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Sunday Stealing: plans for August

Sing Sing

1. What are your plans for August?

My family is going on another trip. I’ll tell you about it after the fact. I will note that my wife and I returned yesterday from the Chautauqua Institution. We were away for a week during its 150th anniversary. I’ll write about it in dribs and drabs in the coming weeks. Also, some major housecleaning is required due to an unexpected development.

2. Your mid-year resolutions or goals

Do more genealogy. My sister Leslie was in our hometown of Binghamton, NY, for a reunion this month, and she got a lot of info from a third cousin (I think) on my mother’s side and my father’s first cousin. Oh, and I plan to do LESS of some other things.

3. Are you good at taking care of plants?

Absolutely not. I have no plants; I’ve never been good with them. My wife has a few, but we must keep them out of reach of our cat Stormy, who will otherwise chew on them and then throw up.

4. What makes you feel nourished?

Interesting question. It depends on what one means by “nourished.” It could be oatmeal or music.

5. Which animals do you see most in your area?

Cats. Lots of cats are in our backyard, so many that our neighbors mistakenly think they are ours.

6. Books on your summer reading list

When folks come to the Friends of the Albany Public Library and present an author talk, I usually buy one of their books. Currently, I have more than a dozen unread. I’ll pick one AFTER the projects are done, which is to say, probably in the autumn.

Hanging like the sword of Damocles

7. Projects you want to tackle this summer

I am editing someone’s book, which I MUST return to; I haven’t touched it all month. Getting our back porch replaced.

8. Do you have weddings, graduations, summer celebrations

We went to the Olin family reunion in July. It’s my MIL’s people.

9. Which summer snacks are you excited to enjoy again?

I can’t think of a thing I eat only in summer.

10. How much time do you like to take for vacations

A minimum of a week. Three-day jaunts can be okay, but it’s not vacating enough.

11. Where are your favorite picnic locations?

Random roadside stops. There’s a nice one on I-86 about a half hour west of Binghamton.

12. Something that would be out of character for you

Not singing.

13. Which summer movies are you excited to see?

I went to the Rolling Stone list of The 44 Most-Anticipated New Movies of Summer 2024. So far, I’ve seen Ghostlight, Inside Out 2, Janet Planet, Thelma, and Daddio, all of which I have reviewed in the links; I liked them all except Janet Planet. Sing Sing is the only movie on the list I know enough about that I would like to see.

14. Your favorite free/cost-effective ways to have fun

Lots of free concerts in Albany

15. Who do you trust most to house & pet sit?

My daughter’s friend Kay

Middle-Road Singles of 1964

different Ray Charles

Billboard began compiling an adult contemporary chart in July 1961. I’m calling this Middle-Road Singles of 1964. What they specifically called the category kept changing.

It went from Easy Listening to Middle-Road Singles in November 1962 to Pop-Standard Singles in May 1964, and back to Middle-Road Singles in November 1964.

Four of the five biggest AC hits were also #1 on the pop charts.

Hello, Dolly – Louis Armstrong, #1 AC for nine weeks AC, #1 for one week pop

Everybody Loves Somebody – Dean Martin, #1 AC for eight weeks, #1 pop for one week. Dean’s NBC variety show began in September 1965 through May 1964, and this was the theme song for the program.

Ringo – Lorne Greene, #1 AC for six weeks, #1 pop for one week. Greene, a Canadian, played patriarch Ben Cartright on the TV western Bonanza starting in the autumn of 1959. After Bonanza moved from Saturday night to the sweet Sunday night slot, the ratings went from #17 (autumn 1960) to #2, #4, #2 (’63-’64), to #1 for three years running.

We’ll Sing In The Sunshine – Gale Garnett, #1 AC for 6 weeks, #4 pop

There! I Said It Again – Bobby Vinton, #1 AC for five weeks, #1 for four weeks pop

Fava – Al Hirt, #1 AC for 4 weeks, #4 pop. Instrumental. The theme of the 1966 ABC show The Green Hornet with Van Williams and Brice Lee was an arrangement of Flight Of The Bumble Bee played by Hirt

Love Me With All Your Heart (Cuando Caliente El Sol) – The Ray Charles Singers, #1 AC for four weeks AC, #3 pop. This Ray Charles was born Charles Raymond Offenberg in Chicago.

People – Barbra Streisand, #1 AC for three weeks, #5 pop

Teen idol

For You – Rick Nelson, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet aired on ABC from 1952 to 1966, with the family, including Rick’s brother David playing themselves.

The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz/Astrud Gilberto, #1 AC for two weeks, #5 pop

The Door Is Still Open To My Heart – Dean Martin, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop

Navy Blue – Diane Renay, #1 AC for one week, #6 pop

Interestingly, though they dominated the pop charts in 1964, The Beatles were not represented on the AC roster. They didn’t appear on the AC charts until Something, #17 in 1969. Their only AC #1 was Let It Be in 1970.

Lydster: Boggled

Wade In The Water

I am boggled by my daughter’s prowess at the word game Boggle. In 2017, I wrote about the game itself. Then, in 2021, I noted how much better my daughter plays.

Now, she beats me. Every time. I will have a small lead at some point, but she always comes back. She usually beats her mother, too. But my worst results happen when I play both of them. Each of them finds different words that I write down.

Of course, she used words I didn’t see, but also ones I didn’t really know, such as grava and weap.

My wife and I were also boggled by the tattoo she got this month in honor of the late feline Midnight. The design she developed was based on his photo, plus the moon and stars. No, we did not know that was going to happen.

God’s gonna trouble the water.

I was also mildly surprised to hear her singing Wade In The Water around the house. Usually, she’s into a song from 1990s soul artists. Indeed, I did not know she knew the song. I asked her how she learned it, but we got more into the song’s derivation.

Some of her friends suggested it was NOT tied to Harriet Tubman sending a message to enslaved people escaping their bondage. The National Parks Service agrees: “Tubman sang two songs while operating her rescue missions: “Go Down Moses,” and “Bound for the Promised Land.” However, I can find several references stating otherwise. The song is generally considered a recognition that one should venture into even unknown waters because God will be there.

The song was famously included in the 1901 “New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The book was published by Frederick J. Work and his brother John Wesley Work Jr., a teacher at the HBCU Fisk University in Nashville who spent years collecting and promulgating songs of this nature.” Here’s a later iteration of the group performing the song.

BlackHistory360 and a United Methodist minister describe the tale’s biblical roots. While it does reference the famous Moses Crossing the Red Sea story in Exodus, the heart is a New Testament tale.

The Gospel

“The refrain… is based upon the narrative of John 5:2-9. It is the story of the pool by the Sheep Gate—Bethzatha in Hebrew. A portion of this passage follows: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda… In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had .”

It has been embraced by generations of Civil Rights activists. When I was growing up, I thought of it initially as a response to the insane reaction some white communities had to black kids swimming in the local municipal pool or even a particular section of a lake, which I wrote about here; bizarrely, in 2009, there was a then-contemporary example.

Wade In The Water:

Brother John Sellers

Ella Jenkins

The Soul Stirrers

Ramsey Lewis

The Staple Singers

So, my daughter’s venture into older music, which I did not expect, was fruitful.

The 100 best books of the 21st century

The New Jim Crow

“These are the 100 best books of the 21st century, as voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, and critics.” So sayeth The New York Times. Alas, I’ve read but a few of them. Still, I will mention the ones for which I have… some relationship beyond seeing the author interviewed on CBS Saturday Morning, such as #76 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022).

#88 The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2010)

Around 2012, Lydia Davis spoke at the Albany Public Library, and I picked up this book. A few years later, the Friends and Foundation named her a Literary Legend, and I got to speak with her a half dozen times. “If her work has become a byword for short (nay, microdose) fiction, this collection proves why it is also hard to shake; a conflagration of odd little umami bombs — sometimes several pages, sometimes no more than a sentence — whose casual, almost careless wordsmithery defies their deadpan resonance.”

#69 The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010)

Not only did I read it, I reviewed it. It’s an important book.

#48 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)

I took the graphic novel to a work conference but left it in my hotel room. They shipped it back to me, but it cost me more than buying the book again. It’s here waiting to be read. However, I did watch the movie on a flight from Paris to New York City in May 2023 and liked it.

#36 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

In 2016, I wrote that I SHOULD read the book, and subsequently, I did but failed to review it. I found it moving.

A Family Tragicomic

#35 Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)

I did not read the graphic novel, even though ADD said I should, and he’s usually correct. And I probably will. However, I did a touring company production of the musical in 2017 at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, and I own the Original Cast Album. Here’s the performance from the Tony Awards in 2015

#26 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2002)

I saw the movie adaptation in 2008, which I did not love.

#20 Erasure by Percival Everett 2001

I saw the movie adaptation in January 2024, and I LOVED it! However, they changed the title to American Fiction.

#16 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)

Someone lent this to me years ago, and I got to about page 59 before stopping, and I no longer remember why. It’s still sitting on my shelf, next to Persepolis. Yes, 2000 is in the 20th century; I didn’t make the list.

#7 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)

It’s been on my Amazon list since 2021.

#2 The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)

My wife has read and thoroughly enjoyed this 600-page book in the past few years. It’s about the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West from 1915 to 1970.

COVID surges in dozens of states

FLiRT

**Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2021 boundaries, summitpost.org, National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS). CARSON ELM-PICARD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE**

A headline in the Boston Globe (firewall) for July 16: COVID surges to ‘very high’ or ‘high’ levels in dozens of states, including multiple in New England, CDC says.

The Globe posts illnesses and deaths in its service area each week. While it’s nowhere near what it was at the height of the pandemic, it’s not zero. Check out the death statistics.

Also, “wastewater surveillance data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the prevalence of COVID has hit ‘very high’ levels in seven states, including California, Texas, and Florida.”

So it is not a shock that Joe Biden contracted the disease again. I’m told that at least 15 people attending the 1973/1974/1975 Binghamton Central High School reunion got it.

From the Los Angeles Times this month

July 1 -COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb in Los Angeles County, as are the number of people hospitalized with infections, as the typical summer surge in the illness creeps up.

Doctors have noted an earlier-than-normal rise for this time of year, which in L.A. County began in May. Among those recently testing positive for the coronavirus was Mayor Karen Bass… The mayor tested positive for the first time last June…

The new FLiRT subvariants, officially known as KP.3, KP.2 and KP.1.1, are believed to be roughly 20% more transmissible than their parent, JN.1, the winter’s dominant subvariant, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease expert at UC San Francisco, has said.

For the two-week period that ended June 22, the most recent information available, 62.9% of estimated COVID specimens in the U.S. were of the FLiRT variants — up from 45.3% a month earlier.

The rise is due to the FLiRT variant.

July 8: COVID cases and hospitalizations rise in L.A. County — and some of those recently reinfected with the FLiRT variants are finding the latest bout the worst yet.

The following week

July 15: For the first time since the winter, California has “very high” coronavirus levels in its wastewater, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state levels are now estimated to be significantly higher than last summer.

The increase comes as national virus measurements in sewage also have jumped significantly, an indication that the summer bump is continuing to grow.

July 16: COVID is continuing to rise this summer, and its spread is being aided by people who are still going to work or traveling while sick.

“Certainly, people are trying to get back to whatever life was like before the pandemic,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “We’re in a different place than we were before. … However, good common sense shouldn’t go out the window.”

FLiRT

Johns Hopkins describes FLiRT:

When it comes to symptoms, we’re not seeing anything new or different with these variants. We continue to see more mild disease, but that’s likely not because the virus is milder, but because our immunity is so much stronger now. After years of vaccinations and infections, most of the population is better able to fight off an infection without as much concern for severe disease…

As with previous variants, some people may have detectable live virus for up to a week after their symptoms begin, and some may experience rebound symptoms.

At-home testing remains a really important tool for knowing whether you could potentially infect others.

The good news is that Paxlovid is still recommended for high-risk individuals. It still works against variants up to JN.1, and based on the sequencing of the FLiRT variants, they should still be susceptible to Paxlovid, as well as to antiviral drugs like molnupiravir and remdesivir.

It’s always a good idea to keep a few COVID tests around the house in case you start to feel sick. Testing—whether at home or in a health care setting—will make sure you know what you’re infected with, which can inform the best treatment plan if you are in a high-risk group or your symptoms progress to more severe illness.

If you do feel sick, follow the CDC’s simplified guidance for respiratory illnesses. This is especially important if you plan to spend time with friends or family who are at higher risk of severe illness.