Albany Archives - Page 13 of 17 - Ramblin' with Roger

Proximate disaster

A blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people

When I read about wildfires in San Diego County, California, or flooding in Mecklenberg County (Charlotte), North Carolina, I contact the appropriate sister to check out if she’s being affected. Usually, the answer is no, though one year, a fire was uncomfortably close.

They do the same for me. Flash floods five miles from Albany made the national news, but the actual storm missed me.

I was thinking about this because my friend Karen, who I’ve only known since 1958, has been in Bhutan and Nepal. Cyclone HudHud created some landslides in Nepal. So when we heard that a blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people, her friends, including me, were concerned.

She explained on Facebook(!), where I purloined her picture, that, according to the local paper The Himalayan, “rescue missions are underway on Huinchili,” one of the mountains visible to her on the trek. Fortunately, she went no higher than 7000 feet; she did have to endure hiking uphill for six hours in “incessant raw rain.” But the snow was at much higher elevations, causing the avalanches.

Some guy in Albany riding a bike got shot, apparently in the head, at 9:40 a.m. on Thursday. I found this more than a little unsettling. When I started riding my bike to the choir that evening, I realized that I just didn’t want to be out; totally irrational, I know, but nevertheless true.

Mistakes were made in treating Ebola in the United States. The second nurse who got infected should not have been allowed to fly. I’d bet money, and I seldom do, that at least one of the two US nurses who got infected were exposed when they took off the protective suits.

But all the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, that he, e.g., wanted the disease to come to the US to get back at white people shred both common sense and common decency.

August Rambling: Deep dark secrets

I wrote this blog post about my ambivalence about blogging on the Times Union website.

The Hook-Up Culture Is Getting 20-Somethings Nowhere. On the other hand, Casual Love.

How we get through life every day.

Nixon’s still the one. And What We Lost 40 Years Ago When Nixon Resigned. See Harry Shearer recreate Richard Nixon as he preps and delivers his resignation speech. Plus George Will Confirms Nixon’s Vietnam Treason.

New Zealand’s non-partisan Get Out the Vote campaign. I don’t see such things often in the US. Sure, there’s get our SUPPORTERS to vote, but that’s a different animal.

Deep Dark Fears is “a series of comics exploring those intimate, personal fears that mostly stem from your imagination getting darkly carried away.” Read more about it.

Rod Serling’s closing remarks from The Obsolete Man episode of The Twilight Zone. “It remains profoundly prescient and relevant.”

All these in a 48-hour period: How games’ lazy storytelling uses rape and violence against women as wallpaper and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has come forward with several stories of being called “chubby,” “fat,” and “porky” by her male colleagues in Congress and Fark prohibits misogyny in new addition to moderator guidelines and Snappy response to sexist harasser in the tech field.

Modern Office with Christina Hendricks.

FLOWCHART: Should You Catcall Her?

Guns and The Rule of Intended Consequences.

What our nightly views might look like if planets, instead of our moon, orbited Earth.

Cartoon: Pinocchio, Inc.

Remember when I wrote about flooding in Albany this month? Dan explains the systemic reason WHY it happened.

Arthur makes the case against “the case against time zones.” I’m not feeling the abolition of time zones either, at this point.

Nōtan: Dark and Light principles of Design.

The jungle gym as math tool.

The disaster drafts for professional sports.

The Procrastination Doom Loop—and How to Break It.

One of my favorite movie quotes, maybe because it’s so meta: “That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” (Grand Canyon, 1991)

Seriously, Rebecca Jade, the first niece, is in about four different groups, in a variety of genres. Here’s The Soultones cover band – Promo video. Plus a link to her latest release, Galaxy, with Jaz Williams.

Tosy’s U2, ranked 40-31 and 30-21.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, 2004.

August 22, 1969: The Beatles’ Final Photo Shoot

Coverville 1043: The Elvis Costello Cover Story III, in honor of him turning 60.

4 chairs, 4 women; 4 women, no chairs.

12 billion light-years from the edge. A funny bit!

Don Pardo, R.I.P..

Lauren Bacall: always the life of the party. And cinema icon of Hollywood’s golden age, 1924-2014. A Dustbury recollection.

More Robin Williams: on ‘cowardice’ and compassion. Also, a Dan Meth drawing and Aladdin’s Broadway cast gave a him beautiful tribute. Plus, a meeting of Yarmy’s Army and Ulysses.

Jaquandor remembers little Quinn. Damn middle recording made me cry.

The Wellington Hotel Annex in Albany, N.Y. was… murdered in plain sight in front of hundreds of onlookers. “If I were a building, this is how I’d like to go.” Here’s another view.

SamuraiFrog’s Muppet jamboree: C is for Clodhoppers and D Is for Delbert (who evolved) and E is for Eric the Parrot and F is for a Fraggle and G Is for the Gogolala Jubilee Jugband.

New SCRABBLE words. Word Up has identified some of the new three-letter words.

I SO don’t care: one space or two after the period. Here’s a third choice.

The ultimate word on that “digital natives” crap.

Whatever Happened to the Metric System?

Freedom from fear.

Ever wondered what those books behind the glass doors of the cupboard might be thinking or feeling?

The New Yorker thinks Yankovic is weirdly popular.

Here’s a nice Billy Joel story.

Pop songs as sonnets.

House of Clerks, a parody of House of Cards.

Saturday Night Live Political Secrets Revealed.

This Sergio Aragonés masterpiece is included as a fold-out poster within Inside Mad. His priceless gift to all Mad fans shows over six decades of Mad contributors and ephemera within a mish-mash of Mad office walls. The only thing missing in this beautiful mess is a key. Doug Gilford will be attempting to label everything you see with brief (pop-up) descriptions and links to pertinent pages…

Hello Kitty is not a cat. You may have known that; somehow, I missed it.

You May Have Something Extremely Valuable Hiding In Your Change.

Improved names for everyday things

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

I wrote this blog post about my ambivalence about blogging on the Times Union website. J. Eric Smith, who used to be a TU blogger, responds at length.

SamuraiFrog responds to my response to 16 Habits of Sensitive People. Also, per moi, he does his #1 songs on his birthday: 1987-1996 and 1997-2006, and 2007-2013. I’ll go back to this myself, eventually.

Dustbury on the theme song to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which a passage in Schutte’s Mass resembles more than slightly. He discovers a Singapore McDonalds product.

Jaquandor answers my questions about vices such as swearing and politics/American exceptionalism.

He also writes of buckets and the dumping of the water therein, which Gordon thinks hurts nonprofits. Snopes, BTW, debunks the claim that 73 percent of donations to the ALS Association fund executive salaries and overhead.

Do you know that ABC Wednesday meme I mention with a great amount of regularity? I think this recent introduction I wrote explains it fairly well.

A is for Albany, again

Ken Screven remembers Michael the Archangel

This is less an essay, and more a series of links to bits about Albany, New York’s past and present.

I just realized, though, that I’ve now lived in Albany, capital of the Empire State, for 35 years now. At least thirteen addresses, staying at the current one for the past 14 years.

The area’s airport has a great set of letters, ALB. Do you know how newspeople identify a state or country by its capital? “Moscow is thinking… Washington reacts…” People say that about our historically inept – though a little more ept in recent years – state government. “What’s wrong with Albany?” They MEAN the state; guess that’s the curse of living in the capital city.

Not that Albany itself doesn’t have its quirks. The current mayor is Kathy Sheehan, the city’s first woman mayor in its over 325-year history. The guy before her served 20 years; two guys before him, 41.
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Here’s a 17-minute video about the creation of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a controversial project which meant dozens of houses and other buildings being razed. Then-governor Nelson Rockefeller, as the joke goes, developed an edifice complex.

This story puts the locally-familiar anecdote about the ESP in a somewhat different light:

It concerns a diplomatic visit to Albany from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, during Rockefeller’s first year in office, and the new Governor’s embarrassment and chagrin when she rode in his limo through the “Pastures”, and witnessed the seediness of the neighborhood around the Mansion– this was the moment, it is alleged, that Rockefeller resolved to build something monumental, fitting the grandeur of his administration, so that foreign dignitaries could pay calls without having to see the slime and grime of a typical Northeastern city. The story may contain a grain of truth–and the visit was certainly real–but it also seems clear that Rockefeller even before his swearing-in, had begun… to think about fixing up the deteriorating neighborhood where he’d be spending the next few years

Andy Arthur ponders what would have happened to downtown If Not For the Empire Plaza.
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Former news reporter Ken Screven remembers Michael the Archangel, a legendary Albany street person of about four decades until he died in 2002. Someone made an eight-minute film about him.

I’d see Michael, dubbed the Archangel by a local judge, on Lark Street often, especially in Trinity United Methodist Church in the 1990s. My girlfriend at the time (now The Wife) was a tad afraid of him, and understandably so, but I usually got along with him. When I saw him with a legitimate job at the flower shop in the aforementioned Empire State Plaza, I was floored. But the gig, to no one’s surprise, didn’t last long.

There will likely be a casino in the area – for me personally, a big yuck – but Albany’s Exit 23 is now out of the running. Dan thinks that’s a good thing.

Crossing the street in Albany is difficult. Fundamentally true.

Albany, in an alternate future. A comprehensive plan for redeveloping the city of Albany — as proposed in 1963. As Albany Archives commented: “A convention center on Elk St, housing at Jennings Landing, ‘The Washington Park Arterial’… it’s so scary! Here’s the takeaway quote: ‘By 1980, the central area of Albany, like cities all over the United States, will be almost completely rebuilt.'”

Amy Biancolli feels a lullaby.
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When Sir Mix-a-Lot rapped “Baby Got Back” with the Seattle Symphony, David Alan Miller, conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, was in the house.

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

Home Repair Workcamp coming to Albany in June

Since 1977, over a quarter of a million youth have participated in this program providing more than 6 million hours of volunteer service around the country.

Picture purloined from nationalservice.gov

There will be an Albany Home Repair Group Workcamp, June 29th to July 5th, 2014. This week-long junior and senior high work camp is co-sponsored by the City of Albany and the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, in conjunction with Group Cares Mission Trips. The participants will be housed at Myers Middle School. Participants gather together for large group meetings, eat in the cafeteria, and sleep on classroom floors.

The average camp size is 300-400 students from around the country, along with adult chaperones and Group staff members. Student volunteers work under the supervision of an adult with construction experience. These adults are supported by others with additional knowledge and construction skills.

There will be approximately 65 individual projects worked on this week, including painting, and the construction or repair of wheelchair ramps, porches, and porch stairs. This will be done at no cost to homeowners or occupants. The homes being repaired have been identified by agencies that work directly with the city of Albany, plus neighborhood organizations and churches. Materials are being donated.

Construction sites and families are visited several times in preparation for the Workcamp. Descriptions of the requested work are recorded and signed-off on prior to the arrival of the volunteers. Building materials will be delivered to all sites prior to the beginning of the week.

Homeowners or residents are expected to be on the property during each day of the construction week; family members or close friends may take their place, though, if needed. Because of the possibility that not all volunteers who register will come, there can be no guarantees that every approved job can be done. However, all jobs that are begun will be finished.

Since 1977, over a quarter of a million youth have participated in this program providing more than 6 million hours of volunteer service around the country. Group Cares, formerly Group Workcamps Foundation, a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization, works together with many types of partners to cosponsor volunteer service projects providing minor home repairs for elderly, disabled, or low-income residents.

Participants pay a registration fee, which covers the cost of food, lodging, programming, insurance, and a portion of the project materials. All participants are matched within a small crew that typically consists of one adult and five youth. Youth groups are split up to work with participants from other groups providing them with the opportunity to make new friends from across the nation.

Not only do the young people get to assist the elderly, disabled, and low-income families with home-repair projects they cannot manage themselves, they support local agencies with their backlog of home-repair and weatherization projects. At the same time, the students receive a cross-cultural service experience for young people, helping them to grow in their Christian faith through service.

The youth of First Presbyterian Church of Albany have participated in similar activities in past summers, traveling to other cities to do home and building repairs. First Presbyterian Church of Albany is located on the corner of State and Willett Streets. The Pastors are Glenn and Miriam Leupold.

The Bible-minded Capital district

The concept of the Bible’s “accuracy” is a rather muddled notion to me.

There have been a couple of polls recently that suggest that the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY area is more godless or less godly, than most parts of the country if you read the headlines:

These Are The Most Godless Cities In America. The subtitle reads: “A new survey ranks U.S. cities in terms of ‘bible-mindedness'”By ‘bible-mindedness’, the study means “a combination of how often respondents read the Bible and how accurate they think the Bible is.” As bible-minded, we’re #99, or second from the bottom.

The TIME poll seems too simplistic. I’ve read the Bible over time, though not as often recently as some think I ought to. But the concept of the Bible’s “accuracy” is a rather muddled notion to me. If it’s that it’s “true”, that there are fundamental truths to be found therein, I tend to believe that. If the question is whether it is literally, six days from ignition to humans, historically accurate, then I’d suggest that it was never meant to be regarded that way.

I submit that that the press seems to see religion as an either/or. EITHER one believes that every single word of the Bible was handed down by God as history and theology (a tricky thing, that) OR one is an atheist, who would hate God if he or she believed god existed. And press coverage of the so-called evangelical movement, especially by ABC News, seemed to solidify this simplistic duality.

I submit that there’s a great middle who find inspiration in some parts of the Bible, who believe that other sections were meant for a different, earlier audience and that that’s OK.

Seen another way, in a different poll by Barna, the Capital District is #1 in Post-Christian Metrics .

The Barna scale was more interesting:

1. do not believe in God
2. identify as atheist or agnostic
3. disagree that faith is important in their lives
4. have not prayed to God (in the last year)
5. have never made a commitment to Jesus
6. disagree the Bible is accurate
7. have not donated money to a church (in the last year)
8. have not attended a Christian church (in the last year)
9. agree that Jesus committed sins
10. do not feel a responsibility to “share their faith”
11. have not read the Bible (in the last week)
12. have not volunteered at church (in the last week)
13. have not attended Sunday school (in the last week)
14. have not attended a religious small group (in the last week)
15. do not participate in a house church (in the last year)

#6 is as problematic for me as it was in the TIME poll. #10 I feel that the way I live my life is sharing my faith, so wouldn’t know how to answer that one. I don’t attend Sunday school because it clashes with the church choir.

Bottom line: I reject the notion that if one does not take the Bible literally, one is godless, whatever THAT means. But, at some fundamental level, I appreciate the glee our high (or low) ranking has generated; I DO get it.