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Take a peek – Yes You Can

Michael Leave a comment

Hello fellow bloggers! I again invite you to take a peek at another ROAMcare post, Yes You Can. 

Confidence comes from within and you can increase your self-confidence. A positive you is a confident you. Confident that you are the best you there is.

Yes You Can

POSTED TO UPLIFT, OCTOBER 30,2024
3 MINUTE READ

Two weeks ago, we wrote about self-worth. It is impossible to discuss self-worth without bringing up self-confidence. Without being confident that you are presenting the best you to the world, it is difficult to describe your value. Likewise, if you do not value yourself, you are not going to be confident of contributing to society. Confidence comes from within. We know that and presented words from others describing the connection between value and confidence. We closed that post with, “Once you accept yourself, you can offer you to others. The true you. The valuable you.”

Are there exercises you can do or it there a roadmap to increasing how confident you feel about being you? There are things you can do to build your self-confidence, beginning with accepting yourself and rising to the challenge of being you.

Read the full blog at Yes You Can, on Uplift at ROAMcare. As always there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding.

While you are there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly our Monday Moment of Motivation and the email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Uplift 2024

Take a Peek – Tell me a story

Michael 3 Comments

Hello fellow bloggers! I again invite you to take a peek at another ROAMcare post, Tell me a story

Much of what we know is from stories told to us by storytellers. Often truth is optional. When you become the storyteller, you owe those looking to learn from you an honest story.

Tell me a story

Posted to Uplift, October 23,2024
3 minute read

When you take a novel from your bookshelf you expect a work of fiction. Whether the latest Grisham or a classic Tolstoy, the common ground is that the story is just a story.

Our lives are not a work of fiction, yet we still enjoy a good story, and many of us enjoy hearing and telling tales from “back in the day.” We recognize much of the remembrance includes a little exaggeration and we are okay with that.

Stories are much more than just the retelling of family lore or to entertain and enjoy. We learn from stories.

Read the full blog at Tell me a story, on Uplift at ROAMcare. As always there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding.

While you are there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly our Monday Moment of Motivation and the email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Uplift 2024

Take a peek – Solving Problems the Right Way

Michael 9 Comments

Hello fellow bloggers! I invite you to take a peek at another ROAMcare post, Solving Problems the Right Way.

Among our interactions at home, at work, and places in between, there are few when some disagreement doesn’t arise. True problem solving has less to do with deciding who is right and everything to do with finding the right way to be.

 

Solving Problems the Right Way

Posted October 2, 2024
3 minute read

In just about a month, Americans will go to the polls to elect 23 governors, 33 senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives, one Vice President and, oh yes, one President. In many of those races it is difficult to differentiate the opponents from their ads and campaign signs. Regardless of party, the advertising party is for the “hardworking people” and the opposition is “too radical” or “too extreme.’’ How is it that both sides can be right? They can’t, and too often neither side is.

We see the difficulties in expressing oneself without bias or without attempting to either make less of someone’s accomplishments or to make more of one’s own when they are presented to us in such jarring fashion as a political ad. If we took a close look at our own interactions with those who take a different view of how something should be done, would we see the same traits as we are seeing now being played out on the larger stages?

Read the full blog at Solving Problems the Right Way on us lift at ROAMcare. As always there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding.

While you are there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Uplift 2024

All that’s write with the world

Michael 13 Comments

Yesterday I had my weekly meal with my daughter. We’ve been eating meals together for 30 some years, the most recent few years every Sunday, sometimes breakfast, sometimes brunch, sometimes lunch, occasionally dinner, alternating houses and hosting duties but with only a quarter mile between the two homes, it’s rarely the only time we see each other over the course of a week.

Yesterday was my turn at my house and I prepared a combination of our favorites. Cinnamon roll French toast bacon sliders. They were yummy! (Actually, yummy with about 27 exclamation marks.) Of all the meals I make, and I do all of the big three, breakfasts are my favorite, and I try to make our Sunday breakfasts when I’m making a Sunday breakfast something different. I like breakfast and said someday I should write a cookbook with just breakfasts. My daughter’s answer, “Why not?”

Easy for her to say. She actually makes a living at writing. Creative writing. I mentioned that to her and reminded her that I made my fortune (hahahaha!) as a hospital pharmacist, not as one of America’s literary giants. But then she reminded me I wield a quill as deftly as a pestle. (See. Creative.) And that made me think how much this “scientist” has put down on paper,  or pixelated the screen.

Last week I was re-reading most of the almost 200 ROAMcare Uplift blog posts as we decide which of them will work best in a compilation into book form. (If you’re interested, a couple of my favorites are Listening for Love, and Friend is Another Word for Love. Yes, there is a theme there.) Most of those posts are around 500 words and some of them have been recycled but we figure that’s abut 90,000 words written, and although a collaborative effort, I do the bulk of the writing.

Then there is this thing, the quote unquote personal blog, that I’ve been hammering at for 12 years, 8 months, and 4 days. Untold number of words, some intelligent. (One of my many favorites here is Good Things, Small Spaces, a real oldie and still goodie.)

I’ve written about a dozen articles for professional journals, a. short lived newspaper column on, yep, drug stuff (weekly for about 2 years), one novel currently getting more air miles back and forth to publishers than I’ll ever get on a real airline, one short story and a “self-help” book (I hate that descriptor) that I keep revising mostly because in all honestly, they aren’t that good, and one of what I hope will be my legacy.

That donation to society is trip through my life tentatively titled Long Shots and Miracles, based on a presentation I do that describes me battling 3 potentially life-ending conditions in the span of 20 years with the power of prayer (I let the doctors battle with medical know-how, I battled with prayer). To give you a flavor of that, this is usually how I close. ‘The doctors have their theories, I’ll stick with mine. But you tell me, what do you think. Am I just luckier than most or am I a living miracle, proof that prayers are answered. You have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. I’m sticking with the Miracle Worker. That seems to be the sure thing.’ Popular among church organizations and just breaking into “survivor” groups.

I also speak on other topics but before I do I write them out completely, as if they would be read. (I found it’s how I best edit myself.) Oh, and once I wrote a letter to the editor.

Is there a point to all this? No, not really. If you are reading this, you are a writer. If there must be one, I’d say the point is that everyone can be whatever they want to be, no matter when they decided to be it, nor what they started out to be. I think as humans, an area we lag the rest of nature is that of adaptability.  We spend much too much time and energy doing things that don’t make us happy or add to our contentment (yes, they are different things), and we justify it too often with “that’s what I’ve always done,” or “oh I could never do that.” The only things you can never do are the things you won’t ever do. (Oh, that would make a dandy sampler!)

So there’s my point. If I can do it, anybody can. Even if I’m not all that good at it. You might be better at whatever you decide you want to be after all this time.

Or then again, I could just be pointless. And that’s okay too.

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Learning all we can for as long as we can prepares us for whatever the day may bring. And keeps us happy and healthy! Read why we say “we’re learning, to be happy” in the latest Uplift.

 

One thousand and then some

Michael 8 Comments

Okay everybody, this is, this really is, this absolutely is, the day we’ve been waiting for. This is the day I post RRSB #1001, as in one thousand and one posts, the start of a new millennium of mish mosh! Some how I have managed to publish one thousand versions of absolute nothingness, sometimes not even bad enough to be called drivel, but other times incredibly profound. And now, it’s time to start again

A thousand posts may not be much to those who post daily, or to those some people who post 2 or 3 or 4 times a day! But for me, what started out as twice a week and even that got to be too much so I dropped it to once a week missive, that is a long time. A long time that started on November 7, 2011.

Where were you in November 2011. I was working at a job I loved that I promised myself would be my last job, I would stay there forever. Well it was my last job and forever came less than 3 years later when health issues and the desire to live trumped the desire to work. I was with a semi-partner who I thought would be with me forever and likewise, forever came less than 3 years later, when health issues and her desire to have a life trumped my desire to just keep on living.

That was okay on both counts. Eleven and a half years later and I’m healthier than I had been, smarter than I had been, and certainly wiser than I had been. I discovered that I didn’t have to be working to be useful but found useful work anyway. I discovered a daughter I had never spent enough time with and that spending enough time didn’t mean all the time, but what we called back then “quality time.” I discovered a handful of friends who added more to my life than I could ever give back to them and that love was shown to me by the ones who would call every week or every day or twice a day, just to make sure I was doing okay, had everything I needed, or just to say, “Hi, now don’t go getting lonely.” I discovered a true love of my life who indeed will be with me forever, just not in the way I envisioned “with me” would happen. And I discovered people who love each other can reach out and touch each other without ever having to touch each other.

Among those one thousand posts were stories of frustration at the little things that shouldn’t be frustrating like people who can’t count back change when the cash register display isn’t there to tell them how much to give back. There also were stories of motivation and how everything I ever knew about how to be a gentleman I learn from hockey. There were those of inspiration and how people would rally behind me in undoubtedly my time of greatest need and although she wouldn’t give me the shirt of her back, she would give me her kidney. There were stories of silliness like how the happiest place on earth is a dollar store. There were predictions of what people would do when (or at that time, if) the pandemic ended. There were moments of absolute terror when I revealed that I believe in miracles not knowing how it would be taken, then of absolutely relief that I could reveal that I in miracles and I don’t care how it was taken because I had to say it and I said it for me. And there were even tales of true wisdom when I posited if you’re willing to say you love pizza, what’s to stop you from telling your friends you love them? (And yes, there were a lot about that groundhog, too.)

What will I do for my second thousand posts. Well, for starters, I’ll have at least one recalling the first thousand. After that, stick around for a few years and we’ll discover them together.

And that’s what I think. How about you?  

It takes work to grow and protect friendships from falling apart. In the most recent Uplift! we suggest three steps to maintaining and growing friendships.

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Did you ever wonder

Michael 7 Comments

Things I’ve sat and wondered about this week.

Winter is the coldest season in the northern hemisphere. It’s also when the earth is closest to the sun.

How many “new year days” are there in a year? If we celebrated the “new year” 23 days ago, what was the “new year” that started yesterday? There are actually 26 different days that begin a new year around the world. Some are solar, some lunar, some lunisolar, some religious, some an arbitrary date. One thing that is constant, there are all cause for celebration and they are all celebrated!

An extra tidbit about the Lunar New Year, even though it is called “lunar,” it is actually lunisolar in that both the position and movement of the sun and the moon determine the beginning of the year. Although it is generally associated with Asian cultures, not all Asian communities will celebrate it on the same day every year. Because of the great physical size of the continent, in some years there is enough distance between major Asian centers that the position of the moon will be in different phases on the same day and result in the new moon observed on different days. Thus there will be a different determination for beginning the new year. Also, not all Asian communities identify their years the same. For example, this year the Chinese are celebrating the Year of the Rabbit while in Vietnam it is recognized as the Year of the Cat.

How much does our brain do without telling us? You may know a favorite hobby of mine is painting. I add a heart into every piece I paint. It is my way of telling whoever sees it (whom ever?) (whatever!) that they are loved. Often when I finish a painting I will set it aside for a few days, then hang I up and take a good look at the finished piece. And often find several hearts throughout it that I hadn’t realized I had painted.

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Can you find the heart?

While I am thinking about painting, did you know that black and white are not colors? To a pure physicist they aren’t. (And if you are a pure physicist and you say they are, just let me have this one please.) Colors are colors because of the amount of reflected light our eyes perceive. The different colors are formed by the different wavelengths light emits as a result of that reflection through whatever the light is passing. White is the presence of all of the possible reflected wavelengths the light may take on, and black is the absence of any reflected light.

Another interesting “color question” is, if there are only 3 primary colors, why are there 7 colors in a rainbow? The three primary colors can be combined to form the 3 secondary colors. In theory, these are the basic “building blocks” of all other colors. If you look at the light as it passes through a prism you can easily identify the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) and three secondary colors (orange, green, and purple). But they are not perfect divisions of color.  Each color bleeds into its neighbor, the secondary colors between the primary colors. We see seven colors in the rainbow because between primary blue and the ultra violet wavelength where all light is absent resulting in black, blue goes through two stages or hues, cyan and indigo, before turning purple. A rainbow just as easily could be considered 6 colors but what would Roy B. Giv say about that?

A few years ago I considered changing the name of the blog. The Real Reality Show Blog was born on Nov 7, 2011 (990 posts ago) during the hay day of reality TV shows which bore no semblance to reality. I wanted a blog that was reflective of reality, at least my realty, and thus the unwieldy title was chosen. I suppose a number of times I wished I had an easier to remember, to say, or to type blog identifier that still reflected who I am. A while ago I thought I had come across the perfect description. Given that the posts are the ramblings of all that I am, I should title the blog what I am, and thus I thought, what am I? Aha. I am a single white male. And the stories are of a kind that a single white male would encounter. I thought that was a perfectly descriptive blog name. A Single White Male. And then I thought, but what would the email from WordPress to the author of a blog that I chose to follow read? Why it would read, “Dear [Blog owner], Congratulations, A Single White Male is now following you.” Umm, no.

Did you ever notice, when I do one of these brain dump type posts, the entries get longer as we get further along with it?

Have a great week! Next week I’ll try to be more thought provoking.

There are many sources of help but help gets us only so far. Don’t expect others to do for you. Ultimately, you have to do the work. We talked about this last week in Uplift! on ROAMcare.org. Read what we said about it here.

That’s a wrap!

Michael 2 Comments

It’s been ages since I published a post in Thursday. I routinely did twice a week posts until I realized I just didn’t have that much to say – even to myself! So I dropped back to just Monday. Here that is. Many of you  know I also write a second blog in a second site ROAMcare.org. I was sitting here today working in new ideas for that one for next year when I thought to myself, between these two, I really did write some good stuff to wrap up the year. (If I say so myself) So, I invite you to wrap up your year with some of my favorite thoughts, from here and there.

Nov 9, ROAMcare

Today is only a day away

What do you do with a day that’s cloudy and gray? Don’t wait for tomorrow. Start a new day today! The sun that will come out tomorrow is already up there. Let the light in!

https://www.roamcare.org/post/today-is-only-a-day-away

Nov 16, ROAMcare

For the people who love us into being

From our earliest day there people molded us into the who we are now. They have been those who loved us into being. Thank the people who make us the who that we are.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/for-the-people-who-love-us-into-being

Nov 21, The Real Reality Show Blog

On being loved into being

Gratitude is not an exercise in saying thanks for what we have, for in truth we will not always have. We should be expressing thanks because we are, because even when we do not have, we always will be. Be grateful you have people who have loved you into being. Say thank you to them, because without them, you are not the who you are.

https://therealrealityshowblog.wordpress.com/2022/11/21/on-being-loved-into-being/

Dec 14, ROAMcare

If you could do it again…

If you could do it all over again, would you? Could you? You shouldn’t even have to ask if you take time now to review where you are in life and get ready to reset for the new year.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/if-you-could-do-it-again

Dec 21, ROAMcare

A Winter Carol

Christmas is just ahead and winter holds many holidays. It is when we remember something special shared with special people at a special time.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/a-winter-carol

Dec 26, The Real Reality Show Blog

Finding joy

We are responsible for our own happiness for if we rely solely on someone else to bring us joy, we always be living by their definition of happiness. It isn’t that the world gives us sorry. It’s that it isn’t the world’s job to make us happy. Happiness is out there. We take what the world gives us and make it something joyful.

https://therealrealityshowblog.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/finding-joy/

Dec 28, ROAMcare

The gift of gratitude

Didn’t get everything on your wish list? Fill that wish with something else. Gift yourself the gift of gratitude.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/the-gift-of-gratitude

Oh there were others, maybe more profound even, but these were my favorites from Thanksgiving on. Words that warmed me in some of the coldest days I’ve seen, and boy have I seen a lot of days!!

Happy New Year everybody. I’ll see you again in 2023.

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Based on a story by…

Michael 4 Comments

I don’t know why but last weekend I was thinking about Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Alfred Hitchcock. Not necessarily in that order. As I’ve written before, I don’t know why I think the things I do, but I do and that is enough to make me think, and then think that I’d rather not want to think about it.

It all started with me re-reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which got me thinking about how a movie and a book can be so different. A movie and a 600 page novel, an epic, the proverbial tome may differ because who could get all that detail into a movie people would be willing to sit through, except perhaps Gone With the Wind, but that has its own problems. But with Ben, or BB as I like to call him, that’s a short story, and still Eric Roth managed to write a 2-1/2 hour movie based on a tale that took me a fifth of that time to read, with a bathroom break thrown in. How did he do that! The answer is, he didn’t. Roth and story writing partner Robin Swicord wrote a different story with a title and a character of the same name. It’s a good movie. It’s a good short story. They just aren’t the same. And that’s been going on pretty much since we’ve had movies.

William Faulkner’s 1944 treatment of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not does the same thing. A character or two are mentioned in both book and movie, and those plus the title are the total of what remains of the story the movie was based on. Now the 1950 adaption, “The Breaking Point,” by screenwriter Ranald MacDougall is much closer to the Hemingway classic. It’s on a different ocean and there’s an extra couple of characters, but it’s recognizable as being a story based on. But does that make it better than the 1944 classic or just different?

You can’t say that Faulkner, who was no slouch in the book writing department, was flexing his writing muscles, because he quite faithfully followed Chandler’s The Big Sleep, changing only what needed changed to make the movie acceptable to those who moderated the 1946 version of the production code (and to make it acceptable to those who wanted to see Bogart and Bacall become Bogart and Bacall). Perhaps that is why when Chandler took to the task of writing the screenplay to Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, he stayed as close as he could to the original story. Oh wait, you’re going to say, they aren’t close at all. You might even say in the movie, the strangers are on an entirely different track than the one the train chugs along on in the psychologically thrilling novel. The “Strangers” presented by Alfred Hitchcock that we see is not the version Chandler wrote. That script ran afoul of the censors (and to a large extent, of Alfred) and was almost entirely rewritten by Czenzi Ormomde. 

When Chandler and co-screenwriter Billy Wilder adapted James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, they took much liberty with the original story, changing names and timelines, and most radically, they added a new character, the insurance investigator, which created a completely different story.  

“Double Indemnity” and “Strangers on a Train,” a double dose of two books, two movies, four stories, none of them bad but none of them based on any other. So maybe when you have great writers adapting great works of writing, you will get great results, just not always recognizable as the story they are based on. 

Now let’s talk about what Leon Uris and Dalton Trumbo did with “The Exodus.”

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Blog Art (25)Everybody is more engaged and more fun to be around when they feel valued, and they feel most valued when they are treated like people. Read why we say good manners never go out of style at www.roamcare.org. While you’re there, check out the rest of our site, then share us with your friends and family!

 

More words please

Michael 1 Comment

Once upon a time I wrote a post and I said, “The English language is said to have close to a million words in it. I’m not sure who counted that but the most complete, or as they would put it unabridged dictionary of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has about 620,000 words. But language doesn’t equal vocabulary. And vocabulary doesn’t equal language. The average educated English speaking person knows around 20,000 words and uses but about 2,000 words in a week of talking and writing.” There are some things those 600,000+ words just aren’t up to task when it comes to describing them. As in them, the things that need describing, not the things that are described. See, right there, that’s where 620,000 words are just not enough. We need more words! And here are some examples.

Blog Art (24)Speaking of things that describe, we’ve been so busy lately so busy making up rules about pronouns to effectively represent people, that we’ve missed it completely that when it comes to things. When writing, or speaking or even texting (although I hesitate to include text message characters as representative of the English language), and reference is made to two objects introduced in the same sentence, in subsequent reference to one or both (or even more!) our current batch of pronouns is woefully inadequate. And we end up writing things like, “As in them, the things that need describing, not the things that are described.”  We need a good shorthand way to refer to thing one and thing two through the duration of the missive.

IMG_2448If I tell you to picture in your mind classic gray sweatpants, you know exactly what I mean. The picture in your mind is unambiguous. And you no doubt can fill in the rest of the catalog with several tops (long, short, and sans sleeves) and short versions of those pants. But what’s the stuff they are made of? We can describe it, but can we name it? Gray sweatsuit material is just too long. It’s usually cotton but to say, “it’s too warm today for long pants, I think I’ll exercise in my cotton shorts,” sounds like I’m headed to the gym in my underwear. Athletic wear is confused with athleisure which is just spandex you wear in the outside. Technically that gray stuff is a sort of flannel but if I say I plan to jog in my gray flannel suit, people will expect to see someone running down the street more formally attired than I’m comfortable running in. Nope, we need a new word for gray sweatsuit material and that’s that.

Body bathers, time for you to tell me what you call this: hmm, these:IMG_0027

While you’re wondering what kind of trick question this is, I’ll speak to the others for a moment. I figure there are three kind of showerers/bathers. There are those who use something like that picture, there are those who use a wash cloth, and there are those (usually very macho men who smell not much better apres shower) who stand under the water, make some squealing type sounds while lathering up with just the soap (usually bar soap) and slapping or rubbing it in with their bare hands. You’re going to say, “But what about loofah users? That makes 4 kinds.” I don’t think there are any loofah users left in the world. They’ve all died out from fungal skin infections from not properly washing their loofahs, which by the way, are not represented in that first picture. The things in that picture are puffs, body puffs or so they are called if you were to look for them on the internet. These are not to be confused with powder puffs, steel wool puffs, or crab puffs. Nor actual loofahs. The point is, there too many puffs. We can’t just call anything that is puffy a puff. We need at least 4 new words added to the army of 600,000.

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Actually, the real point is, I didn’t have anything to write about this week so I stretched things a bit. You might say, I published a piece of puff — but by no means, a puff piece!

Blog Art (22)Did you on June 29 Earth completed a full rotation on its axis 1.59 milliseconds ahead of schedule? Time flies! We talked about that last week at www.roamcare.org? Get over there now and read what we had to say.

While you’re there, check out the rest of our site, then share us with your friends and family!

More things I think I think, I think

Michael 2 Comments

Sometimes I think those things that I think and I think what the heck am I thinking? For example for instance like:

We all have had red towels or blue jeans or black shirts that we will not under any circumstances wash with anything else the first maybe 3 or 4 times until the color stops bleeding because we don’t want to pull pink, or robin’s egg blue, or gray clothes from the washer. But we don’t do that with white. Most white textiles don’t start out that white. That’s a dye that makes them white but we happily toss them in the wash right from the get go. Every now and then as we are we sorting and folding and hanging and doing whatever in order to out away those freshly laundered clothes we will look at a load and say, darn, these shirts/jeans/towels/socks and underwear are fading.  Has anybody out there ever considered that maybe they aren’t fading but those new white jeans you tossed in the load had bled white dye? Just wondering.

Or make this for like example:

Remember when I talked about my microwave being a real nag. It still is and it still beeps periodically whenever I’m not in a hurry to take out whatever it was that I put in there. And I asked, who forgets they put food in the microwave? And then I answered myself. Stoners man. Well, I’ve been so intent on making sure I get stuff out of the microwave in a timely manner before it beeps at me, that I never noticed when I open the door, it beeps at me. Why? I know I’m opening the door. Do I have to be warned that I’m opening the microwave door? Who else would care that the microwave is being opened? And then it dawned on me…stoners, man! Those same guys who would stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave and in 90 seconds completely forget about it, are the ones who would want to know if somebody else is making off with their popcorn!

Or sometimes like this:

Regular readers, or even irregular readings if they read the right posts, know I like old movies. Old like 1930s, 1940s, in a pinch maybe early 1950s movies. As far as I’m concerned, and as far as anybody else with half a brain knows, they were just better back then. Really long term readers know I like to read movie credits. They were better back then too. They were certainly easier to read. A casual movie goer has no idea who did the accounting or catering or painted the scenery for Casablanca. As it should be. It seemed sometime in the 60s, when movie making took a decisive down turn in quality, they also wanted the viewer to know everybody who came close to the camera, even the guy who drove the truck that pulled the trailers the movie stars hung out in when they weren’t in front of the camera. It was sometime then they also made a monumental change in the credits besides just crediting everybody and their proverbial brothers. And this one made sense. The copyright date. Sometime in the 60s or maybe 70s, they started publishing the copyright date in Arabic numerals. Those are the numbers like 1,2, 3 (which is weird because they were “invented” in 6th century India) rather than I, II, III (you know, Roman numerals, which oddly really were invented around Rome, or roughly the area that modern day Tuscany occupies). You can read the entire credit crawl of In a Lonely Place and never lose your place until you get to the copyright. Then it’s “hmm, let’s see, MCM, that’s easy 1900. Okay now, XLI… dammit, come back! I almost had it…wait, that’s too many characters anyway. It came out in ’50, that’s just L. Or did it. Oh H-E-double hockey sticks, now I have to go look it up.” Even old books published copyright dates in Roman Numerals. Why couldn’t they have used real numbers then? Was there a law? We got a bunch of other crazy laws, so maybe so.

And then that started me thinking about crazy laws but we’ll let them pass for now.

If you’re curious…In a Lonely Place indeed was released in 1950 (MCML) but the screenplay was copyrighted in 1949 (MCMXLIX).

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