Albany Archives - Page 2 of 17 - Ramblin' with Roger

Boxing Day 2023

my ever-present past

Boxing Day 2023 was intriguing.

The doorbell rang around 7:30 a.m. It was a guy from the City of Albany’s Department of General Services. He and his colleagues would trim the branches from the trees in the neighborhood. A branch of our neighbor’s tree was leaning heavily on the power lines in front of our house.

Were any of the cars on your side of the street ours? No, our car was across the street. Even though I’m car blind – I don’t recognize vehicles well – I could identify our next-door neighbor’s from an item he placed in front of the car so people were less likely to run into it while parking.

They spent over an hour trimming one tree. It had a lot of problematic branches, and they had to cut them into smaller parts. Then they put those branches in in the mulcher.

I suspect they picked that week to do our street because there is an elementary school on the block, and many teachers park on the street. Too many people grumble about government employees, but I was quite pleased with these.

Book review intro

I stopped at the bank to get cash. I had to wait because a bank employee showed a young woman how to use the ATM.

Then, I took the bus to the Albany Public Library’s Washington Avenue branch to meet the author, Michael Sinclair. He has written a series of 1920s mysteries centered in Albany or Schenectady, NY.

Interestingly, his presentation was much more about Albany’s history, complete with many photos, and less about the books.

My past converges

After the talk, I talked to a reference librarian who’s often at the desk when I’m there on Tuesday afternoons. Michael Sinclair thanked her for some technical assistance, mentioned that he had graduated from UAlbany’s library school in 2003 and that the APL librarian had attended a decade earlier.

I asked her, “When did you graduate?” “1992.” I graduated in 1992. She asked who I knew from there then. I mentioned two future NY SBDC colleagues and my ex-wife. “She was married to this guy who was in the program.” I shook my head and said, “That was ME!”

Okay, so that was weird. Then she said, “And you used to go out with” this woman I dated off-and-on from 1978 to 1983. How did she know THAT? She used to work for said girlfriend at her office at UAlbany, and I would go there occasionally. So the librarian and I used to talk 40 years ago! She said I had a big ‘fro at the time; I didn’t think so, but it was an occasionally scruffy mess.

Altercation

As I’m standing at the reference desk, we hear one person yelling at another. And it got weird. I won’t talk much about it here because no great harm occurred, though it was unsettling to the library staff and me. Oh, and I was wearing a Santa hat at the time. The police arrived after one of the two had departed.

I went home, and then my wife and I went to the movies, which I wrote about separately.

How was YOUR Boxing Day 2023? Mine didn’t involve boxing, but it came close.

CVS plopped a dumpster

Like a bad neighbor…

As you may recall, CVS closed my local store in late September 2023, much to my chagrin.

David Galin, chief of staff to Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan, posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter that the company “shut down an essential business in one of our more diverse neighborhoods, plopped a dumpster in front of two other small businesses just trying to make ends meet, AND decided it to do un-permitted construction on their way out.

“Alas, the City is onto them.”

Joe Bonilla added: “This is how @CVSHealth treats neighborhoods it disinvests in – by plopping a dumpster in front of a coffee shop and a movie theater in Albany! There was a spot in front of its former store, but it chose to locate this in front of two businesses left on the block. Thanks, CVS!”

And if CVS didn’t want it in front of the store because it would have blocked a CDTA bus stop, it could have used the side of the building on South Main, With a permit, of course.

Sunday Stealing: Swapbot redux

Sondheim

Swap-bot For today’s Sunday Stealing, here’s Swapbot redux

What did you do today?

By “today,” I will answer for yesterday since I’ve done nothing consequential today. Or maybe I have. In any case, I washed all of the dishes and vacuumed the first floor. Then my wife and I went out and had dinner with old friends.

2. What are the must-sees in your area?

Discover Albany has a page for this very thing. The Capitol is cool, but I haven’t been there in decades. One of my favorite underappreciated treasures in my county is the Overlook Park with the waterfalls in Cohoes. The Underground Railroad Education Center is cool and will be more so in the next few years. I’ve visited Schuyler Mansion, Thatcher Park, and the USS Slater. My wife and I are members of the Albany Institute of History and Art. I understand that the ‎New York State Museum is getting a needed facelift.

3. What is your favourite quote?

It’s probably from Here and Now: Living in the Spirit by Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Canadian theologian who died in 1996. Here’s a piece of it: “Celebrating a birthday reminds us of the goodness of life, and in this spirit we really need to celebrate people’s birthdays every day, by showing gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, gentleness, and affection.” A longer version I posted on my 60th birthday and probably subsequently.

4. What was the last thing you cooked or ate?

I prepared oatmeal with blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. My regular breakfast.

Grands

5. What is something you learned from your grandparents?

Playing cards. From my paternal grandmother, canasta. From my paternal grandfather, gin rummy.

6. What makes you happy?

Friends, music, learning stuff, leisure

7. What is your best travel memory?

Unexpectedly, we flew first class from Barbados to JFK in NYC from our honeymoon in 1999.

8. What’s the weather like today?

Rain

9. Share an interesting fact that you’ve learned

Almost anything I learned as an adult after college that I feel I should have learned in school. The Red Summer of 1919 and related activities, e.g.

10. What is your favourite book, movie, or band?

I’m going to go with The Temptations. I saw a musical about them called Ain’t Too Proud in May 2023. The group is still going with one original member, Otis Williams.

Poemlike

11. Write your favorite poem or haiku.

I’m sure I don’t have one. So, I decided to think of something by Bob Dylan or Smokey Robinson. But then I saw the book Finishing The Hat by Stephen Sondheim on my bookshelf. I leafed through the table of contents and came across Anyone Can Whistle from 1964. At my previous church, I sang the title song at a cabaret.

Anyone can whistle; that’s what they say-easy.

Anyone can whistle, any old day-easy.

It’s all so simple. Relax, let go, let fly.

So someone tell me, why can’t I?

I can dance a tango, I can read Greek-easy.

I can slay a dragon, any old week-easy.

What’s hard is simple. What’s natural comes hard.

Maybe you could show me how to let go,

Lower my guard, Learn to be free. Maybe if you whistle, Whistle for me.

Here is Patti LuPone singing it.

12. What is a local festival or tradition from your area?

There are several, but my favorite may be the Tulip Festival in May, which I’ve attended at least two dozen times. The Dutch colonized New York before the English took over.

13. What was the best thing you learned in school?

The most interesting fact I learned is that if you add up the digits of a long number and it adds up to be 9, and that number is divisible by 9, the larger number is divisible by 9. For 123,456,789, the digits add up to 45, divisible by 9. When I learned this in 4th grade, it was MASSIVE.

My CVS is closing (1026 Madison Ave)

Removing the cobblestones

My CVS is closing. The store at 1026 Madison Avenue, an anchor of that part of the Pine Hills neighborhood, will soon be defunct. My wife learned this from an employee who told her it would be shuttered on September 26 because of a dangerous structural problem in the basement. It will not reopen. I am bummed.

One of the reasons we moved into the neighborhood is because of its proximity to so many things. My library branch (Pine Hills). My bank. Restaurants, some of which have come and gone.

On the stretch between Main and West Lawrence, my Price Chopper/Market 32 grocery store anchored one end of the block. The Madison Theatre has come, gone, and returned a few times. The next address has been a bookstore and a few coffee shops. My CVS anchored the other end.

In the Times Union story, which came out after I tipped off editor Casey Seiler: “Amy Thibault, a CVS spokeswoman, confirmed the closure date and offered a variety of reasons that led to the decision to shutter the store, including population shifts and a community’s store density…

“The city’s codes department cited the owner late last week for having an unsafe basement due to issues with support columns in the building. The citation, which requires the owner to prepare an engineering report within 10 days, does not affect CVS’ ability to operate its store.” I have my doubts.

Options

To be sure, there are other CVS locations within a mile or two: 885 Central Avenue (0.9 mi), 613 New Scotland Avenue (1 mi), 1170 Western Avenue (1.8 mi), and 16 New Scotland Ave (1.4 mi). Our prescriptions will likely move to one of those. And they are all on a bus route not far from my house.

But it was SO convenient to walk the 0.3 mi to my CVS to purchase my Rx, buy some fruit at the PChop, get some cash from my bank, put $20 on my CDTA bus Navigator card at my library, and maybe pick up some restaurant takeout. “The company has several other pharmacies in the city, but the Madison Avenue location was the sole pharmacy located within the Pine Hills neighborhood boundaries.”

My wife said she was stunned by the news. Sigh. We will deal with it.

Lark Street revitalization

Some local good news. Workers are removing the cobblestones at three intersections of Lark Street, a street near my church, at Hudson, Lancaster, and State.

They were “originally installed two decades ago. Residents long complained that the gaps between the cobblestones were excessive; bike tires (and high heels) got stuck in them. And they’d never been re-grouted since installation. Mayor Kathy Sheehan says one of the first complaints she fielded when she was elected was about the cobblestones.”

I despised them from the very beginning. The cobblestones were also slippery when wet.

Removal of the Philip Schuyler statue

gift from George Hawley

One of the big local stories recently was the removal of the Philip Schuyler statue from the front of Albany City Hall early Saturday morning, June 10.

If you know who Philip Schuyler was, one or more of three things are likely. 1) You are or were from New York State’s Capital District, 2) you are a Revolutionary War buff, and/or 3) you are deeply familiar with the Broadway musical Hamilton.

Schuyler was given the rank of major general on June 19, 1775. “This made him third in command under George Washington and commander of the Northern Department of the Continental Army. But his military prowess was, at best, a mixed bag.

From Wikipedia: “He planned the Continental Army’s 1775 Invasion of Quebec, but poor health forced him to delegate command of the invasion to Richard Montgomery. He prepared the Continental Army’s defense of the 1777 Saratoga campaign.

“When General Arthur St. Clair Stir abandoned Fort Ticonderoga in July, the Congress replaced Schuyler with General Horatio Gates.” Schuyler helped the army from his mansion in Albany by forwarding supplies and encouraging reinforcements northward.

Inquiry

Gates “accused Schuyler of dereliction of duty. In 1778, Schuyler and St. Clair faced a court of inquiry over the loss of Ticonderoga, and both were acquitted. Schuyler resigned from the Continental Army in 1779.”

His second child, Elizabeth, married Alexander Hamilton, the future Secretary of the Treasury, in 1780.

Schuyler served as a New York State Senate member from 1780 to 1784, 1786 to 1790, and 1792 to 1797. He was New York State Surveyor General from 1781 to 1784. “In 1789, he was elected a U.S. Senator from New York to the First United States Congress, serving from July 27, 1789, to March 3, 1791.” He lost his bid for re-election to Aaron Burr but “was selected again to the U.S. Senate and served in the 5th United States Congress from March 4, 1797, until his resignation because of ill health on January 3, 1798.”

He died in 1804, the same year Alexander Hamilton was killed.

Enslaver

The New York Almanack tells more of the story.

“Philip Schuyler and his family, like many New Yorkers in the Colonial and Early Republic years, relied upon the enslavement of men, women, and children of African descent as a basis of their wealth. Enslaved people cleared land, harvested trees, planted and harvested crops, fished, tended livestock, cooked, cleaned, served food and drink, and a myriad of other tasks.

“As Philip Schuyler developed his inheritance starting in the 1760s, he also used enslaved people in his industrial developments, including sawmills, a grist mill, and a linen mill. Between the Saratoga Estate and the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, there were typically 2-3 dozen enslaved people at any one time. Schuyler reported 14 enslaved people at the Saratoga Estate to the first federal census in 1790.”

The statue

A bronze statue by sculptor J. Massey Rhind of Major General Philip Schuyler was erected outside Albany City Hall, dedicated on June 25, 1925. It is “approximately 114 in. tall and has a diameter of 65 in. The statue rests on a marble base which is approximately 87 in. tall and has a diameter of 115 in.” George C. Hawley presented it “in loving memory” of his wife, Theodora M. Hawley.

Interestingly, there was a push to move the statue before. “It has long been criticized for its placement in the middle of a busy intersection. Seventy years ago, a plan to relocate the statue ‘where the public could have a chance to admire, without dangerous jaywalking’ was ‘meeting with favor among influential persons,’ according to a report in the June 1, 1952 Albany Times Union.” This assessment continued to be true until the day it was removed. I never read the inscription because I was too busy ensuring I wasn’t killed by an automobile.

Changes in attitudes

In June 2020, Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan, who is white, first called for its removal “in the wake of reforms following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.” It wasn’t until March 2023 that she announced it would be taken down in weeks.

As it turns out, it was relatively easily moved because it “was not anchored to the plinth, and only gravity has kept it in place.” Fortunately, no one tried to topple the statue. “It likely would have taken as little as a pick-up truck and a strong enough chain or strap placed around the top of the statue to topple it.”

There is a vigorous debate about where the statue should be relocated. One suggestion is “the Schuyler Mansion, located in Albany’s South End. The Mansion, built for Schuyler in 1763, was where he and his wife, Catharine Van Rensselaer, raised eight children.

“Another option, raised by colonial historians, who generally support the statue being moved, is Saratoga National Historical Park. The park, managed by the National Park Service, preserves the site of the Battles of Saratoga, the first significant American military victory of the American Revolutionary War. “

A time capsule!

The removal of the statue revealed a time capsule. “Letters, an atlas, medals, and a 48-star American flag were among the contents. A sealed deed signed by George Hawley… directs the contents be given to the current mayor to placed “‘in the custody of a historical society of the city of Albany which in his best judgement shall be best fitted to use and preserve the same.’”

“’To be placed by him’ — how cute,’” Kathy Sheehan said.

Several people, some of whom I know, believe the removal is “treasonous” and “obliterating Albany’s history.” Nope, I don’t buy it. Ultimately, I’m happy it’s being moved, less for historical reasons and more for the safety of pedestrians and for the sake of the statue itself.