Month: November 2022

Another Hodgepodge from Sunday Stealing

Music and books: how predictable

amy hodgepodge.lost and foundHodgepodge is such a strange word. hodge·​podge ˈhäj-ˌpäj: a heterogeneous mixture: JUMBLE. “A hodgepodge of styles.” So here’s another hodgepodge from Sunday Stealing.

-What’s your favourite childhood memory?

Too tough! Here’s A favorite memory here.

-Do you sing in the shower?

Yes, often in harmony with the vocals I hear in my head.

-What is the best gift you’ve ever received?

I don’t think there’s a single item. The wealth of music and books that many people have given me over the years.

-Do you prefer being indoors or outdoors?

Indoors. Outdoors is hot and sticky in the summer, and I get wary of sunburn because of my vitiligo. Or it’s cold, as it is now, and I have difficulty getting warm enough. I like May and September outdoors, in general.

-Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?

My ex-girlfriend’s sister.

-What do you keep in your bag or handbag?

When I used my backpack more often, it often had my bus pass, masks, spare pair of sunglasses (because I tend to misplace them), a spare hat (ditto), and my bicycle lock.

-Can you knit?

No, and I can’t really sew. I’ve done it rarely, and usually, someone will look at my work and say, “Let me fix that.” So I’ve stopped even trying.

-How many hours do you sleep each night?

Seven. Usually three, then I wake up, play Wordle, and go back to bed.

Role models

-Who is your role model?

I have LOTS of role models for different aspects of life. The problem with having role models is that they are human. So someone could denigrate that choice for their human foibles. But I’ll pick Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison as A role model.

-Who was your first-ever pen pal?

I need to define what a pen pal is. Are we talking about someone I did not know before? Maybe I’ve never had one. But starting with going to college, I wrote many letters to my friends.

-What has been your favourite job so far?

No doubt, working at FantaCo, the comic book store I worked at from May of 1980 to November of 1988. 

-What is your favourite go-to recipe for mid-week meals?

I don’t think I have one that doesn’t involve a microwave. I like making lasagna, for instance, but it’s not quick and easy.

-How often do you eat in a restaurant?

Pre-COVID, 20 times a year. Now, maybe eight times a year.

-Are you close to your family?

It’s a small tribe. My wife, my daughter…

-Do you have any siblings?

I have two sisters who I talk with weekly on ZOOM. They each have one daughter.

-Which phone app could you not live without?

I’m an extremely late adopter. So I know that I could live without a cell phone altogether; I did it for years. On the other hand, OTHER people couldn’t cope; I was nagged about it repeatedly before I had a decent phone. Entities such as medical facilities practically require them to let them know you are coming or that you are there. My need is dealing with what the external world demands of me, not my internal need always to be connected.

Volunteer

-If you could afford to volunteer full-time for a charity, which would it be?

“Afford” is an interesting concept here. When I was working, I felt as though I didn’t have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. Now that I’m retired, I spend some time doing tasks for the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library (FFAPL). Also, I do some things for my church.

But here’s the thing: I don’t WANT to volunteer full-time for ANYTHING. I want to spend time reading, writing blog posts, seeing movies, working on genealogy, traveling, taking naps, et al. I don’t WANT to volunteer full-time for ANYTHING, despite how worthy, say, the programs of the FOCUS Churches are.

-Who is your favourite YouTuber?

It’s the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green (no relation), who are the ONLY YouTubers I can actually name.

-Have you ever been a bridesmaid or a groomsman?

Yes, at least four times. On successive weekends in October 1976 in two different upstate New York cities, in 1979 or 1980 and 2002.

Thanks songs, for Thanksgiving

from Beatles to Boyz II Men

Thanksgiving is coming, so I thought I’d link to some thanks songs. All cuts are in my physical music collection.

Thank You Girl – The Beatles, #35 pop in 1964, as the B-side to Do You Want To Know A Secret (#2 pop). Written by Lennon and McCartney, “eyeball to eyeball.”

Thank The Lord For The Night Time – Neil Diamond, #13 pop in 1967. Written by Neil and arguably my favorite song by him.

I Thank You – Sam and Dave, #4 RB, #9 pop in 1968. Sam says, “I want everybody to get off your seat. And get your arms together, and your hands together, and give me some of that OLD SOUL CLAPPING.” Written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

Thank You – Led Zeppelin, from the group’s second album (1969). Written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

Sylvester Stewart

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – Sly and the Family Stone, #1 pop, #1 RB for five weeks in 1969. Written by Sly Stone. Its first album appearance is on the greatest collection along with Everybody Is A Star (the B-side of Thank You) and Hot Fun In The Summertime. It namechecks other songs by the group.
Dance to the music
All night long
Everyday people
Sing a simple song
Mama’s so happy
Mama start to cry
Papa still singin’
We can make it if we try

Thank You For Talkin’ To Me, Africa – Sly and the Family Stone. A reworking of the previous song, also written by Sly Stone, appears on the 1971 album There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

Thank God I’m A Country Boy  – John Denver, #1 pop and country in 1975. Written by John Martin Sommers.

Thank You For Being A Friend – Andrew Gold, #25 pop in 1978. Written by Gold and Brock Walsh. It was also used as the theme for The Golden Girls, sung by Cynthia Fee in 1985.

Thank You – Boyz II Men, #17 RB, #21 pop in 1995. Written by Dallas Austin and the group, Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, and Shawn Stockman.

Me in the autumn of 1979

Artisans Arcade, still

I’m reading about me in the autumn of 1979. It’s kind of weird that much of it I do not remember. Living with Shazrak, I recall.

I do know I was going to grad school at UAlbany in Public Administration. But I’m reading the names of professors and classmates who are unfamiliar.

In 1978, as part of my job at the Schenectady Arts Council, I was in charge of the Artisans Arcade in the Proctor’s Theatre arcade. That job ended abruptly in January 1979 when the federal funding suddenly disappeared. So I was surprised that I was again working with the SAC on the Artisans Arcade with a woman named Irma Hamilton.

I had an internship at the Albany Housing Authority. The thin, older guy named Frank, I remember, but others, not so much. I remember inputting data about potential residents. One of my presumed improvements was the merging of the maintenance crews, some of whom were paid by state funds and others with federal money. A unified unit ended unnecessary overtime; indeed, one of the units I observed stalling some tasks until 5 p.m. They knew I was RIGHT THERE frequently but didn’t think I would report it.

But other tasks – me going out with staff during evictions, collecting money for some function I cannot ascertain – no idea about these things.

Here’s Johnny!

One of the things I wrote down were two Johnny Carson jokes on the Tonight Show from around New Year’s Day 1980.
There’s a drive-in confessional on Long Island where you drive over the rubber hose, then the priest comes out and says, “Check your soul?”

How to get drunk and cure a hangover at the same time: drink vodka and Milk of Magnesia. It’s a Phillips’ screwdriver.
(How many of you have no idea about the reference to the rubber hose or Milk of Magnesia?)

It’s weird reading about your own life in your own hand but having no recollection. In many ways, I remember 1972 better than 1979. So why did I abandon the 1972 reportage? Because there are no diaries between the autumn of 1972 and the autumn of 1979 that survived my apartment flooding in the 1990s.

So no tales of the disintegration of the marriage between the Okie and me, or 1977, the lost year, or 1978, the found year. I remember SOME of that, of course.

The good news for ADD is I’ll get to the FantaCo years, which start in 1980.

Mom could have gone to college

good hair

I had heard this vague story that my mom could have gone to college. By vague, I mean I don’t know where she would have attended. Moreover, someone (who?) was willing to pay for it. Further, the reason she didn’t go to college or join Girl Scouts was her hair. Specifically, the fact that her hair would become kinky when wet.

Was this a genuine concern of my mother’s? Maybe. But it sounded more like HER mother. Mom’s first cousin, Frances Beal, told this tale about Fran’s daughters and my grandmother, who was temporarily taking care of them. The story, which I have excerpted here:

“The girls were five and four [in the mid-1960s]. They had never seen a curling iron in their life. And in this house, the heat, there was this big, big cast-iron stove… Gert had started the fire and put [in] these coal-burning things, and flames are leaping up when she takes the burner off. She sticks the comb in there. The elder one’s watching all of this, getting more horrified by the minute. And so then she takes it out, wipes it on the dish towel, right? And she says, ‘Come here.’ ‘What are you going to do with that?’ She said, ‘I’m going to straighten your hair. You look like the wild woman from Borneo.'”

So if her potential frizzy hair was a college deal-breaker for my mom, it was from the conditioning [hair pun there] of her mother. Regardless, it was a real shame. She was astute. Even in the stages of dementia she experienced in her last years, she was still very savvy with math.

Marrying that man

One of my sisters asked her, late in our mom’s life, “If your mother was so restrictive, how was she able to marry Les Green?” She said, “I don’t know.”

But her cousin Fran did. “When my cousin Gertie — Trudy, they call her now — started to date the man who eventually became her husband, he was deemed too dark for the family. And I think my father [Ernest Yates] and my Uncle Ed had to intervene and say, ‘Listen, I’m not going to be able to ever speak to you again unless you stop this nonsense.'”

This tracks. Ernie, who died the year after I was born, was a labor leader who ran for political office and married a white Jewish woman. Ed fought in World War II and had a more expansive worldview. Could Ed and/or Ernie have been my mom’s would-be college benefactor? I may never know.

My mom was a wonderful woman. Still, it pains me that the narrow-mindedness of her mother limited my mom. Given the time my sisters and I spent with my grandmother, we knew first-hand that side of my mother’s mom.

Today would have been my mom’s 95th birthday.

Quitting Never Felt So Good

November 17 is the 2022 Great American Smokeout

quitting never felt so goodThere’s a website called Quit Assist to help folks stop smoking cigarettes. The motto is Quitting Never Felt So Good. “There are hundreds of programs, telephone quitlines, websites, apps, and other tools available to help you quit and stay tobacco-free. Many resources are free or low-cost. Here is a partial list to help you get started.”

Thursday, November 17, is the 2022 Great American Smokeout. I hope you can quit smoking. If not for you, then do it for me. Or someone like me.

My father used to smoke cigarettes, Winstons. I remember it well because he would send me to the corner store to buy them for him, starting when I was five or six. This was back in the day when they’d let minors purchase tobacco. This really irritated me. The store at Front and Gaines was only three very small house lots away. Why didn’t he get his own darn cigarettes?

Of course, I never said that. Still, I ALWAYS hated the smell and the taste of the smoke in the air. When I was a little older, and he had graduated to having me buy cartons, I would occasionally steal a pack from time to time, hoping the added expense would get him to at least cutback. Nah. He’d just say, “Give me back my cigarettes.”

These are the good old days

Of course, cigarettes were much more prevalent when I was growing up, with the coffin nails allowed in planes; smoke didn’t know to stop at the non-smoking section, I’ve learned.

It takes me a little by surprise, then, to confront tobacco these days. Those folks who stand just outside the door to a building when they’re supposed to be 20 feet away. Some dude moves away from the hospital onto a path that everyone going that way must pass. Or those who can’t seem to be able to read the quite visible “no smoking” signs in the bus kiosks because they need to light up there, especially when it’s windy and/or rainy. Am I supposed to stand out in bad weather?

Smoking makes me particularly grumpy because I have an annoyingly acute sense of smell. I can sometimes pick up the scent ten meters away. It’s a bit of a curse when our next-door neighbor is puffing away on their property line.

So, at the bare minimum, be aware of your environment when you light up. Better still, save your money. Cigarettes are expensive these days, especially in New York, where they’re about $12 a pack. I swear they were 35 cents when I grudgingly bought them for dad.

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