August 2023 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Those who take public transportation

communal mindset

In a comment, Kelly wrote: I’m interested in the communal mindset of those who take public transportation. You should write more about that! It’s something I noticed when The Wife and I were in Toronto recently; we relied on their subways and commuter rail to get around (or driving each day consisted of about fifteen minutes each way from the hotel to a train station), and you can really tell the people who use those services a great deal.

Part of it may be the concern that mass transit is constantly threatened. In an article touting the benefits of it, Britannica noted: “Where the automobile is a major competitor to mass transportation, the use of transit has declined… political support has eroded as well… If the automobile provides superior service for the majority of riders, why not let the market operate without government intervention, perhaps leading to the demise of transit?”

Actively or tacitly, I think many people recognize when a place – I’m talking to YOU, Boston! – doesn’t put adequate resources behind mass transit. I understand from one of my sisters that mass transit in Charlotte, NC, has collapsed.

So, at least some of us have become not just users but advocates for it as a matter of equity and ecology. Britannica: “Some portion of the urban travel market is made up of people who cannot use the automobile to travel because they are handicapped, elderly, or too young to drive…” My daughter goes to work on the bus, and I used to. “If these people are to have the mobility essential for subsistence and satisfaction in their lives, some form of public transportation is necessary.”

Public good

“Transit provides a community with a way to move potentially large numbers of people while consuming fewer resources… When it is well utilized, it produces important benefits for the community: air-quality improvements, less land consumption than an auto-dependent transportation system, lower energy requirements, and lower accident costs.” I hear tell there’s some global warming taking place.

So it is incumbent for some of us who use mass transit to make at least a minimal effort to make the experience positive. When someone is trying to catch the bus and is four buildings away, I take my time getting on the vehicle, giving them a chance to catch a ride. Others have done the same for me.

The Capital District Transportation Authority buses have bicycle racks. I’ve gotten off the bus to help someone get their bike attached. In part, it’s because I had trouble figuring it out initially.

Mass transit involves more coordination of schedules, of course. Sundays, in particular, do not have robust mass transit schedules. There is a certain chauvinism among some car drivers who can’t understand not being in their own “steel cocoons.” On the other hand, cars involve far more expenses: maintenance, insurance, fuel, parking, and in some locales, gridlock.

Training

My favorite way to travel intercity is by train. I’ve said more than once that taking the train is the only civilized way of traveling. Since 2010, I’ve traveled twice by plane from Albany, NY: to San Diego, CA, in 2018, and to Paris, France, in 2023.

I’ve found people on the train to be more mellow than airline passengers. Conversations with total strangers are common. I think it’s because fellow travelers are in a club that appreciates seeing the country without being behind the wheel. So they tend to be helpful in a way that disciples of a cause tend to be.

Of course, a half-full train is ecologically more sound than riding on the interstate, though getting to the final destination may be problematic. I love taking the Metro North from Poughkeepsie to Yankee Stadium, which is exceptionally easy.

Toronto commuters

Kelly, I’m curious about the “tell” from those Toronto commuters. It reminds me of when I’d ride my bicycle in Albany, and another bicyclist would wave or at least give a head nod. We’re part of the club.

Perhaps these commuters are using a part of their brains, negotiating a system that others are not adept at. I haven’t lived in NYC since 1977 and don’t travel there that often. Yet the subway system was astonishingly familiar when I was there in May 2023.

Maybe it’s the same brain cells that prefer paper maps to GPS. That tends to be me, for whom subway/light rail maps are easy. The first time I went to San Diego with its then-new light rail, c. 2003, I negotiated the system quickly. When I was in the car, I knew I couldn’t find my way back to where I started.

I tasted that in France, traveling from the wedding to the reception, a 45-minute trip. The car had GPS, which worked fine. But we had no idea what direction we were traveling, which was disorientating.

Sunday Stealing: Name your favorite

“You have the right to live better.”

This week’s Sunday Stealing is from Ned the Duck and is Name your favorite

Name your favorite:

Place: it’s probably Niagara Falls. I’ve not tired of it. When I was a kid, I went there more than once. My wife and I traveled there for an anniversary (and a work meeting, which helped subsidize the trip), pre-daughter. Then my wife, daughter, and I stopped there in 2011 during a massive trip to Ontario.

Color: It waffles between green (of course) and blue. I suppose it depends on the particular iteration.

Smell: Bacon. The smell of bacon is better than the taste of bacon.

Magazine: I used to LOVE magazines: Life, Time, Newsweek, Ebony, Jet, Psychology Today, Billboard… Now, I receive The Week, which has GREAT covers. But I stopped getting a lot of magazines, notably The New Yorker because I wasn’t reading them. I AM still getting Vanity Fair, but I don’t read that either, though I’m more likely to view it online. I am consuming The Hollywood Reporter online; my current favorite article: For the first time, Disney is seeking damages in the [Florida] state court case initiated by [Governor Ron DeSantis’] handpicked oversight board.

Texture: Satin sheets, I suppose.

What’s “bored”?

Thing to do when bored: I’m seldom bored. But I’ll play Backgammon on my phone when I need a brain cleanser.

Precious stone: Ruby. It’s the stone of my wife and one of my sisters. My wife’s wedding ring has some ruby in it.

Animal: The peacock. I took a picture of one at the Catskill Game Farm (RIP), and I liked it. It also reminds me of the song My Conviction from the musical Hair.

Time in history: 1978. It’s when all of the good things from the Warren Supreme Court were in place, and it was before Reaganomics started actively taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Also, the earth wasn’t yet on fire.

Font: I haven’t given it much thought, but I’ll say Helvetica.

Sound: The inverse pedal point in music, which I wrote about here. Honorable mention goes to three women singing together in harmony. Example: the chorus of Telling Me Lies by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris.

Fruit: Strawberry.

Vegetable: Spinach. Popeye indoctrination. But canned spinach is an abomination.

Store/shop: Probably Stewart’s, the convenience store all over the Albany area. I like their ice cream. And the larger stores in the burbs are some of the few places you can find a public bathroom that has a chance to be relatively clean.

The late Archie

Quote: “You have the right to live better. You have the right to a better life. You have the right to live in a society without the systems put in that keep us fighting against each other. There’s a better way.” – Archie, a legendary guy in the Albany area who died unexpectedly this week. Here’s his Stand Against Racism website.

Historical figure: Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), who was alive when I was born. Her death was the first of a Very Important Person I can remember, though I didn’t know WHY, other than she was FDR’s widow; I later learned she was SO much more than that. My family visited her residence at Val-Kill in 2013.

Letter: the cursive letter G, which I wrote a lot in my life, of course, because the capitalized form was SO different than the lower-case letter.

Memory: the time I spent with my father in Savannah, GA, 1998. He loved the city, and it was time for us, without my mom or sisters. Two years later, he died.

Dessert: fruit pie (apple, cherry, blueberry) a la mode, with a good vanilla ice cream.

Candy: either a Mounds bar or a York Pettermint Patty to consume. But to play with, M&Ms because I would separate them by color and then eat them in rainbow order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown).

Fine dining

Restaurant: It’s difficult to say. They’re either defunct (Lombardo’s) or have declined. I’ll pick Kismet, the Mediterranean place at the corner of Madison Avenue and S. Allen Street in Albany in my neighborhood, partly because my wife and I stopped by the day it opened. We didn’t dine there then because we had already eaten, but a few days later, my wife and I ate there for our anniversary.

Language: on one level, I love the sound of some Romance languages, notably French and Italian. On the other hand, German has wonderfully descriptive and lengthy words such as treppenwitz.

The thing to learn about: I’m still a Census Bureau nerd – or is it a geek? -especially when it comes to demographic designations. There’s a webinar scheduled for August 30 at 3:00 pm EDT on the potential removal of the Ancestry question from the American Community Survey. The webinar is a chance to provide feedback on removing this question and its impact on data users. I’ll attend this if I don’t have a conflict.

The thing about yourself: I remain curious. No way do I think I know all of the answers. And I still learn something new almost daily.

Most awarded songs #14

Summer’s here

The countdown continues. Some of the most awarded songs #14. Grammy and/or Oscar love. Citations in Rolling Stone magazine, RIAA, ASCAP, CMA, NPR, and more.

20. The Tracks Of My Tears – The Miracles. Classic Smokey Robinson poetry. “Since you put me down My smile is my make up I wear since my break up with you” It uses the clown motif, as did the Miracles’ Tears of A Clown.

19. Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson. Interestingly, this is a song that was NOT written by Willie. The 1972 song was also successfully recorded by artists, including Elvis, before Willie’s Grammy Award-winning version in 1982.

18. Be My Baby – The Ronettes. Written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector, the only Ronette on the track was Veronica Bennett, later Ronnie Spector. Sonny and Cher sang backup vocals. The Wrecking Crew played the instruments, with Hal Blaine making an error in the drumming that stayed on the recording.

17. Great Balls Of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis. The song I most associate with Lewis was used in the 1957 movie Jamboree.

Sacrilege

16. Light My Fire – The Doors. I’ll admit it. The album version of this song, which was often played on the radio despite its 7-minute length I grew to find tedious.

15. What’d I Say – Ray Charles. His first big crossover to pop hit is a great call-and-response. And also very suggestive, especially in part 2. Ray closed every live show with the song. The unedited version.

14. Stand By Me– Ben E. King. This was a rewrite of an old gospel song by King, Leiber, and Stoller, released in 1961. It was featured on the soundtrack of the film of the same name a quarter of a century later. It was covered over 400 times, by Otis Redding, John Lennon, and many more.

13. Dancing In The Streets – Martha and the Vandellas. The song was written by Marvin Gaye, Mickey Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter. The Vandellas had the hit in 1964 after Kim Weston passed on the piece. It was a party song, enjoying splashing through the open fire hydrants in the summer. But it was adopted as a civil rights anthem as well.

Hello, Darkness

12. The Sound Of Silence – Simon And Garfunkel. From Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life by Sanford D. Greenberg. Much of this is accurate, but the part about the song, written by Paul Simon, of course, is not.

Sandy was roommates with Art Garfunkel at Columbia University. [Sandy went blind from severe glaucoma and went back home, defeated, to Buffalo. But his buddy Art showed up at the front door.] Art escorted Sandy around campus and even referred to himself as “Darkness” to demonstrate his empathy with his friend. “Darkness is going to read to you now.”

While at Oxford, Sandy got a call from Art. Art had formed a folk-rock duo with his high school pal Paul Simon, and they desperately needed $400 to record their first album. Sandy and his wife Sue had literally $404 in their bank account, but without hesitation, Sandy gave his old friend what he needed. Art and Paul’s first album was not a success, but one of the songs, The Sounds Of Silence [later changed], became a #1 hit a year later. The opening line echoed the way Sandy always greeted Art.

11. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ – The Righteous Brothers. Written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil in 1964, it was the epitome of the Wall Of Sound.

My CVS is closing (1026 Madison Ave)

Removing the cobblestones

My CVS is closing. The store at 1026 Madison Avenue, an anchor of that part of the Pine Hills neighborhood, will soon be defunct. My wife learned this from an employee who told her it would be shuttered on September 26 because of a dangerous structural problem in the basement. It will not reopen. I am bummed.

One of the reasons we moved into the neighborhood is because of its proximity to so many things. My library branch (Pine Hills). My bank. Restaurants, some of which have come and gone.

On the stretch between Main and West Lawrence, my Price Chopper/Market 32 grocery store anchored one end of the block. The Madison Theatre has come, gone, and returned a few times. The next address has been a bookstore and a few coffee shops. My CVS anchored the other end.

In the Times Union story, which came out after I tipped off editor Casey Seiler: “Amy Thibault, a CVS spokeswoman, confirmed the closure date and offered a variety of reasons that led to the decision to shutter the store, including population shifts and a community’s store density…

“The city’s codes department cited the owner late last week for having an unsafe basement due to issues with support columns in the building. The citation, which requires the owner to prepare an engineering report within 10 days, does not affect CVS’ ability to operate its store.” I have my doubts.

Options

To be sure, there are other CVS locations within a mile or two: 885 Central Avenue (0.9 mi), 613 New Scotland Avenue (1 mi), 1170 Western Avenue (1.8 mi), and 16 New Scotland Ave (1.4 mi). Our prescriptions will likely move to one of those. And they are all on a bus route not far from my house.

But it was SO convenient to walk the 0.3 mi to my CVS to purchase my Rx, buy some fruit at the PChop, get some cash from my bank, put $20 on my CDTA bus Navigator card at my library, and maybe pick up some restaurant takeout. “The company has several other pharmacies in the city, but the Madison Avenue location was the sole pharmacy located within the Pine Hills neighborhood boundaries.”

My wife said she was stunned by the news. Sigh. We will deal with it.

Lark Street revitalization

Some local good news. Workers are removing the cobblestones at three intersections of Lark Street, a street near my church, at Hudson, Lancaster, and State.

They were “originally installed two decades ago. Residents long complained that the gaps between the cobblestones were excessive; bike tires (and high heels) got stuck in them. And they’d never been re-grouted since installation. Mayor Kathy Sheehan says one of the first complaints she fielded when she was elected was about the cobblestones.”

I despised them from the very beginning. The cobblestones were also slippery when wet.

Movie review: Oppenheimer

Barbenheimer

The movie Oppenheimer is worth seeing, preferably at a movie theater. Though not at the showing I attended.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, who was tremendous) was a brilliant scientist who helped develop nuclear science. He also had complicated relationships with women (Emily Blunt as wife Kitty, Florence Pugh as Kitty). And what are his ties to communism?

Very little in this story, except parts of the filming, is black and white. Was the development of the bombs that would be dropped on Japan a good military strategy or an immoral unleashing of power?

Director/co-writer Christopher Nolan has painted a non-linear painting, not just of the main character, but of important partners in the process. Major General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) has conversations with Oppenheimer, which allow the viewer to better understand the work without slowing down the narrative.

Robert Downey Jr was stellar as the Machiavellian bureaucrat Lewis Strauss. Strauss exposed Oppenheimer’s ties to communism, not for the good of the country but for the good of himself.

It is terrific storytelling. Still, the scene of the first test of the device – using real explosives rather than CGI – is practically worth the price of admission. The only flaw I saw was that there were occasionally some 50-star flags when there were only 48 states.

Read the New York Times’ very positive assessment. The negative reviews suggest that the film, at three hours was too long – surprisingly, I beg to differ. It was also painted as too talky, sluggish, and remote, which I didn’t experience. Or the whataboutism that it didn’t show X or Y (the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima or its aftermath, e.g.), which would be a different movie.

The future of cinema

My disappointment was not with the film but the Madison Theatre in Albany the Thursday after it opened. During a scene between Oppy and President Truman, the screen went dark. The sound continued, but it took about seven minutes after two patrons went out to complain. Then it happened AGAIN about 15 minutes later for another three minutes.

That said, I worry about the future of cinema. Sure, Oppenheimer’s opening weekend gleaned $80.5 million, an excellent total for an R-rated, 180-minute film. It came in second to that OTHER Barbenheimer flick.

But several films in 2023 have been described as having box office that was “below expectations, notably the new Indiana Jones and Elemental. During COVID, even I watched movies via streaming. But I need to see the film in person, partly hoping there will be cinemas to support. The number of theaters has dropped since 2019.