ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 9 of 91

Annual hearts game: birthday tradition

Queen of spades Way back in late 1987, hearts, the card game, was played at the home of WBS in Albany. Somehow, through some alchemy that is difficult to explain, it would take place there four, five, even six nights a week at his home.

There were a group of about a dozen people who showed up in different permutations at his house to participate. Most knew where the spare key was.

Occasionally, it took place even when WBS wasn’t home. Specifically, on May 4, 1988, when he called to schedule a game, but work kept him away until after midnight. So three of us played without him.

His sainted wife was aware of this arrangement, but due to the design of the house, specifically the bedroom, she was not disturbed by the comings and goings of these folks.

I should note that we operated by different rules. Traditionally, a hearts hand is started with a lead of the two of clubs, and as a result, no points could be dropped on the first trick. Online games are designed in that manner.

We decided this was a stupid directive; almost every other card game involves the player to the left of the dealer starting the round, so we did that. This meant the queen of spades could be played on the first trick; it’s worth 13 points, and as in golf, points are bad.

A few years later, WBS and his sainted wife moved out to the country, and the hearts games ended. People started having kids, life got complicated, and that was that.

UNTIL six years ago, when my wife asked what I wanted for my birthday. I said, “I want to invite people over to play hearts.” And it was so. Then we did it the next year, and it became an annual tradition.

Well, except for one year, when my wife said we ought to do it another weekend, because the designated weekend was busy, which was true. As a result, it didn’t happen at all, because EVERY weekend is busy.

This year, as usual, the hearts game is scheduled for the Saturday after my birthday. OGA is always late but brings the lasagna. MPH usually brings baked goods. As some writer noted, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”

For ABC Wednesday

Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY

We were always getting the Greenes’ mail, and vice versa.

Roger.Marcia.Trudy — Roger, Marcia and Trudy Green in the driveway of 5 Gaines St, Binghamton, NY – the fence for 1 Gaines St is to the right

I grew up at 5 Gaines Street in the city of Binghamton, New York in the 1950s and ’60s. It was only a one-block street, yet it was heavily traveled.

Let me describe the odd (south) side of the street when I grew up. At the corner of Front Street was O’Leary’s store. That’s where I would go to buy my father’s Winston cigarettes.

1 Gaines, a gray building, had a couple different families there. The guy at the latter house decided to take down an old tree. My father told the guy that the tree was going to crash into their house. The guy told my dad, essentially, MYOB. My dad was right.

5 Gaines was a small two-family dwelling with green asbestos covering. My parents and I lived upstairs for a time but we moved downstairs before my sister Leslie was born. My father’s parents, McKinley and Agatha, moved upstairs.

11 Gaines was yellow and had a huge lot that included chickens and a pretty large garden. When my sisters and I played in our back yard, our balls, Frisbees, et al inevitably went over the fence and we had to climb it to retrieve our stuff without being caught by their dogs. The Saliby (sp) family lived there. There was a boy named Mike.

13 Gaines was white with green trim and had the Greenes living there. We played with Danny, roughly the age of my younger sister. We were always getting their mail, and vice versa.

We really didn’t see the folks at 15 Gaines. There was a usually abandoned store on the corner of Oak Street.

On the north side, Ryan’s bar was at the corner of Front Street. The factory across the street went through so many owners I no longer remember any specific business. I know my sister Leslie had friends across the street.

Why was the road so busy? Canny’s trucking was on Spring Forest Avenue. The vehicles would turn right on Oak, then left onto Gaines before going left or occasionally right on Front.

I believe some rascally children would hit the trailer part of the vehicles with snowballs each winter. Occasionally, the truck driver would stop, and the kids would scatter.

For ABC Wednesday

F is for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

“The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster.”

The novel Frankenstein was written by English author Mary Shelley when she was but 20 years old. It was published with no author credit on 1 January 1818. Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in 1823.

It is a classic tale. Victor Frankenstein animates a creature. By the end, we’re left to wrestle with the question of whether it’s the man or the creature who is is truly the monster.

The recent bicentennial of Frankenstein might be reason enough to note the book. But it is the many appearances in popular culture that have sustained the story’s popularity.

The first film adaptation of the tale, Frankenstein, was made by Edison Studios in 1910. That short piece has been restored, and you can watch it right here.

“The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry…

“In Great Britain, a long-running series by Hammer Films focused on the character of Dr. Frankenstein (usually played by Peter Cushing) rather than his monster.”

It is these portrayals that have kept Frankenstein in the popular culture. When I was growing up, two sitcoms had characters who had the “look.” Lurch (Ted Cassidy) on The Addams Family (1964-1966) was a standard creature in the Karloff tradition; “You rang?”

Whereas in The Munsters (also 1964-1966), Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) was “the patriarch of a family of kindly monsters. The rest of the family included a grandfather resembling the Universal Dracula…, a wife that resembles ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’, and a werewolf son.”

In 1971, General Mills put out the monster cereals, chocolate-flavored Count Chocula and the strawberry-flavored Franken Berry. “Since 2010, Franken Berry, Boo Berry [first released in 1973], and Count Chocula cereals have been manufactured and sold only for a few months during the autumn/Halloween season in September and October.”

My favorite iteration has to be the movie comedy Young Frankenstein (1974) by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder. Borrowing “heavily from the first three Universal Frankenstein films… Wilder portrays Dr. Frankenstein’s American grandson, Frederick, while Peter Boyle plays the monster.” I literally fell out of my seat with laughter – it WAS an aisle seat – when I first saw this in the cinema.

Dustbury posted this recently: “Disabled Valery Spiridonov, 33, was ready to have his neck severed by Professor Sergio Canavero — dubbed ‘Dr. Frankenstein’ — and his head reattached to a new, healthy body.”

Finally, listen to Frankenstein by the Edgar Winters Group here or here or a long version here. It went to #1 in 1973 on the Billboard charts in the US.

For ABC Wednesday

Disease: flu epidemic of 1918-1919

The flu epidemic spread following the path of its human carriers, along trade routes and shipping lines

flu epidemic. I knew there was a terrible flu epidemic near the end of what we now refer to as World War I. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 struck young people particularly hard, and killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide, including an estimated 675,000 Americans, far more than the war. But what CAUSED what was perhaps the second deadliest disease outbreak in human history?

The EcoHealth Alliance’s Robert Kessler shares some facts:

“In researching his book The Great Influenza, John M. Barry discovered that in January 1918, a doctor in Haskell County, Kansas reported unusual flu activity to the U.S. Public Health Service. By March, that had spread to nearby Fort Riley. On the morning of March 11, an Army private reported symptoms of fever, sore throat, and headache. By lunch that day, more than 100 soldiers on the base had fallen sick.

“At the time, very little was known about viruses and their transmission. In fact, the very first virus – Tobacco mosaic virus – had only been discovered 26 years earlier in 1892.”

Interesting that the recommendations against contracting the flu were slightly different from a century later. “Wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply; do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge.”

Kessler notes: “Diet and exercise are, of course, essential components of our health, but a brisk walk isn’t going to do much when it comes to preventing a virus from hijacking a host’s cells and replicating itself. From Fort Riley, soldiers carried the disease to other American military bases and, eventually, the battlefront in Europe.”

That first wave wasn’t particularly virulent. But, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control: “In September 1918, the second wave of pandemic flu emerged at Camp Devens, a U.S. Army training camp just outside of Boston, and at a naval facility in Boston. This wave was brutal and peaked in the U.S. from September through November. More than 100,000 Americans died during October alone.”

Stanford University notes the awful effects of the flu epidemic worldwide: “It spread following the path of its human carriers, along trade routes and shipping lines. Outbreaks swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific In India the mortality rate was extremely high at around 50 deaths from influenza per 1,000 people. The Great War, with its mass movements of men in armies and aboard ships, probably aided in its rapid diffusion and attack.”

As the CDC notes, “Scientists now know this pandemic was caused by an H1N1 virus, which continued to circulate as a seasonal virus worldwide for the next 38 years.”

For ABC Wednesday

Calendar faux meme – “every 823 years”

The year 2100 is NOT a leap year.

Several people I know IRL, intelligent people, have said they got a text or saw a Facebook message. It reads, e.g. “The month of December 2018 will have 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays, and 5 Mondays. It only happens once every 823 years.”

When I first saw this meme a half decade or more ago, I knew instantly that it had to be untrue. The reason was that, as a kid, I devoured the World Almanac every year.

About a third of the way through was the calendar section, and it indicated that there were only 14 ways a calendar year could be constructed. January 1 starts on one of the seven days; it’s a leap year or it’s not. Seven times two is fourteen.

In a non-leap year, if January 1 is on a Sunday, we had experienced that same pattern in 2006, 2017 and will again in 2023. Calendars repeat. 2018 looks just like 2007; 2029 and 2035 will be carbon copies.

(I’m talking calendar days, not moving holidays such as Easter or Yom Kippur.)

In general, a calendar will repeat every six or eleven years, depending on whether it hits one or two leap years in between. So 2002 is the model for 2013, 2019, 2030, 2041, 2047, et al.

Even leap years repeat, obviously less frequently. The calendars for 1992, 2020 and 2048 are the same.

One way to prove that the specific meme is a myth is to go to Time and Date for “When is Saturday the 1st?” Eliminating the months with less than 31 days:
May 2010; January 2011; October 2011; December 2012; March 2014; August 2015; October 2016; July 2017; December 2018; August 2020.

Basically I look at the perpetual calendar for 1801 to 2100 and see the repeating patterns.

Note, BTW, the year 2100 is NOT a leap year. “Any year evenly divisible by four is a leap year, except centesimal years (years ending in two zeros) which are considered common years and thus have the typical 365 days, unless they are evenly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1600 and 2000 are leap years, while 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 are not.”

For ABC Wednesday