Ramblin' with Roger

My father was rather fearless, or so it seemed to me when I was a kid. Very little in the world seemed to ruffle him. If he were upset by the Cuban missle crisis, I never saw it. When Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he went to Binghamton’s downtown to try to keep a lid on the violence that ended up devastating other cities.

The ONLY time I ever saw him lose his cool due to events external to the family was the blackout of November 9, 1965, forty years ago today. He suggested that the event, which covered 13 states and two Canadian provinces, was perhaps a communist plot. I NEVER heard my father mention communism, except in passing, and certainly never as something that he particularly feared. When my father was worried, I was worried, even if I didn’t quite believe that the blackout was a function of a Red menace.

As a result of that event, “the powers that be” said that the power would never go out in that fashion ever again. And, of course, that proved to be true, if you don’t count some smaller incidents, such as the 1977 blackout in NYC.

Until August 14, 2003.

The thing I most remember about that day: practically the first thing I heard about that blackout was the authorities eliminating the possibility that the event was related to terrorism. (That, and the fact that in Albany, every fourth traffic light was working. Our office lost power, but our house was out for only five minutes or so.)

So, where is the line between taking legitimate precautions and living in fear? More and more, I know less and less. I tend to lean against what I consider to be the position of paranoia, but maybe I’m just naive.

(Thanks again to FGH for the photo scan.)

I went to visit my girlfiend at college in May 1971. Much to my surprise, we ended up breaking up. Wounded, I ended up visiting my friend Steve in Poughkeepsie, and he told me about this singer/guitarist named Bonnie Raitt, who he had seen perform. He was really wowed by her, when when I heard her Give It Up album the next year, so was I.

What is it about me and female Scorpio women musicians vis a vis my romantic relationships? lang, Mitchell, and now Raitt. And I never realized it until this month. More self-discovery on the blog.

Artist/Band: Bonnie Raitt (b. 11/8/1949)
Are you male or female: Nobody’s Girl
Describe yourself: Rock Steady
How do some people feel about you: Something to Talk About
How do you feel about yourself: I Feel the Same
Describe what you want to be: Good Enough
Describe how you live: Road’s My Middle Name
Describe how you love: Love Sneakin’ Up on You
Share a few words of wisdom: Give It Up or Let Me Go; You’re Gonna Get What’s Coming

I already have, at 6:10 a.m. Pretty much straight line Working Families and Green parties, plus some Democratic judges. New York allows for cross-endorsements.

For some reason, this song by Tom Paxton, popularized by Pete Seeger, came to mind, especially the last verse:

What Did You Learn In School Today

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie
I learned that soldiers seldom die
I learned that everybody’s free
That’s what the teacher said to me
And that’s what I learned in school today
That’s what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends
I learned that justice never ends
I learned that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we make a mistake sometimes
And that’s what I learned in school today
That’s what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad
I learned about the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And someday I might get my chance
And that’s what I learned in school today
That’s what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that our government must be strong
It’s always right and never wrong
Our leaders are the finest men
So we elect them again and again
And that’s what I learned in school today
That’s what I learned in school

I got married in 1972 at the age of 19. Yes, we were young and foolish and in love. By 1974, we were fighting, mostly about two things: money, or the lack of it, and religion, or my lack of it.
On the money front, she was working as a nurse. I was in still in school. I did the grocery shopping with my neighbor Debi, going to two stores to get the best prices. We loathed it when our significant others wanted to go shopping too. They were always wanting to buy off-budget things like Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
On the religion front, she became a Baha’i, while I was pulling away from my traditional, near fundamentalist Christian ways to a place of serious doubt about organized religion altogether. Baha’is aren’t supposed to proselytize, but she was pretty isolated and wasn’t aware of that. And the primary target of her conversion tactics was me.
Also, she had this annoying tendency to bring strays home. I don’t mean stray dogs or cats. I mean people. Two different women were sleeping on our couch for considerable periods of time. I didn’t know them, I didn’t invite them, and they weren’t even paying any rent.
Early in the summer of 1974, we bought tickets to see Joni Mitchell on August 22 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, something I was really looking forward to. We rode up from New Paltz to Saratoga, a distance of some 90 miles, with my friend Mark and his then-girlfriend. They were in the front seats. For 90 miles, I (and they) heard a tirade of everything that I had ever done wrong in the relationship, including things I thought were resolved, things I had no idea bothered her from months earlier, and things I had no idea what she was talking about. This continued out of the car, through the SPAC gates, into our seats. Certainly she would stop when the music started. No, she kept on, even when the opening act, Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, who would also be Joni’s backing band, started playing.
I got up and sat somewhere else, some 20 rows behind her and my friends. There were people checking tickets in the amphitheater to make sure people were in the correct seats, so I moved around. At intermission, I went back to our original seats. My wife was crying hysterically because the ticket checkers had misread one of the tickets of another patron, was going to put him in her seat and throw her out because she didn’t have a ticket at all. (I had them both.)
We saw the second part of the show without incident. (This was the tour reflected in the Miles of Aisles album.) We went home, and I doubt any of the four of us uttered 10 words for that 90 miles home.
We separated shortly after that, wrote bilious letters back and forth, then less angry correspondence. We finally got to a point of being quite civil.
I went to visit her in 1981. By then, she was living in Philadelphia. There was an outdoor concert that we went to see. I don’t remember much about the performance. I was just glad we had gotten to be in a better place. The performer, of course, was Joni Mitchell.

Artist/Band: Joni Mitchell (b. Roberta Joan Anderson, 11/7/1943)
Are you male or female: Lucky Girl
Describe yourself: Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire
How do some people feel about you: Real Good for Free
How do you feel about yourself: Pirate of Penance
Describe what you want to be: Don Juan’s Restless Daughter
Describe how you live: Impossible Dreamer
Describe how you love: You Turn Me On-I’m a Radio
Share a few words of wisdom: In France They Kiss on Main Street; God Must Be a Boogie Man

New York State has a bottle and can return law, five cents on beer and soda. There’s conversation about expanding it to bottled water, bottled iced tea and other beverages.

The return rate for these containers is about 70 to 80%. Shockingly (to me), people I know actually THROW AWAY these containers. (Shocking, because these people drink a LOT of beer.) This is problematic for a couple reasons. One issue is that the behavior adds waste to the landfill. The other is that it fuels unfortunate behavior in those people I call the “bottle entrepreneurs,” those people who pick up the cans that other people throw away.

In general, I believe the bottle entrepreneurs perform an important public service. After a concert I attended at Washington Park in Albany, the BE were out in force picking up redeemable containers. I swear that the city officials actually waited for them to come through with their bags and (presumably stolen) shopping carts, before starting the clean up. And why not? It creates less work for the city people to do, and less waste to go to the ever-burgeoning landfill.

In the city, municipal trash is supposed to be separated by the homeowners and renters. Newspapers, recycled aluminum cans, and bottles (only the #1 and #2) are supposed to be placed in blue plastic containers issued by the city. Lawn waste (leaves, e.g.) goes in long paper bags. The rest goes in the regular garbage.

The problem occurs when the BE come down the street on trash night, looking for returnables. They look in the blue containers, which sometimes HAVE returnables. They even go through some trash that ins put in clear plastic bags when they can see potential nickels in waiting. One of my neighbors has a note on her blue container, not a handwritten note, but a an 8” X 5” message on a label maker that says:
This Container Does Not Have ANY Returnable Bottles or Cans. KEEP OUT!

Another neighbor saw a man walking onto her porch; she was across the street at the time, and yelled, “May I help you?” The BE said, “Oh, I ring the doorbell here all of the time.” The neighbor disputed this report, when ANOTHER BE shouted, “Oh, give him a dollar, he’s hungry!” The neighbor, not liking being lied to, declined the offer.

I have no solution to the problem unless people start returning bottles at a much greater rate, rendering the garbage picking behavior unprofitable. I mostly favor the expansion of the Bottle Law to include other containers. I figure that the BEs will merely have to make fewer stops before their carts are full. At the same time, it’s really annoying when your recycles are rifled through so that containers are all over the lawn and the city fails to collect what you put out.

I guess this is meant by “The joys of urban life.”

WWOD?