see the point.
Peter

So, I’m spreading the word.

Just went shopping in a grocery store in a Latino neighborhood, a small place with really skinny aisles. Out of deference to the majority, I tend to revert to Spanish for the polite “excuse me, pardon me” type of stuff necessary there.

Gringos – not sympathizers like myself with multiracial family, but completely WASPy white people – are a rare sight in that store, but they do pop up now and then. So when I scooted past one couple with a polite “perdóname,” I wasn’t expecting the man to grumble at his wife that “these people really oughtta learn to speak English to us” as I went by.

Judging by his expression, he wasn’t expecting the big laugh and the “well, not with that attitude, pal!” he got back from me.

Meme swiped from Snowgrouse:

Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (month and day). Then you write down 3 events, 3 births, 3 deaths and 3 holidays.

November 12.

Events:

1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
Does this handkerchief smell funny to you?

1955 – The courthouse in Hill Valley, California was struck by lightning, damaging the clock on the building. It has yet to be repaired.
Much love to whoever snuck that one in! I swear it wasn’t me.

1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous “exploding whale” incident.
<3 <3 <3

Births:

1934 – Charles Manson, American cult leader
Um. Perhaps it’s time I shaved off my beard again.

1943 – Wallace Shawn, American actor and playwright
Inconceivable! I love this guy so much.

1970 – Tonya Harding, American figure skater
Don’t you dare tell me this doesn’t rule.

Deaths:

1035 – Canute the Great
The old Cnut is missed.

1981 – William Holden, American actor (b. 1918)
Hell of an actor. One of the many reasons you need to see Network.

2003 – Penny Singleton, American actress (b. 1908)
Jane, his wife!

Holidays:

Bahá’í Faith: Holy Day, Birth of Bahá’u'lláh
Birth of Sun Yat-Sen (observed in Taiwan)
Constitution Day in Azerbaijan

Not much I can say about those, so I’ll just throw in the fact that the day before my birthday is Veterans Day. Even when I was too young to fully understand the significance of the day, it was always handy to have my birthday right after a national holiday.