Month: March 2009

The Lydster, Part 60: Lydia is Five


Gordon also asked: “How’s the Lydster?”

Well, her birthday is today. I wrote a letter to our Bradley birth instructor this week indicating how important that childhood education was for us. (The birth story, BTW, is here.)

We’re planning her birthday party. This will be her first one that wasn’t ice cream and cake with the family. Meanwhile, she’s been to LOTS of fancier gigs of her friends. It’s not a matter of competition, but on the other hand, this one at least, we thought we’d do something at the local museum.

The invitations have turned out to ber more of a chore than we thought. She wants to invite her old friends from day care, some of whom we have no contact info. Meanwhile, she’s decided that she doesn’t want to invite a couple of her new friends because they recently took her stuffed animal without permission. Her mother suggested that she just not bring the stuffed animal; I say that she’s got to speak up when that happens and complain to them and, if necessary, to her teachers. Someone told me kids don’t hold a grudge; I’m not convinced that’s true with mine.

I was tentatively pleased about the news on the peanut butter allergy front. It’d be nice if, one day, she had one less allergy, since it’s about time for the daily sprays to deal with her pollen allergies.

There’s a working dog on our bus every morning. She’s gone from making sure that I’m between her and the canine to hurrying past it; this is progress.

There’s an open house in Albany for kids entering kindergarten this weekend, with registration starting on Monday. Someone suggested that this will make life easier; I’m not convinced. Since we live in walking distance of her school, I’m still not sure how I get her to school and get to work on time. (And by “on time” I’d settle for within a half hour, as opposed to 2.5 hours.) The buses run infrequently to Corporate (frickin’) Woods, and kindergarten starts late – 8:45 a.m. Don’t know how other parents who both work outside the home deal with this stuff.

Lydia is either going to take her first train ride or first plane ride this year; I haven’t decided.

Any specific questions?

ROG

ROG

J is for Jazz

The problem with jazz is that it means everything from Kenny G to Madeleine Peyroux to New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band. No definition of the American music seems adequate. One I saw recently described it as “cerebral music with rhythm”. This one is about as OK as I can find. Even the word itself, the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Twentieth Century, has been hard to nail down.

Jazz is about discovery. This article expresses the wonder of discover that jazz can bring.

Ultimately, though, jazz can’t be adequately described. It must be experienced. These are all songs I own.
Tutu (live)- Miles Davis
Tutu was one of the last albums I got as an LP; i.e., on vinyl.

Cassandra Wilson – Harvest Moon
A Neil Young cover.

Benny Goodman & His Orchestra – Sing Sing Sing
As the title suggests, this song DOES have lyrics, but I think it’s better as an instrumental.

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong – STOMPING AT THE SAVOY
Also recommended: any of the Ella Song Books. Or all of them.

Oh, there’s so much, I can’t do the topic justice.

Here’s a peculiar thing about Jazz that perhaps folks not in the United States or Americans who don’t follow basketball might not know. There is a basketball team called the Utah Jazz. Utah is not generally known for jazz, and in disposition seems to be the antithesis of that music. The Jazz was formed in New Orleans in 1974, a most likely place for a team with such a nickname, but the team moved to the Rocky Mountains in 1979. (New Orleans got the Hornets, a team formerly in Charlotte, NC in 2002.)
ROG

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Scott and Gordon

Our first contestant is soon-to-be-daddy again Scott from Scooter Chronicles:

1. In a previous post, you predicted the winners of each MLB division. Who do you think wins the league pennants, and who wins the World Series?

Once you get to a short series, there are so many variables so it’s hard to say. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a wild card like the Boston Red Sox. And, shades, of 1986, I’m going to pick the Mets to beat them.

By the way, Scott – you NEED this: a free, 586-page PDF of the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009.

2. What is your take on the AIG bonuses? Where do you think the government needs to take this?

First, those noting that the bonuses were a small percentage of the bailout are correct. Second, the first point is totally irrelevant; AIG is totally tone deaf. I’ve been REALLY uncomfortable with this “too big to fail” label; gives these companies a feeling of entitlement. Given the fact that the average American didn’t even know what AIG WAS a year ago, it’s unsurprising. The only time I ever saw them was on advertisements on Sunday morning talk shows. So their audience was never the average American, it was the DC movers and shakers.

At this point, with over a sixth of a TRILLION dollars already in, the government isn’t going to say to AIG, “Go ahead, go bankrupt,” though those bonuses could have been voided if it had. Some of the bonus monies are going to be given back – or deducted from the next check. But if the government is going to nationalize these companies, and they have all but done so – whatever you want to call it – they damn well better job of setting the rules of engagement for giving away lending OUR money. Politically, if not economically, I think the administration needs to try the “clawback” of AIG bonuses; I know that New York State’s Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has been looking at the contracts as well. Here’s an interesting article about other money our government might try to recover.

3. Who is your favorite musician? Could be a member of a band, or a solo artist, or whomever. But specifically, a musician.

This is probably influenced somewhat by my birthday present, the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD, but I guess I’ll pick Eric Clapton. The stuff on the Yardbirds, Derek and the Dominoes, Blind Faith, his early solo stuff, and especially Cream moved me greatly, and that concert showed that sometimes, he’s still got it.

4. What is your favorite season of the year?

Spring, beginning of new life. It gets warmer. Oddly, it’s also still in Lent, so I get to sing the more mournful stuff in church.

5. Did you read “Watchmen”? If so, what did you think of it? Have any interest in seeing the movie?

I read Watchmen when it came out, and I liked it a lot at the time. I feel as though I should read it again either before or after I see the movie.

Next up, social network maven Gordon from Blog THIS, Pal!

1. Taking a quick business trip to NY City, I want to visit again…but I also want to do more out-of-the-way, quirky places as well as the usual tourist-y stuff. Any suggestions?

The Queens Public Library. Serving the most diverse county in the country, it has a wide variety of collections.

2. Your preliminary thoughts on these early days of the Obama presidency – is he doing right? Way off course?

I have some reservations, but I’m more pleased than displeased. The stuff on Iraq, stem cell research, Gitmo, and much of the stimulus I’m for, especially the emphasis on GREEN jobs and the part about health care, in part because of this story, something Scott has blogged about recently. I loved his apology over the Daschle nomination.

But I’m still not convinced that we’re not going into a quagmire in Afghanistan, as the Soviet Union did, if we’re not already, and more troops might not help. Also, there were a LOT of vacancies in the Treasury Department with a lot to do. I know he inherited TARP, but it rather stinks.

The other question I’ll hold in abeyance.

Still taking more questions!

ROG

ROG

The Faith Meme

This quiz was a Facebook thing thing I got from Jaquandor (again!)

1. Who gave you your first Bible?

It was so long ago that I have no idea. Best guess, though, would be my paternal grandmother, who was also my Sunday school teacher. Or perhaps it came from the church itself. No doubt, it was a King James Version. Currently, I own the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, Good News, The Way and Good News. I also have New Testament only: Jerusalem Bible and New International Version, and probably others. Additionally, I have handbooks, a concordance, essays and hymnals – quite a few hymnals, actually.

I also have The Book of Mormon, which I tried to read but found boring, as well as a Treasury of Kahlil Gibran. I’ve had others, but they’ve disappeared over the years; I don’t recall specifically selling them or giving them away.

2. When and where did you receive your first Communion?

No idea, but it was as a child; I “grew up in the church”, as people were wont to say.

3. What was the first prayer you were taught?

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
When I learned this as a young child, it didn’t bother me, but by the time I was eight or so, it started to really freak me out, actually.

4. What was the first church you attended?

Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E. Zion) on Sherman Avenue (or Street) off Carroll Street in Binghamton, NY. The church moved to the corner of Oak and Lydia Streets when I was about seven, just two short blocks from my home.

5. What was the first Bible passage/story that became meaningful to you?

There were so many Bible stories I was taught. I suppose Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace from the Book of Daniel; it may have been their names.

6. What was the first miracle you experienced?

I suppose it was when I started speaking in tongues. I think I’ve told that story in this blog somewhere, though for the life of me, I cannot find it presently.

7. Where and when were you baptized?

Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, Binghamton, NY, August 1953, which I know only because I’ve seen the photo.

Bonus: Is there a story of faith you would like to share that doesn’t fit into one of these categories? If so, share it.

I had a “saved” experience when I was nine years old. Oddly, it wasn’t at church, but at a Bible study that was maybe a half a block from my church. It almost certainly had to do with a Billy Graham crusade.
Subsequently, I started to go to Friday Night Bible Group, usually with my sister Leslie, for years at the home of Pat and Art Gritman. She was the secretary to Neville Smith, the principal of my elementary/junior high school, Daniel S. Dickinson in Binghamton. She was about 16 years younger than Art; I remember specifically that when she was 48, he was 64.
When I was in high school, I would go to my church in the morning, then walk with my friend Bob Swingle to the Primitive Methodist Church in Johnson City in the evening, not an insubstantial trek on foot. From Bible club and from PM, I could quote chunks of Scripture by heart.
But it was also during high school when doubts about my faith emerged. The notion that, e.g., most people in India, good practicing Hindus, were going to go to hell because they didn’t know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior became problematic to me, and I drifted away from the church in my twenties, merely dabbling in everything from Baha’ism (the faith of an ex) to Catholicism (often my Christmas and Easter place of choice) to Unitarianism to the Unification Church. It wasn’t until the early 1980s when, through music, I found my way back into church, and that was/is a theologically evolving process.

ROG

March Ramblin’

I find myself thinking a lot about Natasha Richardson, which is strange because, unprompted by IMBD, I couldn’t tell you one thing I’d seen her in; Nell and the remake of The Parent Trap, as it turns out. Whereas I know about lots of films in which I saw her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, or her husband, Liam Neeson.

Besides the strange way she died, there’s that weird argument that always seems to happen when a famous person passes away. In the comments to this nice article in Salon, one person essentially hijacks the issue with “Aren’t there more important things in the world to worry about?” Lots of back-and-forth that you can read yourselves. Or not.

My feeling is that if someone is uninterested in a “celebrity death”, then he/she oughtn’t to pay attention. But it’s one thing to say, “I don’t care.” It’s quite another to say, “And you shouldn’t either.” People should be allowed to grieve even those they’ve never met, yet because of their artistry or personality or for whatever reason, has moved them in some way. Their loss is real.

And invariably, the death of a celebrity shines a light on the cause of said death, if it’s unusual. (“Wear a helmet when skiing!” “No, it’s too restricting to see and hear properly.”)

I felt the same way when Jennifer Hudson lost three family members to murder. There were those who offered, “People are murdered all the time in Chicago. Why should I care about THIS?” I say: by all means, please don’t. But offer not your analysis about “the celebrity culture”, as though others might not be moved by the American Idol/Dreamgirls performer’s situation. Besides, even in the Windy City, a triple homicide is not an everyday occurrence.
***
Looks as though I’ll still have Dora the Explorer to deal with:
The daughter would normally “age out” of Dora in a year or two. But now that the daughter has dubbed the tween explorer as “beautiful”, I guess I’ll be stuck with her for a little while longer. Why they just didn’t come up with an older cousin so that the original Dora could entertain the younger crowd, I just don’t know.
***
I found this background for a seminar interesting.
In June 2008, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-61, new copyright legislation that closely followed the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The public response to the bill was both immediate and angry – tens of thousands of Canadians wrote to the Minister and their local Members of Parliament, leading to town hall meetings, negative press coverage, and the growing realization that copyright was fast becoming a mainstream political and policy issue.

The “Canadian copy-fight”, which includes many new advocacy groups and the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that has over 90,000 members, has attracted considerable attention from the mainstream media, with many wondering how copyright had emerged as a contentious policy issue.

So the Canadians are having as much trouble with expanding the copyright law as some Americans did a decade ago, including (need I say) me.
***
There’s an online petition to save Proctor’s Theater in Troy, NY from demolition. Apparently, the current plan is to “save the facade” and tack on behind it some ugly badly-built auditorium. The rest of the beautiful building is to end up in the already overloaded landfill in Albany County.

Frankly, I’m not big on online petitions. Frankly, I doubt their efficacy, especially when the signatories include people who are not constituents of the officials taking an action. But the real audience is not so much the folks who run Troy City Hall as it is Governor Paterson. “The city of Troy is applying for a grant from New York State to demolish the theater. The petition to Governor Paterson is asking him to grant money for the renovation of the theater, not its destruction.

“The theater was built in 1914 and remains the last existing grand movie palace in Troy. While the building is in disrepair, it does not need to be torn down. In 1979 Proctor’s was placed on National Register of Historic Places – but this distinction may not save it from the wrecking ball.”

Anyway, I add my name here because, in some minuscule way, I helped with the renovation of Proctor’s in Schenectady in the late 1970s by selling ads and performing in the arcade for an April 1978 fundraiser. It’s also the building I worked in for nearly 11 months. Here’s a picture of Proctor’s Schenectady – Troy’s is similar though now in disrepair – but, as the petitioner noted, “with vision and leadership it can look like this again!”

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial