Ramblin' with Roger

Beacon in the Park and other events

I’m on a panel discussing the movie The Librarians

First Presbyterian Church of Albany is hosting Beacon in the Park, a juried First Friday exhibition and community arts weekend – and we’re inviting regional artists to be part of it.

On February 6–7, 2026, the historic building on Washington Park will become a gallery, concert hall, and gathering space. FPC is looking for artwork that responds to the light, architecture, and neighborhood that make this corner of Albany so distinctive—many more details at the link above.

More pressing: Submit Your Artwork for the Beacon in the Park Juried Show.

Deadline: Monday, January 26, 2026 (5 PM)

Art Show Prospectus: Please read before submitting art.

Artwork must be inspired by First Pres, Tiﬀany windows, or the Washington Park neighborhood.

Panel

ITEM: I received an invitation to be on a panel for the NYS Writers Institute, apparently as a result of participating in the collective reading of Legs by local author legend William Kennedy.

In the email: “We’ve put in a request to screen the new film The Librarians on Friday, Feb. 20^th, at 7 PM at Page Hall.” That’s at the downtown UAlbany campus.

“We’re going to have a small panel of librarians in conversation after the screening. Would you be interested in appearing on the panel?” I know at least one of the other librarians participating.

“Our conversations are informal and fun, and involve audience Q&A.” Sure. I’ve already started prepping; it’s less than two months away.

FFAPL

Book reviews and author talks at Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue between Lark and Dove Streets, Tuesdays at 2 pm in the large auditorium.

January 6 | Author Talk | James Preller, writer of many children’s books, discusses & reads from his book, Shaken.

January 13 | Author Talk | Michael Neagle, professor of history at Nichols College, discusses & reads from his book, Chasing Bandits: America’s Long War on Terror.

January 20 | Book Review | Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI by John Cassidy. Reviewer: Eugene Damm, former journalist & past president, FAPL.

January 27 | Book Review | These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. Reviewer: James Collins, PhD, Prof. emeritus, Anthropology Dept, Program in Linguistics & Cognitive Science, U. At Albany, SUNY.

Sunday Sunday: F.A.B. winter 2025

January birthdays

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This busy holiday weekend, we’re going to keep this simple. We stole this from a blogger named Idzie, who called this the F.A.B. (film, audio, book) meme.

F.A.B. winter 2025

F. Film: What movie or TV show are you watching?

I watched the CBS piece Rob Reiner: Scenes from a Life. Mark Evanier said about it: “Someone — probably many someones — did an extraordinary job putting it together in not enough time. They not only got access to a lot of Reiner’s closest friends, but they got them to share very personal, unique insights into the man…

“I know how easy it is to lapse into clichés and say generic things about how wonderful the deceased was, how the world will never be the same, etc. This was not that. It was a portrait of a real person painted by people who knew that real person and who said things specific to that real person. “

I totally agreed with that assessment. Also, “Remembering the treasured films of Rob Reiner from CBS Sunday Morning by Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz

BTW, I wrote about the Reiners here.

A. Audio: What are you listening to?

Besides Christmas music, which I will play until January 6 or until I run out, whichever comes first, I’ve been listening to musicians whose birthdays are in early January:

Joan Baez: Simple Twist of Fate

David Bowie: Panic In Detroit

Jim Croce: Operator

Roger Miller: You Can’t Rollerskate In A Buffalo Herd

Donald Fagan: The Royal Scam – Steely Dan

Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock

Soupy Sales: Though I’m Just A Clown, On Motown Records!

Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells A Story

Michael Stipe: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – REM

Stephen Stills: Woodstock – CSNY

B. Book: What are you reading?

I’m catching up on The Week magazine and the newspapers.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

“Quote a song lyric that sums up your year”

You know that end-of-the-year quiz I do? This one question is taking up too much space.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

It would be easy to stick previous years’ songs on the list.

Logical Song by Supertramp

I said, Now, watch what you say, they’ll be calling you a radicalA liberal, oh, fanatical, criminalOh, won’t you sign up your name? We’d like to feel you’re acceptableRespectable, oh, presentable, a vegetable

Monster by Steppenwolf

America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

Virtually all of Elephant Talk by King Crimson

And especially The Trouble With Normal by Bruce Coburn

The trouble with normal is that it always gets worse

Resistance?

Then I saw a HeatherCox Richardson video from August 7 titled Forms of Resistance and Reasons to Believe It’s Working. From about three minutes in, she said:

Those sorts of ways of recognizing quietly, of making a statement quietly, matter because people hear them and recognize that they are not alone.

Do you hear the people sing?Singing a song of angry men?It is the music of a peopleWho will not be slaves again

When the beating of your heartEchoes the beating of the drumsThere is a life about to startWhen tomorrow comes

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?Beyond the barricadeIs there a world you long to see?Then join in the fightThat will give you the right to be free

That was set in France in the first third of the 19th century. Here’s a song set in France, slightly earlier. Marat-Sade as sung by Judy Collins:

Marat, we’re poor and the poor stay poor

Marat, don’t make us wait any more

We want our rights, and we don’t care how
We want a revolution
Now

That brought to mind another tune sung by Judy Collins, Democracy, written by Leonard Cohen. The penultimate verse:

It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here – the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

Another song I thought of was (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing by Heaven 17. As I recall, someone with the band or the label thought it was a bit overboard to say about Ronald Reagan. I’m not litigating that, but in a 2025 performance, the band said the song was more relevant now than then. And it has a great beat.

Have you heard it on the news about this fascist groove thang

Evil men with racist views spreading all across the land

Don’t just sit there on your ass, unlock that funky chain dance

Brothers, sisters, shoot your best. We don’t need this fascist groove thang

NYT

On July 1, Jon Pareles put together a list for the New York Times

Tracy Chapman, Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution
The Isley Brothers, Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2
Public Enemy, Fight the Power
Michael Franti & Spearhead, Yell Fire!
Bob Marley & the Wailers, Get Up, Stand Up
Mavis Staples, Eyes On The Prize
Patti Smith, People Have the Power
Björk, Declare Independence
Rage Against the Machine, Know Your Enemy
Antibalas, Uprising

I know I own the ones I linked to. That Isley Brothers couplet has been running through my head even before the list was published:

When I rolled with the punches

I got knocked on the groundWith all this bullsh#t going down

I can’t forget American Idiot by Green Day, which came out in 2004 in response to the knee-jerk reaction to the stupidity of that time.

Don’t wanna be an American idiotOne nation controlled by the mediaInformation age of hysteriaIt’s calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tensionAll across the alienationWhere everything isn’t meant to be okayIn television dreams of tomorrowWe’re not the ones who’re meant to followFor that’s enough to argue

The chorus of Tubthumping by Chumbawamba runs through my head a LOT, over and over:

I get knocked down

But I get up againYou’re never gonna keep me down

But the winner

I just saw the 2025 video for the Dropkick Murphys’ Who Will Stand For Us? I’m not a “you must watch” guy, but please watch. Lyrics

Who’ll stand with us?Don’t tell us everything is fineWho’ll stand with us?Because this treatment is a crimeThe working people fuel the engineWhile you yank the chainWe fight the wars and build the buildingsFor someone else’s gain

So, tell me, who will stand with us?

And as time rolls on, not a single thing has changedAnd the wealth gap’s only grown as we all point to blameWe’re at the throats of one another, though we share a single fateAnd the golden few laugh on and on as we all take the bait

Lydster: unsent photo

Ho, ho, ho!

Here’s the story of the unsent photo.

I’ve stated many times that one of the primary reasons I started blogging was because I was terrible at keeping track of my daughter’s first couple of years in that baby book that almost every parent is gifted, including us. You know, the date of the first step, the first tooth. I do recall that she began cruising before she reached eight months; that was a term I had never heard before becoming a parent.

My wife and I were also awful at sending out Christmas cards. But we figured: Hey, we have a new baby! Surely, this will be the opportunity to send out cards with the information about our addition to the family.

Moreover, they were taking pictures at my house of worship for the church directory. This was the perfect time to take advantage of this confluence.

Seasonal failure

And yet… and yet, somehow we never really sent this photo and card, probably taken in October or November of her first year, out for Christmas, even though the cards were printed in plenty of time. So basically, we sucked at sending out Christmas cards even when we should have been highly motivated. A few family members MAY have gotten the picture, although I am not at all certain.

In fact, we sent out Christmas cards in either 2022 or 2023, quite possibly for the first time as a family, and our daughter was already an adult by that point.

So consider this an extremely belated Merry Christmas from us, new parents, and our little child, who’s not so little anymore.

The 24 Dec main meal

Christmas eve pancakes 2025

Finally, here’s our Christmas Eve linner or dunch or sunch or lupper, or whatever you eat at c 3:45 pm when you have to be at church at 6 p.m. The daughter designed pancakes with blueberry eyes and a raspberry nose. The bacon antlers were skipped on her meal.

The candy cane was alternating banana and strawberry slices.

Seven Carols For Christmas

Alice Parker for Robert Shaw

Here are Seven Carols For Christmas, arranged by Alice Parker. My church choir, along with the Festival Celebration choir, performed these on December 14.

In 2006, Alice Parker wrote this description of the process:

“In 1970, Robert Shaw asked me to write some arrangements of Christmas carols for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choruses. We had not worked together since the last album for the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Irish Folk Songs in 1967, and his move to Atlanta.

“He was planning a series of Christmas concerts, and was not satisfied with the settings he could find: they were apt to be too elaborate, with overly simple choral parts. He asked that the chorus be allowed to shine in rather open orchestrations, and gave me freedom to choose whichever titles I wished in a mix of familiar and unfamiliar tunes. In Mr. Shaw’s acclaimed Christmas concert, the carols were scattered through the retelling of the story, in different patterns with the succeeding years.

“So they were not at the beginning intended to be a single concert piece, although I am frequently asked to share my preference for a sequence. One possibility, using all the numbers, is: O Come, Emmanuel; Away in a Manger; Fum, Fum, Fum!; Good Christian Men, Rejoice; So Blest a Sight; God Rest You Merry; Masters in This Hall. Another choice would be to split the above list into two parts, with the first three forming a little suite from varied sources, and the next four celebrating their British heritage. But you may order them as you wish, or use just one or two in a special program.

Rejoice!

“The enduring popularity of these arrangements has been a source of great satisfaction to me. It shows that these wonderful melodies, with their texts of love and hope, can unite different generations in the concert hall, as well as in the church and at home. Even in the cacophony of today’s musical world, their message shines clear and true. So now, good Christian folk, rejoice, and join your voices in tidings of comfort and joy! “

A live performance by The Michael O’Neal Singers, December 2016

The Pioneer Valley Symphony performance at Greenfield High School. Also, O Holy Night with Emily Jaworski. December 19, 2015

Huron Carol

fillyjonk linked to the Huron Carol. The singer “notes that the Nativity story has been ‘reset’ from the First Century Middle East to pre-colonial North America…. I am not bothered by it: the idea that Christ is for all times and all places can also sit along with the idea of ‘we know a little of the history, so we should try to be accurate.'”

Merry Christmas!