Albany Institute of History and Art Archives

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.

The theater and other diversions

Some Like It Hot; Hadestown; Gordon Parks

While filling out one of those quizzes, I realized I must be missing some other diversions. I’m not watching much television. The movies I see (primarily) get reviewed here. So what else have I been doing?

My wife and I went to the Albany Institute of History and Art and saw “Gordon Park: I, too, am America” in early February, just before the exhibit closed. I loved his work, which I remember from the pages of LIFE magazines in the 1960s. He exposed the disparity of American life with his camera. A reviewer called the installation “incomplete but still rewarding.” The description of the works in one medium-sized room and a tiny annex seems accurate.

I realized that I related to Parks as a singular figure, the only black photographer I knew of, just as Arthur Ashe was the sole black male tennis player in my awareness.

Theater

My wife and I have season tickets to musicals at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. The first one scheduled was Aladdin in October 2022. Unfortunately, that was the timeframe when my spouse was experiencing her leg injury.

I could have gotten the money credited to our theater account, but at that late date, Proctors wouldn’t fill those seats. Instead, I posted my issue on Facebook; I got a taker – a guy and his very enthusiastic mom – and our digital tickets could be used, which made me happy.

Thus, the first show we saw was Hairspray in January. I’d seen the original 1988 movie, written and directed by John Waters. The iteration we saw was more moving than a previous production I had seen, especially when Motormouth sings I Know Where I’ve Been.

The best part of going to a Thursday matinee at Proctors is that a few actors will come to a smaller theater and talk to the audience. They told their stories of putting on a production in the midst of COVID. One performer was cast two years earlier, while another auditioned online on a Thursday in Mississippi and was in NYC the following Monday. That first rehearsal involved practicing the exhausting finale. You Can’t Stop The Beat.

Hell, you say

In March, we saw Hadestown. The Tony winner still plays on Broadway but also has a touring show. The musical by Anaïs Mitchell tells a variation of an ancient Greek myth about Eurydice, a young woman desperate for something to eat. She ends up in “a hellish industrial version of the underworld. Her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to attempt to rescue her.” The tour will continue through May of 2024. Well worth your time.

My wife and I saw Rent at UAlbany in March; some great performances. Ditto Sister Act at the newly refurbished Albany High School, where our daughter, home from college, joined us. Some difficulties with the sound marred both shows.

Norma Jeane

My wife and I also saw the movie Some Like It Hot (1959) at the Spectrum in Albany. While I had seen a movie ABOUT Marilyn Monroe, this was the first film I saw that she starred in.

The movie was very good. Indeed, it has been “voted one of the best films ever made in polls by the BBC, the American Film Institute, and Sight & Sound.”

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play two musicians on the run from the Chicago mob in 1929 who dress up as women and join an all-female band heading to Miami. Marilyn as Sugar Kane is more than another “dumb blonde,” even though the band’s singer describes herself that way.

I had heard about her clashes with director/producer/co-writer Billy Wilder, with her demanding many retakes. Ultimately, Wilder acknowledged: “Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set and not know her lines and yet give the performance she did!” She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress.

My wife and I thought that the lighting made Marilyn seem to be topless in a couple of nightclub scenes, though she was wearing clothing.

There is a bit of mob violence in Some Like It Hot. But fortunately, it wasn’t like seeing a Scorcese or Coppola film.

Also, I imagine that they should ban the movie in Kentucky. Lemmon and Curtis are in drag. And Joe E. Brown’s famous last line just nails that down.

Dear diary, my short summer staycation

I’ve come to the conclusion that people dis blogging, even when they don’t read blogs, because they believe it’s just a bunch of personal entries, as though it were some sort of public diary. While, I’ve usually attempted to give you a much more diverse and eclectic record, every once in a while, I need a journal entry, if only for ME to keep track of my activities six or sixteen months from now.

July 23: After work, I met The Wife and The Daughter at Albany’s Washington Park at for a free Park Playhouse presentation of the musical Singin’ in the Rain. The family didn’t get there until close to 6 p.m. for a 7:30 performance, and that’s too late. We found probably the last seats in the amphitheater, in the last row, far to the right, with some obstruction from one of the light poles. This was the antepenultimate performance, and it had reviewed well.

That said, the performance of the musical was quite fine. Great singing and dancing, even though only the guy playing Donald (the Gene Kelly role in the movie) was an Equity union actor. And, as advertised, there was actual singing, in the controlled “rain.” BTW, in case of real rain, the show might be postponed or even canceled. My friend Susan, who plays the oboe in the orchestra, and who the Daughter and I happened across at intermission, said only one show was canceled, though a couple were delayed over the four-week run.

The problem is that, because the stage gets wet, and has to get mopped up during the break, there’s not much story left afterward; a small complaint.

July 24: I took a day off from work, and we headed for the Albany Institute of History and Art. The baseball exhibit was also on its antepenultimate day on display. While the info on the major league teams was interesting, I was most intrigued by the local history. It showed the Capital District from our now-defunct minor league Yankees showcasing future stars such as Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams to the Albany Senators playing an exhibition game against Babe Ruth to the 1880s team in Troy that was a precursor to the San Francisco Giants.

After lunch, we went to the New York State Museum. There was an exhibit of art from students from the 64 education campuses comprising the State University of New York. There was also a fine display of photos and tools of the Shaker communities, several of which were around the area back in the religious organization’s heyday.

July 25: The folks putting on Park Playhouse had also produced a two-day run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, with child and teen actors, at Albany’s Palace Theatre. This is the iteration in which Cinderella was played at various times by Julie Andrews, Lesley Ann Warren, and Brandy. I love this show, and this version was quite good, especially the title actress and the girl playing the herald.

However, because it was for free, and was presumably kid-friendly, parents brought their infants and toddlers, who couldn’t be still, or QUIET, for a 55-minute presentation, so it was occasionally difficult to hear. Outdoors, the noise may have been more diffused. Indoors, in the 2800-seat theater, at least 2/3s full, it was amplified.

July 26: I’ve previously touted the amazing work that happens on the very small stage of the Mac-Haydn Theatre, in Chatham, 45 minutes from Albany, where the entrances and exits become part of the set. My love for West Side Story is even more well established. This combination did not disappoint, from the very athletic mixing between the Sharks and the Jets, to the fine use of space to show Maria’s balcony.

The Wife thought the guy playing Tony was too pretty, though I disagreed. The problem with theater in the round, though, is that it may take a few seconds to find the highlighted action, such as when Maria and Tony first meet, and Tony is, for us, briefly obscured by the crowd at the dance.

What particularly worked for me was the Somewhere dance. Often a ballet that stops the action, it was quite effective with, e.g., “Anybodies”, the “tomboy” Jet dancing with Bernardo, the now slain Shark leader. Hey, maybe there IS “a place for us.”

And to nail that down, as we found our way to our car, we saw the actors playing Tony and Bernardo get in their vehicle and drive away together.

98 Acres in Albany

David Hochfelder, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of History at UAlbany, is working on a research project titled “98 Acres in Albany”. Your help is requested.

The research team would appreciate any help you could give in connecting with people whose lives were affected by the demolition of the area and subsequent construction of the South Mall.

The goal of this project is to build a website that will reproduce the lost streetscape based on photos held at the Albany Institute of History and Art and the NYS Archives that document almost all of the 1,200 buildings demolished as well as map the demographic and public health trends in the 98-acre area and surrounding neighborhoods.

The research team has an advance book contract with SUNY Press to publish a companion volume of photo-essays. First drafts of those essays are on this WordPress blog.

The research team’s social media outreach is here:
Twitter
Facebook

Please reach out to Dr. Hochfelder and his research team if you have relevant stories to share. Please pass word on to others you know who may have stories to share.

Thank you for helping to document and preserve the voices of those who lived in the 98 acres of Albany that are now consumed by the South Mall. Help keep history alive!

K is for Killing

The current debate over gun violence likely will not be ended so easily.

My church, First Presbyterian Church in Albany, NY, is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. The church donated some artifacts to the Albany Institute of History & Art, itself founded in 1791. The Institute has an exhibit, ongoing through April 17, showing some of the church history over the years.

Some of the church members included John Jay, eventually the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury; and Aaron Burr, third Vice-President of United States, and the first NOT to go on to become President.

After Burr killed Hamilton in a duel in 1804, the pastor Eliphalet Nott delivered a jeremiad against dueling. As it was a particularly long and significant sermon, it was published by the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany. (I listened to the re-enacted speech a few years ago.) Eliphalet Nott had the remarkable effect of, almost singlehandedly, effectively ending what had been considered an “honorable” way for gentlemen to settle their differences.

The current debate over gun violence likely will not be ended so easily. The solutions seem to be fewer guns on one side, more guns on the other. The latter group clings to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The notion of a militia, to me, seems to be a state-run National Guard.

In any case, here’s a list of murders with firearms (most recent) by country. And here are twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States. Nothing here, I suspect, will change anyone’s mind about the next steps to take. No Eliphalet Nott sermon will save the day anymore.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12