Charles E. Harris WW II memorabilia

57th Ordnance Ammunition Company

In my Father’s Day post, I noted that the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library, had the Charles E. Harris World War II memorabilia collection, 1944-1971 [bulk 1944-1945]. My father had, I only discovered recently, been part of the all-Black 57th Ordnance Ammunition Company in Germany in 1946.

Moreover, I wrote: ” This means that at some point I need to go to the NYPL to see whether Les Green appears in the documents.” Since my wife and I were going to NYC, my first stop needed to be the NYPL’s main branch. I had a library card, available to any New York State resident, but it had lapsed. (I’ve also been a member of the library, making an annual contribution, for at least a decade.)

I got my renewal even before we checked into the timeshare. Then I registered for the Special Collections account. But I wasn’t sure I’d have a chance to use it because the space in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division is limited.

Change of plans

My wife and I got our theater tickets in Times Square, but we had over seven hours to spend. We started walking toward a museum. But I needed to sit and rest, so I pulled out my phone and checked messages. I had an appointment at the Schomburg for 11 a,m. Oddly, I received it at 11:25 and didn’t read it until 11:45, but the notice said my spot was good until 5 pm.

Directions on my phone said I could get to the facility on 135th Street via the 1, 2, or 3 train. But the directions lied. The #1  left us at least 20 minutes away (did I mention it was hot and humid?) Ultimately, I found a kind letter carrier who told us we needed to go downtown to 96th Street, then take the #2 or #3 back uptown to 135th. The facility was right across the street.

The Harris collection, as I figured, only covered 1944 and 1945, and didn’t touch on my dad’s service dates. Nevertheless, I found the information in the log he kept to be fascinating. 

Afterward, we got a recommendation for a local restaurant. Unfortunately, it was hotter inside than it was outside. So we got food from a street vendor, found a place to sit in the shade, and then returned to Times Square, where we went to a coffee shop before heading to the theater. 

Goodbye, Dolly Parton

9:25

I’m not surprised that I was sad to hear about the passing of Dolly Parton. (Do I need a series of descriptors for her – singer, actor, philanthropist, et al.? I think not.)  But the melancholy frankly astonished me.

I have only one of her albums. The Grass is Blue, which I bought at a library deaccession sale. It starts with a cover version of Billy Joel’s Travelin’ Prayer. I do have the three Trio albums with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris; the three-part harmony on the chorus of Telling Me Lies always makes me weepy.

Watching a bunch of television coverage reminded me of her grace. My favorite Dolly story involves the song I Will Always Love You. Incidentally, a guy on NBC News said that the song was written in response to someone’s death, which I knew to be untrue.

When The Times included Parton on its 30 Greatest Songwriters list earlier this year, their pop critic Lindsay Zoladz wrote:

“Perhaps the rich emotional range of her vast body of work is best expressed in those two songs she supposedly wrote in a single night. “Jolene” crackles with nervous envy, anxiety and desperation. “I Will Always Love You,” her huge-hearted farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner, is sung with the omniscient benevolence of a guardian angel. The human and the divine: Dolly Parton is a little bit of both.

In an interview with Dan Rather, she talks about Elvis wanting to record IWALY, which thrilled Dolly. But his manager, Col. Tom Parker, informed her that Elvis would get 50% of the publishing royalties. She was disappointed and declined the offer, but didn’t blame Presley or Parker; she graciously acknowledged that the Colonel was just being a shrewd businessman. Of course, Parton was just as clever.    

Cinema

Little wonder that Jane Fonda saw that Dolly would be perfect for the movie 9 To 5. (The Empire State Building was lit on Tuesday night at 9:25.)  The fact that she memorized everybody’s lines, which may have made her performance stronger, and wrote and recorded the iconic title track, was a bonus. 

She was probably underestimated for a time. The New York notes that “at the time of her death, Parton reportedly had more than 350 wigs and 2,000 pairs of shoes. She embraced rural stereotypes and kitsch to develop a chic all her own. 

Dolly said, “I’ve created this [caricatured public persona] and played it up. But this isn’t all I am. It’s not even most of what I am. Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart, and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

Definitely, heart. She has a children’s hospital named after her and helped fund the Moderna mRNA COVID vaccine. “She was the first in her family to graduate from high school; years later, her philanthropic organization donated more than 200 million books to children.”

What really caught me was something Heather Delaney Resse wrote: “Dolly Parton died. She was 80 years old, too. And suddenly, I found myself thinking about 80 years in an entirely different way. About how much life that really is. How many choices it holds. How many opportunities we are given to make someone else’s life a little better, or a little worse. And ultimately, how differently two people can choose to spend the time they are given.”

Read the NYT obit and a piece from the Smithsonian. 

Lydster: Love Island USA

Password

One of the things my daughter did quite regularly when she was home from college was go upstairs to her room to watch Love Island USA. Occasionally, she subjected her parents to it by watching it in the living room. 

In two articles in major publications, it appears that the daughter has hit the zeitgeist. (I’ve never been particularly zeitgeisty.) 

Bloomberg

On July 8, Future Party summarized the  Bloomberg story Love Island Has Cracked the Code on Gen Z’s Attention Span. After noting that the ratings of reality shows have taken a beating in the past decade or so: 

“Despite already being in its eighth season, Love Island USA is more popular than ever, according to Bloomberg.

  • “The first three episodes this season racked up 2.3 billion minutes viewed, putting it in the same league as premium scripted hits like House of the Dragon and The Bear.
  • “80% of viewers who started watching the season in its first two days have already watched at least 15 episodes — an incredible engagement rate.
  • “This season generated over a billion social media impressions across platforms in just 16 days after its premiere. The numbers have only continued to climb since then…
  • Last Looks: “Why does Gen Z love Love Island USA so much? Beyond the juicy drama, the show’s near-daily schedule fuels instant FOMO, while its interactive voting app puts viewers in the driver’s seat, letting them decide which contestants stay and which get booted off the island. That engagement has translated into major trading volume on prediction markets, with Kalshi even giving the show its own ‘dedicated tab’ in its culture section.” Ah, gambling! It reminds me of a recurring segment on The Daily Show.

“Gen Z has also proven to be starved for in-person socializing… and Love Island USA is helping fill that gap. The show has sparked a wave of public watch parties, with bars reporting boosted business thanks to group viewing — a notable turn of events given how much less Gen Z drinks than previous generations.” 

NYer?

The New Yorker (June 27, 2026), mostly behind a paywall: “We all know what it is to be unhappy in love. In unhappy couples, each person feels unaccompanied; whatever they have, they wish for a little more. The unhappy speak our language, and we speak theirs. The punctuation of this language is the moment when a woman’s face falls with disbelief, and when she weighs, in a tearful yet luxurious silence, her desire against her dignity.

“At least, this is the language of unhappiness on reality TV. We are just now in the season of ‘Love Island,’ the most fluorescent of reality dating shows, in which young, tanned, and wonderfully naïve singles compete to fall in lust and become one half of the cast’s—and the nation’s—most popular couple.”

Fluorescent is right. If the Barbie movie found many ways to do pink, Love Island is an adult Candyland.

“The British islanders are currently sunning themselves in Mallorca; their American counterparts are enjoying similar tropical conditions and neon furnishings in Fiji. The communal bedrooms are open, the mike packs are strapped to this season’s bikinis (animal print and accent hardware abound), and a roster of ‘bombshells’ and Casa Amor hotties—seducers flown in to test the contestants’ romances—are said to be holding in isolation in nearby hotels…

“June is the original and proprietary ground for ‘Love Island,’ that hinge point when all the vague aspirations for the year have been half dashed, and the summer looks both opulent and devastatingly short.”

Naturally

Of course, I sent these pieces to my daughter, who was away in South Africa again until recently. As is her wont, she replied wryly, “Interesting, isn’t it?” It is. My daughter was part of a wave of viewers before the season ended in mid-July. 

When I was growing up, I usually knew what the Top 20 shows were for any given week – often Bonanza, or later, All In The Family –  based on the Nielsen ratings shown in the local papers.  In a streaming universe, I have no strong idea. So I’m feeling mildly nostalgic about learning this tidbit.

I’ve been watching Password recently. One of the celebrity contestants was Ariana Madix, the main host for Love Island USA seasons 6 through 8. (No, I didn’t recognize her or even know her name; my daughter would have likely scolded me for this transgression.) There was even a series of Password clues about love, in honor of the series.

Brunello: The Gracious Visionary

Brunello Cucinelli, The King of Cashmere

BrunelloOn its very last day at the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany, my wife and I attended a matinee of the film Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, even though I had no idea what it was about.

Per Rotten Tomatoes, it’s “an inside look at the extraordinary life and career of the man behind a luxury fashion empire built on the principles of humanity and artistry,” Brunello Cucinelli.

It’s an odd yet interesting device to have actors show him growing up in a rural agricultural community, while the now-70+ Brunello makes asides about the situation. His family lived on land they didn’t own, so the landlord came by annually, imploring the children not to go to school but to stay home and help their parents. The parents ignored the advice.

Young Brunello excelled at school, especially in math. This would help him play cards, initially with family. But the young man and his siblings still had to come home to do chores. Nevertheless, he found rural life idyllic.

His father and other relatives decided to move to the city and work at the factory. Soon, it was clear that his father was disappointed in the sterile work environment. 

Adrift

Brunello was a young man without a plan, hanging around a local establishment and winning money at cards. When he got a girlfriend, he bumbled into a brief gig as a fashion model. His affection for angora wool reminded him of the rabbit fur that he and his siblings would comb out. 

When he decided to start a factory, his building design, with windows to the outside rather than sterile walls, arose directly from his father’s unsatisfactory experience. He became “The King of Cashmere.”

Brunello noted in The Cut that making the film  he wanted was so that “50 years down the line, when my grandchildren and others look at the movie, for them to say, ‘This is what my grandfather, my great-grandfather thought as he was still alive.'”

There were oodles of celebrity tributes, from Oprah Winfrey, Patrick Dempsey (“McDreamy),  Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali and others. 

Is it hagiography? Well, sure. Does it work anyway? It didn’t for most of the RT critics, who were only 27% positive. IMDb was more generous at 7.2 out of 10, though with more one-star reviews than two- to six-star combined.

But my wife and I liked it for two reasons. It was beautifully filmed by  Giuseppe Tornatore, who made Cinema Paradiso. 

More importantly,  we were taken by the “‘philosopher-designer’ revered for his distinctive integration of humanistic values, craftsmanship, and ethical entrepreneurship.” He called it “humanistic capitalism,” which essentially meant one can make money while encouraging the workers, creating an inviting place to work, etc. When COVID hit, he promised to keep his employees paid for up to two years.

So we bought into the messaging. It didn’t feel particularly self-serving for a guy who’s been in business for a half century. Check out the website, especially the section on the company and the value of human dignity.

APL Looks Ahead with New Strategic Plan

Book reviews and author talks

From here: Albany Public Library’s Board of Trustees approved a new strategic plan that will guide initiatives across the seven-branch system over the next three years. The plan includes five major goals and related strategies, and is available on APL’s website and at each branch location.

“This plan will challenge us and inspire us to be better. There’s a lot to look forward to, including a new Library of Things for APL, and hopefully a partnership with the school district to give every student a library card, among many other things,” said APL Executive Director Andrea Nicolay. “Some elements of the plan came straight from people in the community, and others we’ve been dreaming of for a while.”

Book reviews and author talks

Tuesdays at 2 pm at the Washington Avenue branch of the APL

August 25: Book Review: The Last Extinction:  The Real Science behind the Death of the Dinosaurs by Gerta Keller.  Reviewer:  Jonathan Skinner, PhD, retired statistician & amateur classicist. 

September 1 | Author Talk | Kathy Wright-Muzio discusses & reads from her historical romance The Determined Pursuit, written under her pen name, Elizabeth H. Franklin. 

September 8 | Author Talk | Shakeema “Shaq” Funchess discusses & reads from her book, Kai Says Hi, which is inspired by & dedicated to the memory of Harbe Nagi.

September 15| Book Review | Book and Dagger:  How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham.  Reviewer:  John Rowen, former president, Friends of APL.

September 22 | Book Review | American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation by Eric Rutkow.  Reviewer:  Alex Ashby, MF, watershed forester, Albany Dept. of Water & Water Supply..

September 29 | Book Review | Copernicus’ Secret:  How the Scientific Revolution Began by Jack Repcheck.  Reviewer:  Tom Ellis, educator & activist.

In other news
The August Open Mic Night will once again take place on the second floor of the Madison Pour House – by the fireplace – on the 4th Tuesday: August 25th. Management was very accommodating in July and turned off the speakers that usually play music upstairs, but there is some competition with a bit of sound from downstairs. Sit close to the fireplace in August where it will be easiest to hear the stories and poetry! 
Tuesday nights are Burger Night at the Pour House (according to the menu, they do have Beyond Burgers as a plant-based option) – so come to Open Mic Night hungry and enjoy Burger Night! 
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