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Sunday Stealing: Nell Stokes

strawberry

Before I get to this week’s Sunday Stealing, something hyperlocal, curious, and time-sensitive. There is an exhibit called “Nell Stokes: Stories of an Education Advocate” at the Albany Institute of History and Art, an entity my wife and I have supported financially. The exhibit was mounted by Lacey Wilson on December 19, 2023, and was scheduled to be up until December 2024. (Here’s an interview with Lacey from January.)

However, by chance, Nell, a local treasure, learned on May 19, 2024, that the exhibit will be taken down in a few days (i.e., tomorrow, May 26.) She posted about it on her Facebook page and received questions on why it was being removed five months in when twelve months was promised. She believes, and I agree, that it should stay up as promised until December, and we need to know, if not, why not.

Her request to you is to call Diane Shewchuk at 518.463.4478, Ex 441, and ask the Question.

And now back to our regular quiz

1. Have you ever been stung or bitten by an animal?

I’ve been stung by bees, or probably wasps. While my dog, an Alaskan husky, bit me when I was a kid, it was the fact that my parents (probably my father) thought it was no big deal until Lucky Stubbs bit one of the pastor’s daughters, that really irritated me. Only then he gave him to one of his co-workers who had more property to allow the dog to roam.

2. Do you have a favorite bird? Do you feed the birds at your house or park?

Of the ones I never see: ostriches, penguins. In the I’ve seen them category: blue jays, cardinals, et al. And eagles. Frankly, if it weren’t for neighborhood standards, I’d never mow the lawn so the creatures could forage. BTW, the question reminds me of the song My Conviction from the musical Hair.

Specifically: “There is a peculiar notionThat elegant plumageAnd fine feathersAre not proper for the maleWhen actuallyThat is the way things are in most species”

3. What is the last thing you said to somebody before replying to this email?

To the Daughter: “Take the Zyrtec first.”

I remember sleep

4. How do you get yourself ready to sleep at night?

This probably requires its own blogpost. Short answer: there’s no consistent pattern in terms of when I go to bed, or how long I’m off my computer, or whether I watch television first. Usually, I watch a recorded episode of JEOPARDY, because I get teases on my phone which reveal TMI. I have what they call bad sleep hygiene, and it’s gotten worse in the last several months. I do take a battery of Rx pills and brush my teeth.

5. When was the last time you wrote a proper letter?

“Proper” is an interesting term. I did write a Christmas letter at the end of the year and even snail-mailed it to several people who had sent me cards over the past two or three years.

6. What is the worst injury you have ever sustained?

Our contenders: June 1972 – I was getting out of a car when it was rear-ended. I spent a day and a half in the hospital, then six weeks in physical therapy. 1994 – I tore the left meniscus sliding down a mountain in Utah. 2009 – I broke a rib while on my bicycle, trying to avoid a car. We’ll go with the knee, which troubles me to this day.

7. If you could choose your career based strictly on what you think would be fun instead of your qualifications/salary/etc., what would it be?

I wish I had been a public librarian rather than working in a closed environment.

An alternate Earth

8. You can live on another planet, which one and why?

There’s probably a planet somewhere in the universe that has to have a similar ecosystem as Earth. Maybe the people there haven’t mucked up the environment as much as we have.

9. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Strawberry. There was a place in my college town, New Paltz, where I’d have a sundae, and it’d be strawberry ice cream and strawberry sauce.

10. What do you think of tattoos? Do you have any?

I’ve mellowed on tattoos. From not liking them at all to finding some quite appealing, though usually not the full-body jobs. But I’m never getting one.

11. Are you very active or do you prefer to just relax in your free time?

I don’t have any free time. Some items sit on my to-do list for months while more pressing items muscle their way onto my calendar. This is related to my bad sleep patterns. Maybe when my wife retires.

12. If you could bring back one TV show that was cancelled, which one would you bring back?

There are plenty of shows. But a lot of reboots, even with the same cast, they are lesser efforts. Murphy Brown was a prime example.

No surprise

13. Do you prefer to watch movies in the theater or in the comfort of your own home?

In the cinema. I simply have no patience/discipline to watch a movie at home and watch it in the way it was meant to be viewed, which is straight through.

14. If you opened a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?

First, I would never open a restaurant; it is way too much of a hassle. That said, something like Sabor a Campo, which is “an eat-in buffet, carry-out style restaurant, specializing in value-driven multicultural foods, and set in a relaxed, homey, and familial environment.”

15. What do you think is a common thing that is shared between countries despite language barriers?

Most people just want to be left alone to work, raise and feed their families, with respect, civility, and peace.

I see there’s a new final question:

15. If money were no object what would you do for your next birthday??

Right now, I have no idea. It’s in the middle of my wife’s work year and my daughter’s school year. Under the right circumstances, I’d travel somewhere I’ve never been, maybe Ireland and Nigeria.

Harlem Hit Parade of 1944

1942 recording ban

Album cover, Ink Spots Ella Fitzgerald Souvenir Album by Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, outside, front cover. Decca Records. 1981.0656.497, 1981.0656.498, 1981.0656.499.

As I’ve described, soul music/rhythm and blues/et al. has been described by many different names. Here’s the Harlem Hit Parade of 1944.

I noticed a couple of interesting features. Most of the performers we would now consider jazz musicians. Also, some of the songs crossed over to the pop or country charts; the ones that hit #1 are designated with a P or C followed by a number for the number of weeks at #1 on the applicable chart.

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall – Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, 11 weeks at #1 (P-2)

Straighten Up And Fly Right – The King Cole Trio, 10 weeks at #1 (C-6). I DO so love this song.

Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me – Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra, eight weeks at #1. Instrumental. Trumpet solo by Cootie Williams.

G.I. Jive – Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, six weeks at #1, written by Johnny Mercer (P-2)

Hamp’s Boogie Woogie – Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra – six weeks at #1, unsurprisingly co-written by Hampton

Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You – The King Cole Trio, four weeks at #1

Main Stem – Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra, four weeks at #1. Recorded in 1942. “After sitting on the shelf for well over a year, this track was finally released by Victor in early 1944 during the Recording Ban

I’m Lost – Benny Carter and His Orchestra, vocals by DickGray, two weeks at #1

A single week at #1

Ration Blues – Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five (C-1)

G.I. Jive – Johnny Mercer with Paul Weston and His Orchestra

Solo Flight – Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, featuring Charlie Christian on guitar, written by Christian, Goodman, and James Mundy

When My Man Comes Home – Buddy Johnson And His Band, vocals. by Ella Johnson. ‘Though recorded just prior to the beginning of the 1942 ‘recording ban,’ this track wasn’t released until well over a year later, entering the national record charts in February 1944.”

Till Then – Mills Brothers

The strike

I suppose I should mention the 1942 recording ban which didn’t end until November 11, 1944. Per Wikipedia: “On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians, at the instigation of union president James C. Petrillo, began a strike against the major American record companies because of disagreements over royalty payments. Beginning on midnight, July 31, 1942, no union musician could make commercial recordings for any commercial record company. That meant that a union musician was allowed to participate on radio programs and other kinds of musical entertainment, but not in a recording session. The 1942–1944 musicians’ strike remains the longest strike in entertainment history.”

From Jacobin: “Demanding a bigger cut of the profits created by new recording technologies, the AFM’s roughly 136,000 members refused to produce any recordings for two full years. And they won. Following the ‘recording ban’ …, the AFM secured contracts with over six hundred record labels that required each company to cough up a royalty fee for every record sold. The royalty fund was then used to pay musicians across the United States and Canada to perform free public concerts. For decades, the union-controlled fund was the largest employer of musicians in the country.”

From the University of Maryland: “By 1943, then-smaller record labels such as Capitol and Decca had reached settlements with the AFM but RCA Victor and Columbia continued to hold out. The back-and-forth grew so contentious that the case went before the National Labor Relations Board and moved President Franklin D. Roosevelt to write the AFM pleading ‘what you regard as your loss will be your country’s gain.'”

Young Sheldon penultimate episode

The Big Bang Theory prequel

I find it weird that I’m musing about the television program Young Sheldon. It’s partly because it was not a show I watched. My wife saw a few episodes and liked them, and I’m sure they were fine, though a seven-year-old know-it-all wasn’t my thing.

I also didn’t watch The Big Bang Theory regularly. Several people I know IRL were SHOCKED by that fact. “But you worked in a comic book store!” A couple of them, actually, for collectively about a decade. And I collected funny books.

I have, I’m told, some geek/nerd credentials as a librarian! And I was on JEOPARDY! Surely, it was a show MADE for me. I saw a few episodes; most were entertaining. But there would be cringe-worthy elements involving socially awkward roommates Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and their friends and colleagues.

I did watch the last two episodes of TBBT. I’d view the finale even for shows I had once watched but abandoned, such as Seinfeld. It was a satisfactory ending.

I recorded back-to-back episodes of TBBT prequel Young Sheldon, mistakenly believing they were the last two. One was about two of the 14-year-old’s teachers (Wallace Shawn and Ed Begley, Jr.) trying not to acknowledge that their student (Iain Armitage) was smarter than they were.

The antepenultimate episode involved young Sheldon’s dad George (Lance Barber), a high school football coach, getting a chance to work at the college level. As the rest of the family prepared for a photo shoot, two of George’s colleagues came to the Coopers’ door to inform them that George had died of a heart attack. If I had been seeped in TBBT lore, I might have known that George died when Sheldon was 14.

Funeral

The following week was the last two episodes. Funeral was one of the most profoundly accurate portrayals of grief I’d ever seen, certainly on a network sitcom. Unlike TBBT, which was filmed before a live studio audience, Young Sheldon is a single-camera show.

This allowed the YS creators to repeat a ten-second snippet of dialogue between George and his wife Mary (Zoe Perry), the last time the family would see George alive. Young Sheldon imagined that he said, or could have, or should have said when his dad went out the door. This was astonishingly relatable.

It was compelling enough that I would recommend it to my buddies with Death Cafe. (There are snippets of the episode currently on YouTube, but I don’t expect them to survive. Paramount Plus does have the whole show.)

The Chuck Lorre vanity card at the show’s end reads: “Part of the heartache of this story is that it reminds me of how I took my dad for granted. How I was so wrapped up in myself, I didn’t see what was right in front of me.” Sounds a lot like young Sheldon, and maybe the older Sheldon as well.

I was amused by the discussion of how YS did or did not adhere to the timeline of TBBT. It reminded me of conversations I’d listen to in comic book stores about whether a given funny book story was consistent with the continuity of an issue from a decade earlier.

ALA: record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023

joy in diversity

In March 2024, the American Library Association reported a record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023.

“The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the…ALA.” The numbers “show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022 when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship.”

My irritation with this trend should be no secret to anyone who knows me or has read this blog for a while. Public libraries are, and I’m going to use some highly technical language here, “really cool.”

The Binghamton (NY) Public Library embedded in Daniel S. Dickinson School in Binghamton, NY had, at some point, the Dylan poster by Milton Glaser on the wall. So THAT’s how you spell Dylan!

That branch and the main library downtown each had librarians from my church, strong black women. I worked downtown for about seven months, learning about Psychology Today and Billboard magazines, which I DEVOURED before putting them away.

When I lived at my grandmother’s shack in 1975, listening to LPs at the downtown branch was my refuge. In 1977, my go-to places were my downtown library in Charlotte, NC, and then the New York Public Library.

At FantaCo, I would go to the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library and look up publishers in Books In Print, which is how we ended up selling a bunch of Creepshow graphic novels.

I’ve never worked as a librarian in a public library. However, I’ve been what someone calls an advocate, participating with the Friends of the Albany Public Library and then its successor, the FFAPL.

So libraries have long been my third place. “The only real requirement is that nobody is forcing you to show up.”

Censorship

The challenges to libraries, then, make me cranky publicly, and frankly livid in private. From the ALA:

“Key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:

Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.”

People in library districts have the right to pick for themselves what they choose not to read for themselves and their minor children. But some folks want to have OTHER PEOPLE climb under their rocks.

“Oh, no, black people are represented in books,” such as the Amanda Gorman inaugural poem. “And homosexuals,” with the emphasis on the middle syllable. At the very moment, at least SOME of the nation is recognizing the joy of its diversity.

Libraries and librarians are free-speech heroes.

I recommend John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight segment on why public libraries are under attack, and where those challenges are coming from.

One commenter quotes a source I’m unfamiliar with, but it tracks as true. “When they start firing librarians and banning books, you’re in the beginning of a dictatorship. Librarians are the guardians of free speech and the first lines of defense against a dictator.”

Rebel Without A Cause; SIX

Divorced, beheaded, survived

I haven’t attended enough cultural/entertainment events for my tastes of late. While I did go to the reopening of the Spectrum Theatre on April 24, I haven’t been able to get there since, and I want to soon.

I saw Rebel Without A Cause, the first James Dean movie I ever viewed. Experienced with a 21st-century lens, Jim Stark (Dean) seems less a rebel than, in the words of ScreenRant, “a troubled youth struggling to find his place in a society he sees as hypocritical and devoid of meaning.”

Indeed, it is the high school clique that almost immediately scorns him without much provocation who are at least as broken as he. The knife fight between Jim and Buzz (Corey Allen), a few years before West Side Story, is said to reflect the “social pressures of male teenagers.”

Surely, Jim is frustrated by his ineffectual father Frank (Jim Backus), who allows Jim’s mother Carol (Ann Doran) to uproot the family at the first sign of difficulty.

Control

Jim’s one male friend, Plato (Sal Mineo), is a real outsider, abandoned by his parents, needing “to assert some control over a world in which he feels powerless and invisible.”

Jim’s classmate Judy (Natalie Wood, later in West Side Story) evolves from her disregard for Jim as her classmates did, while missing her old relationship with her father (William Hopper from Perry Mason), to Jim and Judy becoming surrogate parents to Plato.

Indie Wire makes the case that Plato is the first gay teenager on film while avoiding getting stopped by the restrictive Hays Code

It’s an interesting slice of life, with Ray (Edward Platt from Get Smart), the cop specializing in dealing with youth a sympathetic character. Even if it is “overwrought and cloyingly melodramatic,” I still appreciated the chance to see it on the big screen.

Famously, the three leads all died too soon. In a gallery of Lost Photos From a Legendary Hollywood Archive, Dean is captured just a month before he died in a car crash at the age of 24 on 9/30/55, even before the film premiered. Natalie Wood drowned at sea in 1981 at the age of 43. And Sal Mineo was murdered in 1976 at the age of 37.

Divorced, beheaded, died…

SIX, which my wife, daughter, and I saw at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady I don’t think is that compelling a book. I had listened to the music beforehand. But for what it is, it does the thing extremely well. It was an 80-minute rock show with a sextet of Henry VIII’s queens.

The Times Union review by Katherine Kiess is about right. “Styled as a ‘Renaissance Idol’ belt-off…they compete in a glamor-coated trauma Olympics to see whose marriage was the worst.”

You can tell it was a rock show because they namechecked “Schenectady!” a half dozen times before the “LED wall panels and cathedral windows that become everything from a church confessional to a dating app screen.”

The four-piece band, the Ladies In Waiting, cooked. And the singers were excellent. So it’s perhaps not great theater but, as the Los Angeles Times noted, it is “unapologetically revisionist. That’s why it’s successful.” And entertaining enough.