Albany Archives - Page 16 of 17 - Ramblin' with Roger

Running for Office QUESTIONS

For some reason, the city of Albany holds its school board vote in November, rather than in May, when most other locations do. In fact, the school BUDGET IS voted upon in May, along with the library board and the library budget.

Anyway, someone called me up a few months ago and asked me if I wanted to run for school board. Last year, someone I knew told me that “people” were discussing having me run, but I never got a call. This year, I got a call from a local official who I knew before he was elected to his office. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

It’s not that it’s an unpaid position that takes a lot of time. It’s more that school boards are handcuffed by No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top. Moreover, in the city Albany, the nine or ten charter schools, which are far less transparent financially than they ought to be, are paid for out of the school budget. In other words, I don’t know how to make the situation better, or even maintain the status quo.

A few years ago, I was also asked to run for the library board; THAT position I thought about for a while before declining for time reasons. Someday, I might run for that.

1. Have you ever thought of running for political office?
2. Have people requested that you run?
3. Have you run? For what office(s)?
4. Have you served in elected office?

I was in student government in high school, college, and grad school, but it’ll be a while before I try again.

There were more than a half dozen countywide positions for which there was no opposition candidate, only the Democrat. That is distressing, but I’m still not running.

R is for Recycling

It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade the system, but for alleviating my guilt at throwing away a yogurt cup, it was worth every penny.

When we were away this past summer, we had our mail held. And I swear that my favorite item that I saw once we retrieved it was a flier from the city of Albany about its new recycling policy. No longer did the city only take plastic items with the #1 or #2 in the triangle; it’s now taking #1-7!

This was hugely important for us, as we are very active recyclers. So those yogurt and cottage cheese containers, which tend to be #5 or #6, we just hated to throw out.

My wife would sometimes put leftovers in them, but unless they were well-labeled, I’d mistake them for their original packaging info until it was too late. Some were saved for school arts and crafts, but there are just so many craft projects one can do. It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade the system, according to the newspaper story at the time, but for alleviating my guilt at throwing away a yogurt cup, it was worth every penny.

I hate going to the returnable center at the local supermarket. A lot of recyclable, but not returnable, items that people bring end up in the trash. I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of people around here just don’t spend the few minutes to separate out the recyclables and it makes me…peevish.

One element of the new city regulations that I ignore is the “Single Stream Curbside Recycling Collection”. I still segregate my paper products from the bottles and cans because of the bottle entrepreneurs who rifle through the recycling bins. I figure when they open up the green bin and see that’s it’s all paper and cardboard, they’ll leave it alone, and only go through the blue bin that has the recyclable – but not returnable – bottles and cans.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

P is for Pinksterfest

This coming weekend, Albany, NY is having its 63rd Annual Albany Tulip Festival. It will be held in historic Washington Park. “The tradition stems from when Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd got a city ordinance passed declaring the tulip as Albany’s official flower on July 1, 1948. In addition, he sent a request to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to name a variety as Albany’s tulip…She picked the variety ‘Orange Wonder’…”

The event kicks off on Friday with a special musical program on City Hall’s historic 49-bell carillon at 11:30 a.m. Then at noon, there will be “the traditional Dutch practice of scrubbing the streets,” which frankly still fascinates me. Saturday features the coronation of the Tulip Queen, plus performers and vendors on both Saturday and Sunday. The whole schedule is here. The greatest challenge involves getting the majority of the bulbs to be in bloom that weekend, not too early or too late, despite unpredictable weather. The strategy in recent years has been to plant different types of tulips with varying blooming times.

At the same time, the term “pinksterfest” has ALSO used for the weekend, more or less synonymously, but not quite. So I needed to track this down.

From Wikipedia: “Pinkster is a spring festival, taking place in late May or early June. The name is a variation of the Dutch word Pinksteren, meaning ‘Pentecost'”

More useful, though, was THIS article by Matthew Shaughnessy from 2010: “…by the 19th century, it was the most important holiday of African-American slaves who lived in Dutch settlements from the Hudson Valley down to New York City…In Albany, during the week preceding Pinkster, slaves, and servants—both of African and European ancestries—gathered to set up camp, sing, and play music through the use of a large, skin-covered drum on Pinkster Hill. Individual encampments or ‘airy cottages’ were constructed by weaving branches and shrubs through a series of stakes that were vertically implanted into the ground covering the hill. Just upon celebration, the camps were stocked with beer and liquor as well as an assortment of food, including fruits and cakes.

“The annual celebration began on the morning of the Monday following…Pentecost…While the majority of the Dutch population attended early mass, African-American slaves and Euro-American servants would congregate on the hill by the ‘thousands’ and await the arrival of the Pinkster King, who was referred to as ‘King Charles.’ By all accounts, King Charles was an elderly member of the slave community, perhaps a patriarchal figure of some sort.”

The article goes into some detail about the goings-on.

Again from Wikipedia: “Sometime between 1811 and 1813 despite or perhaps because of its popularity, the city of Albany, New York passed a city ordinance banning the drinking and dancing associated with Pinkster. Whites were concerned that the congregation and socialization of large groups of African Americans could provide them with the opportunity to plot or plan a revolution. Some historians believe the council wanted to eliminate Pinkster because it didn’t appeal to the burgeoning middle class, pointing to the fact that the law was eventually overturned, which would contradict the motivation of preventing uprisings.”

Shaughnessy: “For one week a year, the strictures of everyday society were relaxed. Work was momentarily forgotten. Those at the bottom of the society, namely slaves and servants but also women and children, reversed the existent social hierarchy. For the remainder of the week, slaves and servants engaged in a variety of sports and increasingly commercialized forms of entertainment, which, according to a later account published in 1867, were exceedingly popular among white children. There were exhibitions of exotic animals, circus-riding, clowns, and the apparent highlight of the festival: the ‘Toto.’ While the Toto was a dance performed exclusively in the West African tradition of loud drumming and singing, its hybrid during Pinkster combined European and African steps. In addition, slaves sold herbs, roots, and shellfish in carts decorated with flowers, especially [Pentecost] azaleas…” At some point during the run of the Tulip Festival, the Pinksterfest name was absorbed.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

V is for Victor and Voice

I wonder if she knew about REAL kitsch, and a REALLY big dog.

The story of Nipper is rather interesting, involving struggling artist Francis Barraud, and his by-then deceased dog, which had previously belonged to his brother. The painting was originally called “Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph”; only later would it be dubbed “His Master’s VOICE”. Through a series of transactions, as described here, Nipper became the trademark of the VICTOR Talking Machine Company. The original 1900 trademark is shown below.

Ultimately, the logo was on a wealth of RCA Victor records. RCA Victor put out an 80th anniversary series of albums in 1997. The earliest album represented a period when “Victor was the leading jazz label.” But I associate RCA V with classical music, often played by the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra. RCA Victor was always a technological pioneer, experimenting with 33 1/3 RPM as far back as 1934, and introducing the 45 RPM in 1949.

When a Long Island photographer recently described a local Nipper as “a big kitschy dog”, I wonder if she knew about REAL kitsch and a REALLY big dog:

From Wikipedia: “A huge, four-ton Nipper can be seen on the roof of the old RTA (former RCA distributor) building on Broadway in Albany, New York.” It is likely the largest extant Nipper in the world, though the Baltimore Nipper DOES include “a gramophone for Nipper to listen to.” More details about Albany’s Nipper, a local landmark that I see every weekday on my way to work, can be found here.

Local musician Greg Haymes, a/k/a Sarge Blotto from the legendary Albany band Blotto, has a blog with Sara Ayers called Nippertown, where they run down the current happenings in and around New York State’s capital city. And guess what appears in the logo?

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

30-Day Challenge: Day 27-A Picture Of Where You’re From

This was an arcane piece of information my late father once noted that I found inexplicably interesting.

A picture? I did a whole blogpost about my hometown of Binghamton, NY last year, and much more recently, a partial blogpost about Albany, NY, where I’ve been the last 30 years.

Well, all right:

When I was growing up, this was the post office in Binghamton. Now it’s the federal building.

Perhaps slightly before my time: it’s the house of the first Dutch governors, who resided in Albany.

This was an arcane piece of information my late father once noted that I found inexplicably interesting. Binghamton, NY is about in the middle of the state, east to west, but lies very close to the northern border of another state, Pennsylvania. To get to the state capital, Albany, you have to travel about 150 miles to the northeast (more like 140, but whatever).

Charlotte, NC, where my parents moved in 1974, and where I lived briefly in 1977, is about in the middle of the state, east to west, but lies very close to the northern border of another state, South Carolina. To get to the state capital, Raleigh, you have to travel about 150 miles to the northeast (more like 175, but close enough).