Category: Uncategorized

People born in December 1953

The fourth of My Three Sons

Here are some people born in December 1953. this is the final installment of people born in 1953. I won’t do this for 1954 because I was born in 1953. One person I’ll skip because I will mention them separately.

Tom Hulce (5th): he played Pinto Kroger in Animal House (1978). He was also the wayward son, Larry, of Gil (Steve Martin) and Karen (Mary Steenburgen) Buckman in Parenthood (1989). But he is best known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Amadeus (1984), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar as Best Actor, losing out to his co-star F. Murray Abraham, who played Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri. These are the only three films I’ve seen featuring Hulce, all at the cinema.

I never really related to the humor of Sam Kinison (8th). But I understood it better after I read about his growing up. His father was a Pentecostal preacher. “At the age of three years, Kinison was hit by a truck, which left him with brain damage… His parents divorced when Kinison was 11, after which his brother Bill went to live with his father while Kinison stayed with the rest of the family, against his protestations.” For a brief time, Sam was also a fire and brimstone preacher. He was killed in an automobile accident with an intoxicated driver on April 10, 1992.

Being…himself?

I’ve seen John Malkovich (9th) in a few movies (Places in the Heart (1984), Dangerous Liaisons (1988)), his Emmy-winning performance in Death of a Salesman (1985), and a couple of hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live. My favorite has to be the bizarre movie Being John Malkovich (1999).

Bess Armstrong (11th) was in the movies The Four Seasons (1981) and Nothing in Common (1986); the TV shows On Our Own (1977) and My So-Called Life (1995). I’ve seen her in all these plus three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and other television appearances.

Bill Pullman (17th) is an upstate New York kid born in Hornell and attending SUNY Oneonta. While I’ve seen him in several movies, including A League of Their Own (1992) and Sleepless in Seattle (1997), I’ve never watched either Liebestraum (1991, filmed in Binghamton, NY) or Independence Day (1996).

Barry Livingston (17th): I am so seeped in the history of the TV show My Three Sons, I remember this. “In 1963, he joined the cast of the ABC [then CBS] sitcom My Three Sons as next-door neighbor Ernie Thompson. His older brother, Stanley Livingston, was already a series regular as Chip Douglas. After Tim Considine left the series two years later, Livingston joined the cast permanently (his character was adopted into the family, keeping the show’s title intact) and remained with the series until its end in 1972.” He’s still a working actor, and I’ve even seen him in films such as The Social Network (2010) and Argo (2012).

Echoes of Joy

Betty Wright (21st): I mostly know her for one song, Clean Up Woman, but she had more hits and a complicated personal life. She grew up singing with the Echoes of Joy, a gospel group, from age two(!) to 11. Betty “died from cancer, on May 10, 2020, at her home in Miami, aged 66.”

Meredith Vieira (30th): I first noticed her on CBS News. “Vieira joined 60 Minutes in 1989, following the birth of her first child. Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes, allowed her to work part-time for two seasons so she could care for her child. After that, it was arranged that she would work full-time. But after two years, she became pregnant again and asked to continue the part-time arrangement. Hewitt declined her request, firing her, and deciding instead to hire someone who would work full-time.” I didn’t often watch The View (1997-2006), the syndicated Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (2002-2013), or Today (2006-2011), but I’d see her occasionally, covering the Olympics, appearing on 30 Rock, et al.

The College of Saint Rose is closing

The administration failed miserably

To my tremendous sadness, the College of Saint Rose is closing. The 103-year-old institution will shut down at the end of the academic year after the May 11, 2024 graduation.

What has been its great strength, a campus amid the city of Albany, NY, will be the greatest challenge for the neighborhood: nearly 90″properties — almost all of them clustered in the Pine Hills neighborhood — will be left vacant.”

As the Times Union reported: “The college’s properties in the one square block of Madison Avenue, Western Avenue, and Partridge Street will become empty. Most of them are zoned ‘multi-use — campus/institutions,’ which allows a wide variety of options, from residential to retail.”

I’ve always liked college campuses intrinsic to its city, such as Syracuse University, Brown University in Providence, and the downtown University at Albany campus. Meanwhile, Binghamton University, near where I grew up in upstate New York, seemed at arm’s length to me growing up.

The CSR campus is only three to four blocks from my house. A student enrichment program occurred there when my daughter was in elementary school; in 3rd through 5th grade, it was in science, and in 6th grade, science. My daughter was so positively affected that she briefly considered CSR as a college choice.

I’ve attended musical recitals by students, some of whom had been in our church choir for a time, at the lovely Massry Center. Our church choir director taught there until the school gutted more than two dozen majors, including several in their excellent art and music programs designed to save money a few years ago.  But the decision, along with  COVID, meant that the enrollment plummeted.

SOS

“College officials have in recent days attempted to secure emergency funding from the state, county, and city to stay open. While the responses were encouraging…  none of those entities said they could immediately offer help.”

A CSR spokesperson recently said, “The women’s soccer team is undefeated, and it’s business as usual over here. There is no plan to announce that the college is closing.” Still, the closure was a shock but, oddly, not entirely a surprise.

The Saint Rose Exposed page is written by Bruce Roter, a professor at Saint Rose, for 24 years before the 2022 retrenchment. He is the Founder and President of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Museum of Political Corruption and its Center for Ethical Governance.

Roter writes: “I am angriest at the administration and the board of trustees who let this community down. It was their primary responsibility to maintain the financial well-being of the college — they failed miserably. They failed the students who were promised an education that would change their lives. They failed the faculty who dedicated themselves to those students. They failed the staff who worked diligently behind the scenes to support the College. They failed the College’s founders, who envisioned an institution that would lift people up and educate the whole individual. They failed the alumni. They failed the Capital District Community.”

Now what?
As state Sen. Neil Breslin and Assemblymembers Patricia Fahy and John T. McDonald, III noted: “There is no way to quantify the impact of Saint Rose’s physical absence in the City of Albany. It is imperative we accelerate discussions surrounding the College’s 87 properties, their

future use, and how we can minimize the immediate and long-term effects on our surrounding community, businesses, and the Pine Hills neighborhood more specifically.

 

“The College of Saint Rose is part of the very fabric of Albany. We will work diligently to ensure there is a clear path forward for students and faculty, the College’s physical presence in the City of Albany, and a smooth transition and integration of existing academic programs through partnerships between Saint Rose and other institutions of higher education both in the Capital Region and New York State.”

 

I must believe that College of Saint Rose graduates, several of whom I know, must be mourning. And, of course, “the closing could be devastating to some students, who will struggle to find another college where they can finish their degree.” Not to mention faculty and staff who will have to seek other jobs.

 

From my house, the College of Saint Rose is just beyond the recently shuttered CVS. Talk about “There goes the neighborhood…”

Sunday Stealing – Identity

hot under the collar

mytrueidentityThe Sunday Stealing this week is about identity, an intriguing topic.

1. if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?
Read: see #8 below
Watch TV- JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Twilight Zone, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Mission: Impossible until Landau and Bain left. See movies: Young Frankenstein, Annie Hall, Casablanca, West Side Story, 13th.
Listen to: see #4 below

2. have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? if so, who?
He is not exactly like me – he is far more technologically knowledgeable, e.g. But Arthur is a political science guy, sometimes activist, and is open to stealing ideas from me. In fact, he’s doing his Ask Arthur Anything event, which he admittedly purloined from me.

3. do you care about your ethnicity?
Yes, and yes. Yes, it still seems to matter to others; we aren’t in that post-racial society yet. And yes, because it’s interesting to me. Ancestry occasionally recalibrates my DNA percentages. Presently:
Mister Music
4. what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?
In response to blog posts J. Eric Smith shared, I wrote a series of pieces that featured Prince, the Temptations, Jethro Tull, Steppenwolf, Johnny Cash, Steely Dan, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Harry Belafonte, plus a bunch of people also mentioned in the previous links. If I HAD to pick three, it’d be The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon.

5. are you an artist?
Suppose art is drawing, painting, or sculpting; then absolutely not. If art includes singing, then arguably yes.

6. dog person or cat person?
I had cats from when I grew up until 40 years ago. Then, a decade ago, there were two cats, one of whom was certified demented by his vet. The one dog we had when I was a kid bit me; we got rid of that dog when he also bit the minister’s daughters. There are a handful of dogs I’ve liked, especially Random.

7. inside or outdoors?
I like the outdoors when it’s temperate. I like April, May, and September. But I hate heat and fear burning. My tolerance for the cold has diminished with age.
Literature
8. five most influential books over your lifetime
I dunno. How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi regarding how I see inequity. Life Itself by Roger Ebert is about how I see movies. The Sweeter The Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip is about how we’re the same. The Good Book by Peter J. Gomes is a philosophical treatise. One of those Joel Whitburn books about music – Top Pop Singles – is about how music rules.

.
9. would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?
By default, Hogwarts. I’ve never read any of the books, but I’ve seen all the movies.

10. list the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.
Sleeping, reading, sorting through stuff, blogging, eating (including food prep or purchase)

11. have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?
Yes, at random times. A few times on the Amtrak.

12. could you live as a hermit?
That’s what COVID felt like. If I had a phone, Internet, a source of food delivery, maybe for a year before I started going bonkers.

13. do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?
Most people who know me well recognize that my outside appearance is not particularly a high priority for me. So I haven’t a clue.

14. three songs that you connect with right now.
Here are songs by artists who have birthdays in December: Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinéad O’Connor, who died in July 2023;  Something So Right– Annie Lennox from her all-covers album, where she reorders the Paul Simon lyrics;  Love and Affection– Joan Armatrading, which has one of my favorite first lines:  “I am not in love. But I’m open to persuasion.”
made into a PBS series
15. pick one of your favorite quotes.
When I get this question, I pull a book off the shelf and randomly pick something. From The Story of English by McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil: “Phrases like hot under the collar and bite the dust are an everyday reminder of the powerful influence the cowboy has had on the English language. Perhaps this is because, of all of the frontier heroes, the cowboy was the beneficiary of nineteenth-century technology. The camera and the railroad exported the cowboy lifestyle and language back to the east so vividly that a New York dentist, Zane Gray, who was virtually ignorant of the real West, could create a believable picture of cowboy society from the information available to him in New York, thousands of miles from the range.”

More Early Pop Chart Xmas Hits

Harry Stewart

Here are more early pop chart Xmas hits.  There were no specific Billboard holiday charts until 1963.

Winter Wonderland – Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers, #4 in 1947. Issued on the 78 flipside of the Mercer hit “A Gal In Calico.”  Orchestra conducted by Paul Weston.  I think of Mercer more as a songwriter and producer than a performer.  He “co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs.”

I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas – Yogi Yorgesson, #4 in 1949,with The Johnny Duffy Trio, and the B-side of Yingle Bells.  It’s a parody of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Who IS this guy? He’s “the creation of Harry Stewart, who delighted audiences in the 1940s and 50s with parody songs” in a Swedish accent. He was born Harry Skarbo, the son of a Norwegian immigrant father and a second-generation Norwegian-American mother.

White Christmas – Frank Sinatra, orchestra and chorus conducted by Axel Stordahl, #5 in 1945. The song is from Holiday Inn, written by Irving Berlin. I’ll have to remember to play a LOT of Frank at Christmastime in 2025 when he would have been 110.

Jingle Bells – Glenn Miller, with vocals by Tex Beneke, Ernie Caceres & The Modernaires, #5 in 1941.

Frosty the Snow Man – Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys, orchestra conducted by Carl Cotner, #7 in 1950. Like many of my generation, I’m more familiar with the Jimmy Durante version from the 1969 animated film.

Not the same

Silent Night – Bing Crosby with Victor Young and his orchestra, #7 in 1935. This is a “markedly different arrangement from his much more familiar Decca re-makes of 1942 and 1947.”

Christmas Island– The Andrews Sisters, Guy Lombardo, and His Royal Canadians, #7 in 1946. I loved the Sisters. I have several seasonal cuts with them and Bing.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Woody Herman, #7 in 1946. Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote it. I got a Herman album from my late FIL’s collection.

Yingle Bells – Yogi Yorgesson, #7 in 1949.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Spike Jones, #7 in 1950.

Chevy

Chuck Miller recently posted three long-form (four to six-minute) Chevrolet commercials for the holidays from the past three years. It was touching stuff.

December 1st

among other things, vote

Every December 1, I’m torn about what to write. Item #1: It’s World AIDS Day. “This year’s theme is “World AIDS Day 35: Remember and Commit.” This annual event serves as a reminder of the global struggle to end HIV-related stigma, an opportunity to honor those we have lost, and a rallying cry to commit to working toward a day when HIV is no longer a public health threat.

In the national goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030, GLAAD “noted an alarming generation gap. Gen Z, the youngest generation in population surveys, is the most diverse and most out LGBTQ generation in history. According to our study, Gen Z is also the least knowledgeable about HIV.” Ignorance is NOT bliss.

Wyoming

Here’s a JEOPARDY clue:

#8974, aired 2023-11-16 THE NAME OF THE LAW $1600: The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 was named for James Byrd Jr. & this Casper, Wyoming man

The $1,600 clue was a Triple Stumper, with no one even ringing in to say the name of Matthew Shepard, born on December 1, 1976, whose brutal death in Wyoming in 1998 because he was gay I mentioned here and elsewhere.

(In case you’ve forgotten Byrd, he was the black man “who was tied to a truck by two white supremacists and a third man who had no racist background, dragged behind it, and decapitated in Jasper, Texas” in the same year.”)

It only took a decade and a black President to enact the bill.

Per Wikipedia:

“The measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

“The bill also:

  • Removes, in the case of hate crimes related to the race, color, religion, or national origin of the victim, the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity, like voting or going to school;
  • Gives federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crime investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue;
  • Provides $5 million per year in funding for fiscal years 2010 through 2012 to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes;
  • Requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track statistics on hate crimes based on gender and gender identity (statistics for the other groups were already tracked).”
Sister Rosa

The other December 1st recollection involves Rosa Parks being arrested on a Montgomery city bus in 1955 for failing to cede her seat to a white man.

As I noted back in 2010, Rosa was hardly the first person unwilling to give up her bus seat. Claudette Colvin had done the same nine months earlier, but she was young, loud, and brash.

What got me thinking about this was a new movie about Bayard Rustin, which I have not yet seen. He was the most important civil rights organizer that most people never heard of. It was his study of Gandhian nonviolence that informed much of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s strategies.    He was also instrumental in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

You probably didn’t know him because he was gay at a time when, at best, it was inconvenient to the civil rights movement. At worst, he could have been jailed.

This makes me think about how well we marginalize folks who either don’t fit a particular narrative or else we cast aspersions on them to make them less than.

Alternative narratives

The defense in the Shepard case suggested that his ruthless murder was just a drug purchase gone wrong.

Many high-profile murder of a black person while dealing with law enforcement since the Black Lives Matter movement began has involved the victims painted as criminals. George Floyd allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill. Philando Castile was stopped for a traffic violation. Eric Gardner was selling loose cigarettes. And so on.

So, December 1st often fills me with hope. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 wouldn’t have happened if Martin Luther King Jr. and MANY others hadn’t used the Montgomery bus boycott as a launching pad for another phase of the Civil Rights movement.

December 1st shows how marriage equality, from Loving v. Virginia (1967) to Obergefell v. Hodges  (2015) can take place.

But I have no illusion that these hard-won victories can’t be rolled back. Since Shelby County v.  Holder, when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Right Act, the “Brennan Center has consistently found that states previously covered by the preclearance requirement have engaged in significant efforts to disenfranchise voters.”

Books being banned and challenged usually highlight black people, brown people, gay people, trans people… you get the drift.

My Christmas wish is for people to register and vote, not just in presidential years. Folks should be voting in school and library board selections, city and town council races, state and county legislative contests, etc. If possible, get involved in campaigns. Or – if you’re brave enough, and in this social media environment, it is brave – run yourself.

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