Ramblin' with Roger

Three Trustees for the APL Board to be chosen May 19

I will be reviewing Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser April 14

ITEM, from here: Albany voters will select three trustees for the APL Board of Trustees in the Tuesday, May 19, election. Two positions carry full five-year terms, while the third (partial) term is for one year.

Albany residents interested in running for a seat on the board need to complete and submit nominating petitions. The petitions, eligibility information, and instructions are posted on the Library Budget page, and paper copies are available at all seven APL branches.

Trustee nominating petitions, with at least 65 signatures of qualified voters, are due to the Clerk of the City School District of Albany (1 Academy Park) by 5 pm on Wednesday, April 29. Trustee candidate names are announced after the school district validates the submitted nominating petitions.

The library’s trustee election and budget vote share a ballot with the city school district vote, which also takes place on May 19. Note that the locations may differ from the primary and general election sites.

The library is hosting a second Trustee Candidate Information Session (the first was on March 12):

March 26 (Thu) | 6:30-8 pm | Delaware Branch | 331 Delaware Ave.

At the information session, current trustees will be on hand to answer questions about how to get on the ballot, tips for a successful campaign, and what it’s like to serve as a library trustee.

You can also view an informational presentation online.

APL Budget Vote

“Albany city residents will also vote on the library’s 2026-2027 operating budget tax levy… The budget plan was approved by the library’s Board of Trustees at its March 10 meeting.

“The proposed 2026-2027 operating tax levy of $9,661,856 would result in an increase of $42.58 for the owner of a home assessed at $250,000. The spending plan represents a 17% increase in the annual total operating budget tax levy.

“’Our main goal is securing adequate funding for the library and everything that it provides to our community,’ said Board President Sarah Macinski. ‘This increase addresses the impact of some expenses that have spiked in recent years, like health benefits and utilities, while ensuring we have enough reserve funds to maintain branch facilities and be grant-eligible for future renovations.'”

Honestly, I believe part of the cause of the larger-than-usual request this year was that, during more than one year in the 2010s, the trustees chose not to ask for an increase. This meant the previous year’s budget was automatically passed even as expenses went up.

Diverse viewpoints

ITEM: From the Times Union (likely behind a paywall)

NY Regents to vote on library rules, including support for ‘diverse viewpoints.’

“All public libraries need to set specific policies on how new materials are selected and how people can object, the state librarian told the Board of Regents Monday [3/9]…

“State librarian Lauren Moore emphasized that each library Board of Trustees can write its own policies. But they must support the concept of selecting ‘diverse viewpoints,’ she said.

“Library directors should take care to buy materials on viewpoints they themselves disagree with, rather than only choosing materials with ideas they support, she added.

“They must also set rules for public use of meeting rooms, which must also be available to groups from a diverse set of viewpoints, she said.”

The Regents did indeed pass the new rules. (Thanks to TU reporter Kathleen Moore for helping me find this.) Most larger libraries likely have such policies in place, but it may be an issue at smaller ones.

Indeed, Albany Public Library does have both a Materials Selection Policy and a Material Reconsideration Request Form. The reconsideration request form includes an option to object to a library program.

Book reviews and author talks (including me!)

Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, Tuesdays at 2 pm in the large auditorium

April 7 | Author Interview | David Sylvestor, local writer & instructor, will be asked about his 2024 Erie Canal crime novel, Hung Be the Heavens with Scarlet, by poet Therese L. Broderick, MFA.

April 14 | Book Review | Mona’s Eyes, a novel by the French art historian Thomas Schlesser. Reviewer: Roger Green, MLS, business librarian retired from the NY Small Business Development Center.

April 21 | Book Review | The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics by Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, & Mark Olshaker. Reviewer: Bryon Backenson, Director, Bureau of Communicable Disease Control, NYS Dept. of Health.

April 28 | Author Talk | David Ricci, from the Berkshires, discusses & reads from his book of photographs, Hunter Gatherer: Salvaged Stories of American Culture, with text by Cheryl Finley.

Cap Rep: Archduke

the Great War

The play Archduke. playing at Cap Rep in Albany, NY, through Sunday, March 29, is about the plot to assassinate the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which helped start World War I.

Yet the story is not only informative about the political machinations that preceded the Great War but is often quite laugh-out-loud funny.

Archduke was written by Rajiv Joseph, who has had 17 plays produced in 20 years, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.” It was previously produced at a theater in Philadelphia, with mostly the same small cast and the same director, Blanka Zizka

The play opens with 19-year-olds Gavrilo (Suli Holum) and Nedeljko (Sarah Gliko) meeting at a secret location in Belgrade. As John Green would say Everything Is Tuberculosis. The two young men and a third, Trifko (Brandon J. Pierce), are all suffering from the deadly disease.

Meaning of life

Impoverished and looking for meaning in their too-short lives, the trio have been recruited by a Serbian army officer named Apsis (James Konicek, the only one not from the Philadelphia cast) to train to liberate Serbia from its Austro-Hungarian overlords. The leavening of the indoctrination comes from Apsis’s savvy cook, Sladjana (Melanye Finister), who slyly undermines her boss’s mission. Is despair and destruction the only path?

While the dialogue was fictionalized, the narrative of these young men being recruited by the anti-empire Black Hand is historically accurate.

An interesting choice by director Zizka was the casting of 40ish women as Gavrilo and Nedeljko. Per the program: “Zizka believes that casting shouldn’t be based on finding an actor most like the character, because ‘acting is transformation.'”

The production is further enhanced by the imaginative staging – the intentionally anachronistic wheeled chairs cracked me up – and the effective projections designed by Jorge Cousineau and Michael Long.

If the play Archduke comes to your town, go see it. Here’s the page about its Philadelphia run in early 2025 and the Playbill from its off-Broadway production in late 2025. My wife and I saw it at Cap Rep on Saturday, March 14, at the matinee.

Sunday Stealing Feels Distinctly Adolescent

live wire

Welcome to Sunday Stealing, which feels distinctly adolescent. 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 week’s Sunday source is Minnesota Mom, who loves baking (especially cookies). She stole this meme from Esther, whose blog is no longer available, so the trail has gone cold.

These questions require just a yes or no, but you can answer at length if you’re in the mood. The choice is yours!

Litter

But before we get to that, here’s what happened very late Sunday night/very early Monday morning, March 15/16. I was downstairs watching TV about 11:45 pm when the doorbell rang. That’s really unusual. Was there an accident? Is my house on fire? No, the guy said he really needed money to get something to eat. He promised to pick up the litter from my lawn.

Let’s talk about litter. My wife is assiduously dedicated to keeping the trash from our yard. Yet, a day after she’s done, you would not have known of her efforts. It’s not just the schoolkids nearby; it’s the wind.

So I tell the guy at the door. “Sure, whatever,” give him a $5 and quickly close the door. BTW, he does pick up some of our litter.

Electric

About a half hour later, I’m in my office, which is on the second floor at the front of the house, playing Wordle. By now, the rain is pouring, and the wind is gusting so much, perhaps 50 miles per hour/80 kilometers per hour, that the walls are shaking.

Out my front window, in my periphery, I see a large spark. A tree branch has felled a power line that ran from a telephone pole on my side of the street to a house across the street. The large branch lands in the middle of the street, right next to what I assume is a live wire, beside my wife’s car.

I could have called National Grid, our power supplier, but I chose to ring the Albany Police Department’s non-emergency number. After all, they are only two blocks away. The dispatcher tells me that it’s very windy out there, which I acknowledged. But soon, there’s a fire truck blocking my street.

In the morning, the wire is wound up, the branch is gone, and a truck is parked in front of the house, doing SOMETHING, because it’s running 24/7. Two days later, four trucks, including a cherry picker, are out there fixing the situation.

But I wonder if the guy repairing something at the top of the pole somehow mucked up my Internet. It’s not OFF, but I can’t get to sites, or it’s very slow.

On to the quiz

Have You Ever …

1) Skipped school?

The first time I remember doing so was when I had been legitimately sick for a day or two. I was feeling better, but I learned that the Beatles’ new videos were going to premiere on a show called Where The Action Is, which was, inexplicably, airing at 8:30 a.m. So I watched Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. This must have been February of 1967.

The next time was when Julian Bond came to town in 1969.

2) Lettered in a school sport?

No, I never did school sports. I did show up one day at a football tryout, but the ill-fitting equipment and general vibe weren’t for me.

3) Made a prank phone call?

Probably, but I have no strong recollection.

4) Paid for a meal with coins?

Yes, definitely, in 1978 in downtown Schenectady. I went out to breakfast or lunch with a friend, but was short on cash. To be fair, I doubt the meal was more than $4, including the tip.

5) Laughed until some sort of beverage came out of your nose?

Possibly, but I don’t really remember.

Spring songs

Classics Explained

I was trying to decide what to play for some spring songs. Fortunately, I pulled Joel Whitburn’s Album Cuts, 1955-2001 off my shelf. The annoying thing is that, as a strict list, it does not differentiate between songs with the same title but are different, and covers of the same song.

Spring – Little Milton (1969)

Spring – John Denver (1972)

Spring – Meryl Streep · George Winston (1985) from The Velveteen Rabbit, a story I love

Spring – · Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (1992)

These were all different songs, despite the same title.

Spring Again – Lou Rawls (1977)

Spring Fever – Biz Markie (1989)

Now, I come to a song with oodles of covers. “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” (1955) is a popular song with lyrics by Fran Landesman, set to music by Tommy Wolf. The title is a jazz rendition of the opening line of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month.” The song describes how somebody feels sad and depressed despite all the good things associated with spring

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most – The Pete Jolly Trio (1963)

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most – Ella Fitzgerald (1960)

Then…

Spring Collection – The Vapors (1980)

Spring Comes To Spiddal – The Waterboys (1990)

Spring Is Here – Peter Nero. When I tried to search for Nero’s Spring Concerto from 1961, this is what came up.

Spring Creek – George Winston (1991) from the album Summer

Spring Fever -· Elvis Presley (1965)

Spring Fever – Orleans (1976)

I was unfamiliar with all of the songs.

Highbrow

There are two pieces of music I play every vernal equinox. The first is The Rite of Spring (1913) by Igor Stravinsky. I always loved the story of the ballet, explained entertainingly by Classics Explained.

There are several recordings. I decided on Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky (1960) with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

The other annual ritual is playing The Four Seasons (1725) by Antonio Vivaldi. I prefer summer and winter; the solstices are in minor keys, whereas the equinoxes are in major keys.

Celebrating the Sestercentennial

also: Ask Roger Anything

Usually, for the beginning of spring, I ask you to Ask Roger Anything. You still may – I encourage it – but I also want to turn the tables a bit. What, if anything, are you doing to celebrate the sestercentennial of the United States?

No, I hadn’t heard of the word before either. My spellcheck does NOT like it. As far as I know, the prefix is a Latin term meaning “two and a half.” It also has other definitions. I’ve been using semiquincentennial (half of five hundred years) or quartermillennial because I find it easier to use.

Anyway…

I remember the bicentennial in 1976 with much more enthusiasm than I have for this year’s model. Reenactments and the Tall Ships were events I watched on television.

For 2026, the “United States Semiquincentennial Commission is the congressionally appointed body in charge of promoting and coordinating” the events. The calendar seems rather sparse, but maybe I missed something. There IS a Water Lantern Festival in Albany, NY on June 27. The New York State Museum in Albany will open a huge exhibit this summer to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The process was a political football for a while. Then the politicization got worse as FOTUS, in 2025, “created the White House Task Force on Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday to also promote and plan the events.”

Daily Kos notes the UFC fights on the White House South Lawn on June 14 and an Indy Car race around DC. Naturally, there will be a lot of Trump 250 merch available.

And yet…

At the point when I might be [might be? That’s understating it!] feeling discouraged, I heard a recommendation for a book. The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit. It “surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability…

“While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.”

On The View, Ken Burns reiterates that his latest project, The American Revolution, is his most important yet. It dissects how the internal conflicts of “all men are created equal” played out. And, implicitly, still does.

I think I need to go to the next No Kings rally on March 28.

Still, you CAN Ask Roger Anything

If you have a question for me, you may just Ask Roger Anything. I’ve yet to reject a query. You can test the limits of my tolerance. Moreover, I’ll likely answer it sooner rather than later.

You may leave your questions in the comments section of this blog, in my email, referenced elsewhere on this blog, or on my Facebook page (Roger Owen Green); always look for the duck.