Month: February 2013

Well, there’s Plan C

On Saturday, we did almost nothing.

I know that some of you folks from out of town, and out of the country, were concerned about how we fared after the Blizzard of 2013. We were fine in Albany, with 6.5″, c 16.5 cm, of snow. More in the hilltowns around here. The worst weather was to the east – Long Island, and much of New England. I noticed on Facebook that Steve Bissette, who lives in Vermont, was able to get to the post office, but the post office was closed.

Our Saturday was like that. Usually, that morning involves my wife going to Weight Watchers, which is about four miles (6 km) away, at 7 a.m. Since the bulk of the snow had fallen Friday night – and she and the Daughter had gone, on foot, to Steamer No. 10 to see Annie the night before, she slept in until nearly 6:30! She really knows how to goof off; yeah, right. She didn’t go to her Zoomba class either, which probably didn’t take place anyway.

There was a party planned for our twin nieces, who were turning 12, about an hour away, at 1 p.m. That event ended up getting postponed until the next day. The superintendent of the Albany schools had invited people over to visit her at 3 pm, but that got canceled, fairly late.

OK, the local branch of the Albany Public library was going to do some really cool stuff for Chinese New Year, involving reading, and music, and – oh, ALL of the branches were closed for the day!

After I had shoveled the sidewalk early on – a wonderful experience, I must say, the family ate breakfast, together. Then the Daughter and I shoveled a path from the front to the back of the house and dug out the car. It was considerably colder at 8 a.m. than it was at 6 a.m., and it was a good thing we liberated the vehicle because it would have been too difficult on Sunday morning to get to church on time.

As it turned out, on Saturday, we did almost nothing. Laundry was washed, dishes were cleaned, but mostly it was reading, watching TV, and listening to music. My wife noted how relaxing it is not to have to get up before dawn on a weekend morning; as someone who dreads the alarm going off on weekday mornings, but especially on Saturday, I quite concur.

This is an example of where LESS (stuff to do) is MORE (fun). I approve of this concept.

The First Step to Freedom

Freedom is a process, not an event.

 

There was an exhibition, entitled The First Step to Freedom: Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that toured eight cities in New York State in the fall of 2012, the last of which was Albany, on November 9 and 10, at the New York State Museum. My family spent over 90 minutes in line to see the document for less than three minutes.

As this audio/visual presentation shows, the Emancipation Proclamation has been oversimplified.

It is NOT true, for instance, that President Lincoln freed all slaves with the stroke of a pen.

“It is an easy narrative, historians argue, that a single document granted freedom. But that’s not how it happened.

“Look to the proclamation’s language: ‘That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.’

“Freedom only applied to those slaves in states that had seceded. It did not apply to border states, or specific regions in Union control: about 750,000 slaves.”

On the other hand, it would also be false to suggest that it did nothing. It led to a number of black soldiers fighting on the Union side; after about two years of war, that infusion of new fighters made a huge difference, and also showed that it wasn’t just others fighting for the freedom of black people.

The Emancipation Proclamation was just part of a process, sometimes progressing (Thirteenth Amendment, Reconstruction), sometimes regressing (Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, inequitable treatment by courts). The military became integrated, and the schools were supposed to be, although the resegregation of public education is now painfully clear. There is an inequality in our prison system, and continued inequity in wealth is its own jail.

Freedom is a process, not an event.

E is for Encyclopedia

I still have a soft spot for those nearly uniform books that went from A clear down through Z.

When I was around six years old, my parents got me the Golden Book Encyclopedia, a series of books for kids. Well, it was for my sisters and me. But I was the one who practically wore off the covers.

Three or four years later, Mom and Dad purchased the Encyclopedia Americana, ostensibly for the family, but I was clearly the greatest user by far. I may have read the whole thing, over time. Because the books became instantly dated, Americana sold these Annuals that would update the main books. My parents bought these as well, and I DID read the volumes practically cover to cover.

When I was living on my own, local supermarkets would often sell encyclopedias, one book a week. The first volume would be 99 cents, or maybe just a penny; subsequent books were three or four dollars each. I know I started buying these because I ended up with a lot of A volumes; I knew more about aardwolves and Aachen than anyone should.

During my brief time in New York City, I was a telemarketer for about three months. I called people who had the World Book Encyclopedia already and ask them if they wanted to buy the Annual. I was rather good at selling these, as I recall.

Of course, now, most encyclopedias are available online, which makes them easier to keep up-to-date. Still, I still have a soft spot for those nearly uniform books that went from A clear down through Z.

That reminds me: I learned to spell the word encyclopedia from Jiminy Cricket on the Mickey Mouse Club.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

My ambivance about Ed Koch

Ed Koch also didn’t endear himself to upstate voters when he ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York State in 1982, again against Mario Cuomo.

 

Edward I. Koch died recently. He was the brash, outspoken mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. You should watch this interview conducted in 2007, where he “reflected on his life and political career, and talked of how he would like to be remembered.” I would agree that he brought some fiscal stability to a city on the brink of bankruptcy, “turning a $1 billion budget deficit into a $500 million surplus in five years. He restored the city’s credit, doubled the annual budget to $26 billion and oversaw $19 billion in capital improvements.”

The year 1977 was tough for both NYCNY and me. The city had a blackout that led to widespread looting. A guy dubbed Son of Sam was going around shooting people. I had graduated from college the year before and was underemployed in my college town in the autumn of 1976. In desperation, I lived with my parents in Charlotte, NC for the first four months of 1977; not my favorite place at the time. Then, after a brief trip to Binghamton, NY, I ended up living in the apartment of my sister and her husband at the time. Much of the time, they were in Boston, though they were present some of the time, and he and I did not get along that well.

I had a 30 hour per week telephone job from 6 pm until midnight. I spent most of my time hanging out in Greenwich Village with a co-worker named Michael, who pursued an ill-fated romance with a young woman. I’ve long since lost track of him, but have remained friends with the woman to this day.

So I wasn’t all that engaged with the politics that was going on. It seemed that there were a half dozen folks running for mayor. Ed Koch had been a reform-minded member of Congress, but his pro-death penalty position troubled me greatly. I ended up rooting for Mario Cuomo, who was the state’s Secretary of State.

Despite living there, I was totally unaware of signs that were apparently all over the city saying “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” Mario Cuomo has continually denied being behind these signs, and though Cuomo and Koch appeared together from time to time subsequently, Koch never forgave either Mario, or his son Andrew, the current New York State governor. (I tend to believe Mario, but wouldn’t be surprised if Andrew were involved; he was a very nasty guy.)

He also didn’t endear himself to upstate voters when he ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York State in 1982, again against Mario Cuomo. Koch described his run as hubris. He was hurt by an interview with Playboy magazine, where he was insulting to upstaters, describing rural life as “a joke,” for instance.

Amid his accomplishments, and they were many, it was thought by many that he was lousy on race relations with blacks, and extremely slow in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

After his time as mayor, he worked as a partner in a law firm, did radio commentary, wrote newspaper columns, and even movie reviews. talk-show guest. his support of the war in Iraq peeved me, especially since he had opposed the Vietnam war as a Congressman. More recently, he tried, unsuccessfully, to get nonpartisan reapportionment done, which I support.

The writer Pete Hamill said in 2005 that he was “some mad combination of a Lindy’s waiter, Coney Island barker, Catskills comedian, irritated school principal and eccentric uncle.” This was meant as a compliment, and it’s pretty accurate. The praise he received was no doubt warranted, but somehow, I was not his biggest fan.
***
Artists Against Fracking is a video postcard from Yoko Ono to Andrew Cuomo

From the 1977 Sacred Songs album, NYCNY by Daryl Hall, which rather sounds like NYC, NY of 1977

Book Review: THE ME GENERATION…BY ME (Growing Up In The ’60s)

Ken Levine’s early life had a lot to do with growing up Jewish, not particularly coordinated or popular – perhaps one could say nerdy – in Southern California.

 

Ken Levine is a blogger I’ve been following for about five years, and whose observations about the entertainment industry I enjoy a lot. He is “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer.” So I was interested in a book by a guy who both wrote shows I’ve watched, such as MASH, Cheers, and Frasier AND has done play-by-play for Seattle Mariners and other baseball teams.

I put his new book on my Amazon wish list and received it for Christmas. The premise of the book he dedicated a blog post to is that:

“They say if you can remember the’60s you didn’t live through them. But that’s not true. 99.9999% of the largest generation the world has ever known grew up in the ’60s and were not so drugged out that the decade became a mere purple haze. 99.999999% of them didn’t attend Woodstock, move to Haight-Ashbury, protest the war by burning their bras or banks, or form a band that played Woodstock. Most of us went to school, had summer jobs, wrestled with adolescence, and enjoyed being catered to by the media and Madison Avenue because of our sheer size.

“And the world changed dramatically while all of this was going on. But in the background.”

Levine’s early life had a lot to do with growing up Jewish, not particularly coordinated or popular – perhaps one could say nerdy – in Southern California. He didn’t have a rebellion against his parents, though.

Like many boys of his vintage, he was competing with the Beatles for the attention of girls. He writes a lot about his success, or more correctly, lack of same in the area of romance. Levine knew actress Ann Jillian and had an unrequited crush on her.

Levine had some interest in politics; he actually watched political conventions. World and national events both surprised and impacted him, from the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Jr., and RFK, to the 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

What I really liked was how music was a marker for much of that decade for him, as it was for me. He managed to be invited to the first episode of Shindig, an ABC-TV music show, but somehow didn’t quite make it.

I was distracted by some chronological errors. The musical Hair was popular in 1968, but Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In by the Fifth Dimension wasn’t a hit until 1969. George Wallace was a serious contender for President in 1968, not 1964.

Still, it’s enjoyable enough, although if coarse language bothers you, this book will annoy you. Non-essential; I suspect that his next volume when his writing career begins in earnest, will be more to my liking.

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