May 2011 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Happy birthday, Willie Mays!

She got to meet a bunch of the players mentioned in the song at a media event, including Willie, Mickey and the Duke, but the true significance of these gentlemen’s accomplishments was lost on her because she knew baseball not at all.

My favorite baseball player as a kid was Willie Mays. I thought, and I still think that he was the greatest person who played in my lifetime. He could hit for average (.302 lifetime). He could hit for power; he was fifth all-time in extra-base hits, behind only Hank Aaron, Mays’ godson Barry Bonds, Stan Musial, and Babe Ruth, and 4th in home runs after Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth. He was a great fielder, with 12 Golden Gloves in a row (1957-1968).

Willie came up with the New York Giants in 1951, but his 1952 season was truncated and his ’53 season obliterated because of military service. In 1954, the Giants faced the powerful Cleveland team, a roster that won a record 111 out of 154 regular-season games, in the World Series. The Giants swept the Series in four games, in no small part due to Mays.

So when the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, the Bay City was expecting more pennants. But they lost the Series to the Yankees in 1962. I didn’t realize until I read this article that those Giants’ losses in the playoffs and the Series, even after Mays retired, pained him. So the Series win for the 2010 San Francisco Giants was a win for the Say Hey Kid, so dubbed because he was lousy with names.

There is a song by a guy named Terry Cashman called Talkin’ Baseball, which mentions “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” in the chorus, they being the three now Hall of Fame centerfielders who played in New York City in the 1950s: Mays, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Duke Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It namechecks a bunch of other players as well and has been updated occasionally. Listen to it HERE or HERE or HERE.

I have a colleague who knew Terry Cashman because she was friends with Terry’s daughter. As a result, she got to meet a bunch of the players mentioned in the song at a media event, including Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, but the true significance of these gentlemen’s accomplishments was lost on her because she knew baseball not at all. She also met Rusty Staub, who she knew from his restaurants, not his ball playing. I am jealous.

Mickey died in 1995, and Duke Snider passed away in February of 2011, leaving only Willie from that triumvirate.

Happy 80th birthday, Willie! Listen to The Treniers singing Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song).
***
The 2010 World Series trophy was in Troy, NY yesterday, for a good historic reason.

This week, and next

I should note, first of all: Today is Cinco de Mayo—or the fifth of May, which “commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the French-Mexican War. It is not Mexico’s independence day, as is commonly believed.” [Emphasis mine.] “In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations.”

This means, unfortunately, yet another opportunity for some people to consume alcohol stupidly, even in areas without a large Mexican-American population. Guess I’ll put out a good thought to the cosmos for some sort of personal restraint. Sorry to sound so cranky about this, but past behavior on these seemingly designated drinking days (see also: St. Patrick’s Day) warrants it.

Yesterday, I went to the dentist, then donated blood (time #142) in downtown Albany. Even on a cold, rainy day, I miss downtown.

Saturday is a VERY busy day. Our household has a couple of chores to tend to. Yet I want to go to both the Tulip Festival AND Free Comic Book Day. This is the tenth year for FCBD and I always end up buying SOMETHING, which, of course, is the point. I need to get something that will fit in my backpack, because, weather permitting, I’ll probably ride the bike. I suppose that leaves out getting one of those long white comic boxes, even though I could actually use one.

Sunday, of course, is Mother’s Day, which, as usual, I spend with my mother-in-law and her family. More on that holiday on Sunday itself.

As people who work in my office know, I tend to play a lot of music of artists around their respective birthdays. For the seven day-period from May 8 through 14, there is the greatest number of artists for which I have a lot of their albums:
May 9 – Billy Joel (quite a few)
May 10 – Donovan (a couple)
May 10 – Bono (a lot of U2)
May 11 – Eric Burdon (a couple Animals’ albums)
May 11 – Butch Trucks (at least one solo)
May 12 – Steve Winwood (quite a few, mostly with Traffic)
May 13 – Stevie Wonder (a LOT)
May 14 – Bobby Darin (one)
May 14 – David Byrne (quite a few, both solo and with Talking Heads)

Oh, and Burdon’s turning 70. I always had affection for We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, It’s My Life, and Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. I used to quote the latter: “Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”

Know who would have been 70 on May 13? Ritchie Valens, of La Bamba fame. Of course, he died in that plane crash on 3 February 1959 with the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, thus remaining forever young in our minds.

I won’t be playing much music at work next week because I’ll be out of the office 2.5 days at a workshop learning more about, among other things, American Factfinder 2 on the Census page, necessary because I’m giving a podcast about it in mid-June. Yikes.

Closure…or Not

While some Republicans congratulated Obama, others praised GW Bush for using Gitmo as an intelligence source, while pointedly ignoring Obama’s role.

I woke up ridiculously early Monday morning, around 3:50 a.m., and just could not get back to sleep, so I went to the computer. Ah, Bin Laden’s dead. Hmm. Where’s my fist pump? Maybe I’m still too tired.

I came across Kevin Marshall’s piece, which was entitled “No closure from Osama bin Laden’s death”, and even before I read the actual piece, I realized that he was on the right track. Key half-sentence: “I became confused as to why I didn’t feel that level of joy that everyone else seemed to be expressing.” It reminded me of what I wrote about the execution of Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

Then I went to Reader Wil’s page. She said, “…People are glad that this cruel man is dead. Isn’t it terrible that we should be glad that somebody is killed, even if he deserved it? It asks for revenge and hatred. The death of any tyrant is cause for satisfaction for one group and cause for fury, anger, and revenge for his friends.” Sounds about right.

The next stop was Mark Evanier’s post: “Boy, it’s nice to see America so happy. This country has been in bad need of a hug for a long time and the killing of Osama Bin Laden seems to be it, at least in some quarters.” Yeah, I saw the celebrations in New York and DC and elsewhere, but is AMERICA happy? And if America’s so happy, why aren’t I?

After finally going to sleep and too soon getting up again, I started reading more responses. Newsmax echoed Evanier’s point: “Bin Laden Death Gives US Reason to Cheer,” to get us out our “surly” state over “rising gas prices, stubbornly high unemployment and nasty partisan politics”. Wow – now I can ignore the $4.159 per gallon gasoline, up six cents just this week, at the local station.

So I watch the Today show and read more stories and find the samo samo. While some Republicans congratulated Obama, others praised GW Bush for using Gitmo as an intelligence source, while pointedly ignoring Obama’s role. Meanwhile, someone was blathering about the liberals and the Ground Zero site, and I tuned out. And speaking of nasty partisan politics…

Let me be clear: I’ll shed no tears for Osama bin Ladin. But this paragraph in David Sirota’s article in Salon rings too true: “This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in the news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history — the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.” I also noticed Jack Bauer, the fictional character from the TV show 24, was tracking on Twitter, and I knew for sure that this one death is no cure-all.
***
Steve Bissette’s rant, Part 1 and Part 2. And on a lighter note, how the former Kate Middleton helped to do in Usama.

P is for Pinksterfest

This coming weekend, Albany, NY is having its 63rd Annual Albany Tulip Festival. It will be held in historic Washington Park. “The tradition stems from when Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd got a city ordinance passed declaring the tulip as Albany’s official flower on July 1, 1948. In addition, he sent a request to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to name a variety as Albany’s tulip…She picked the variety ‘Orange Wonder’…”

The event kicks off on Friday with a special musical program on City Hall’s historic 49-bell carillon at 11:30 a.m. Then at noon, there will be “the traditional Dutch practice of scrubbing the streets,” which frankly still fascinates me. Saturday features the coronation of the Tulip Queen, plus performers and vendors on both Saturday and Sunday. The whole schedule is here. The greatest challenge involves getting the majority of the bulbs to be in bloom that weekend, not too early or too late, despite unpredictable weather. The strategy in recent years has been to plant different types of tulips with varying blooming times.

At the same time, the term “pinksterfest” has ALSO used for the weekend, more or less synonymously, but not quite. So I needed to track this down.

From Wikipedia: “Pinkster is a spring festival, taking place in late May or early June. The name is a variation of the Dutch word Pinksteren, meaning ‘Pentecost'”

More useful, though, was THIS article by Matthew Shaughnessy from 2010: “…by the 19th century, it was the most important holiday of African-American slaves who lived in Dutch settlements from the Hudson Valley down to New York City…In Albany, during the week preceding Pinkster, slaves, and servants—both of African and European ancestries—gathered to set up camp, sing, and play music through the use of a large, skin-covered drum on Pinkster Hill. Individual encampments or ‘airy cottages’ were constructed by weaving branches and shrubs through a series of stakes that were vertically implanted into the ground covering the hill. Just upon celebration, the camps were stocked with beer and liquor as well as an assortment of food, including fruits and cakes.

“The annual celebration began on the morning of the Monday following…Pentecost…While the majority of the Dutch population attended early mass, African-American slaves and Euro-American servants would congregate on the hill by the ‘thousands’ and await the arrival of the Pinkster King, who was referred to as ‘King Charles.’ By all accounts, King Charles was an elderly member of the slave community, perhaps a patriarchal figure of some sort.”

The article goes into some detail about the goings-on.

Again from Wikipedia: “Sometime between 1811 and 1813 despite or perhaps because of its popularity, the city of Albany, New York passed a city ordinance banning the drinking and dancing associated with Pinkster. Whites were concerned that the congregation and socialization of large groups of African Americans could provide them with the opportunity to plot or plan a revolution. Some historians believe the council wanted to eliminate Pinkster because it didn’t appeal to the burgeoning middle class, pointing to the fact that the law was eventually overturned, which would contradict the motivation of preventing uprisings.”

Shaughnessy: “For one week a year, the strictures of everyday society were relaxed. Work was momentarily forgotten. Those at the bottom of the society, namely slaves and servants but also women and children, reversed the existent social hierarchy. For the remainder of the week, slaves and servants engaged in a variety of sports and increasingly commercialized forms of entertainment, which, according to a later account published in 1867, were exceedingly popular among white children. There were exhibitions of exotic animals, circus-riding, clowns, and the apparent highlight of the festival: the ‘Toto.’ While the Toto was a dance performed exclusively in the West African tradition of loud drumming and singing, its hybrid during Pinkster combined European and African steps. In addition, slaves sold herbs, roots, and shellfish in carts decorated with flowers, especially [Pentecost] azaleas…” At some point during the run of the Tulip Festival, the Pinksterfest name was absorbed.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Six years

Sometime before the end of the year, I’ll be on a two-week trip. My Internet connectivity will be sporadic. Even if I were to be that many days ahead, I find that writing is a function of inertia; the longer I’m off, the harder it is to get restarted, my February experience notwithstanding.

One must be dedicated, or demented, to blog every day for six years – your call.

It helps a lot that one can post ahead of time. I might write a couple of blog pieces on a Thursday night or a Saturday afternoon, which makes up for those days that I don’t get a chance to blog at all. This is why I almost never post more than once a day. It is better to blog daily than thrice in a day, then not at all for three days, it seems to me.

I may have said this last year at this time, but I find it difficult to see me posting every day this coming year. I managed to get through the first 11 days of my sojourn to Charlotte, NC around my mother’s death writing only three blog posts, and two of those being my mom’s obit and funeral program, because I was actually about 10 posts ahead; a cold January helped. Then, the night before we were going to take the train home, I wrote five posts while trying to stay awake to make my wife, daughter, and driver/sister were awake in time to catch a 2 a.m. train back to Albany.

Finding content to write about has seldom been an issue. Time, though, can be a beast. Generally, during the week, I write between whenever I wake up (5 a.m., optimally) and the time I have to get the daughter up (6:30 a.m), with detours to check my e-mail and visit other blogs. The latter is especially true on (ABC) Wednesday morning.

One of the great emotional points I’ve gotten to is that I don’t worry anymore about the number of hits I get in a day. If I did, I’d be a whole lot better promoting my posts on Twitter and Facebook, which I do currently only when it happens to occur to me.

Another factor is the fact, while this is my first love, blog-wise, I probably should spend more time and effort with my other blogs. I did get encouraging news on that front, BTW, when Pew Research, in this article, under Sites and Sources, linked to one of my other blogs! A bit of a coup, that, so I suppose I should keep it up.

Well, as the great philosopher Doris Day once said, “The future’s not ours to see.”