Binghamton Archives - Page 8 of 13

March rambling #1: Platypus Controlling Me

The Toxic Attraction Between An Empath And A Narcissist

What Is Your Name? Where Are We? Who Is President? Oh God

Trump(Doesn’t)Care cartoon

Poor People Need BETTER Health Insurance than the Rest of Us, Not Worse

The lessons we fail to learn: Warren G. Harding

American ‘Christianity’ Has Failed and I don’t want to preach a faith that can be so easily adapted to self-hatred and self-harm

How the baby boomers destroyed everything

The 1862 Binghamton (NY) Race Riot – something I did not know about my hometown

After Slavery, Searching For Loved Ones In Wanted Ads

Coins of the Rebellion: The Civil War currency of Albany merchants

Jobs, Income, and the Future

A brief history of men getting credit for women’s accomplishments

The Weight of The Last Straw

7 Lies About Welfare That Many People Believe Are Fact

Albany, NY Plane Crashes Into Houses On Landing Attempt, March 1972

Contractor sues for $2 million in unpaid bills on Drumpf’s D.C. hotel

Kellyanne Conway’s interview tricks, explained, and her boss’s 10 steps for turning lies into half-truths

A college course on calling out scientific crap

The adult children of him will ditch Secret Service protection once he leaves office

Sen. Gillibrand Has Perfect Response To Regime Misspelling Her Name

‘Where I come from’ we claim universal generalities as our peculiar virtues

Some ‘snowflakes’ can take the heat

The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity, it’s loneliness

About Robert Osborne

Amy Biancolli: woman walks into a sandwich shop

The Toxic Attraction Between An Empath And A Narcissist

You May Want to Marry My Husband

This 75-Year Harvard Study Found the 1 Secret to Leading a Fulfilling Life

David Kalish: I am my dog’s seeing-eye person

Coke: Global ad campaign celebrates inclusion and diversity

Alphabetizing Books

Ruben Bolling won the 2017 Herblock Prize

Now I Know: The Boy Who Captured the Wind and How to Claim Antarctica and The Park at the Bottom of the Lake

MEET APRIL THE GIRAFFE, formerly from Catskill Game Farm!

Sammy Davis Jr. Oscar blunder

Cush Jumbo

Lawyer’s Pants Catch Fire During Closing Argument

Garter snakes can be super deadly

Music

Divenire – Composer Ludovico Einaudi

There’s a Platypus Controlling Me (from Phineus and Ferb)

What are the songs that best capture our moment?

K-Chuck Radio: A dose of Northern Soul

Don’t Let Me Down – The Beatles

10 Beatles Covers You Really Need to Hear

Songs about the moon

The First Ward of Binghamton

My maternal grandmother is buried in the northeast corner of Spring Forest Cemetery, less than two blocks from the house she grew up in.

I went to the Olin family reunion last month. I told my sisters, who are in California and North Carolina, that I was going to our hometown of Binghamton, NY. But, for reasons of time, that proved not to really be the case. I went THROUGH Binghamton, on Route 17, heading west to Endicott, as represented in the northern portion of this map, right past my stomping grounds in the First Ward.

When I was growing up, there were houses where that highway is now located. They razed dozens of homes to build a road that would make getting to somewhere else much easier. This broke my heart.

The vast majority of my growing up is represented in this graphic. This is approximately the eastern half of what was known as the city’s First Ward. See Route 11 to the right (east) of the map? That’s Front Street, and there’s a one-block stretch off it, Gaines Street, where I used to live.

In fact, one of my sisters found this video of 5 Gaines Street, the house I grew up in, posted in 2014. When WE lived there back in the 1960s, it was green, rough material that was probably made of asbestos on the exterior. Though I spent 18 years there, none of the interior structure looks familiar, though the backyard does.

Every weekday, I’d walk from Gaines Street to Oak, Lydia, Murray, Meadow, Mygatt to Dickinson Street – I loved the zigzag – to that circle near the southwest corner of this map, on Starr Avenue and Dickinson. That’s where my school, Daniel S. Dickinson, used to be. I attended there from K to 9. They razed it a few years later.

My maternal grandmother lived on Maple Street, off Prospect Street, so we’d go to her house, via Mygatt Street, at lunchtime, and, when we were younger, after school. That building’s gone, too.

Philadelphia Sales was on Clinton Street, but we almost always entered from the Dickinson Street side, through the parking lot. That was the basement entrance where the best popcorn ever was located, or so we thought at the time. It’s also where we bought our records, 45s mostly. That story now defunct.

I often took a circuitous route home. There was a candy store on Mygatt Street between Dickinson and Clinton that had that red shoestring licorice I loved. Friend Bill lived across the street. Heading north on Mygatt Street, we’d say goodbye to Lois near Meadow, and Karen near Spring Forest Avenue. Walking east on Cypress Street, I’d say adieu to Carol, and then cut through Ray’s property through Canny’s trucking, then back home.

We played at Valley Street Park, just north of our house. I tried to learn to play piano at Mrs. Hamlin’s house on Elm Street, between Everett and Mygatt.

The Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church used to be downtown, but when the block was torn down to build a playground, the congregation moved to a building at the corner of Oak and Lydia. That’s still there.

That massive expanse of greenery to the northwest is Spring Forest Cemetery. My friends and I would cut through it to play baseball at Ansco field on the other side. My maternal grandmother and her sister Deana are buried in the northeast corner of the cemetery, less than two blocks from the house they, and my mother grew up in.

My newspaper route started at Clinton and Oak, at the barbershop I used to go to, and went one block east, comprising a chunk of Front Street, including a long-gone apartment complex known as the Dwight Block, a nice little street called McDonald Avenue by the river, and a chunk of Front Street towards my house.

The First Ward, or The Ward, as we referred to it, was always a bastion of immigrants. A lot of Slavic folks, even now. But according to the 2010 Census, there are now Arabs, who weren’t there in 1970.

It’s been a rundown part of town for a while. But the city is trying. They’ve taken down the behemoth that was the Magic Ice building, formerly Cutler Ice in my time. Half a block from my old home, there will be new homes. The First Ward is a Brownfield Opportunity Area

Maybe next time I go to what they now call Greater Binghamton, I’ll actually GO to BINGHAMTON, see the old homestead, visit the graves.

Special thanks to Arthur@AmeriNZ, who manipulated the BOA map.

That reminded me of

I worked in that library as a page for seven months in 1969.

I saw on my friend Lynne Jackson’s Facebook page on the Saturday morning of Albany’s annual tradition, the Tulip Festival, that there would be a booth where one could “Ask A Muslim” a question.

When the family finally got there, the family got to meet Nafisa and Fazana (pictured with that hatted Lynne). They were gracious and intelligent and wonderfully open. It was a wonderful idea, though I told them I thought it was quite brave.

Fazana wrote on her Facebook page “I talked to a non-Muslim gentleman who had just finished reading the English translation of the Quran and was pleased to report that nowhere in it did it say that Muslims should kill Christians. Needless to say, I wanted to recruit him to talk to others on behalf of Muslims because we are constantly trying to convince others to believe this fact!”

That reminded me of:

When my sister Leslie and I went to High school in Binghamton, NY, we were asked by the music teacher at suburban Vestal Junior High School, Mr. Fitzroy Stewart, on the one black teacher in the district, to talk with his all-white students about being a black teenager.

Words

A terrestrial friend wrote about teaching:

It was an undergrad… who made the following observation about the linguistic style of the novel Home Boy by Naqvi and its immigrant/migrant characters.

“Why does this character always use such big words? I mean, ‘heterodox pedagogy’? ‘epistemological dead end’? Give me a break. It’s almost like he NEEDS to do that to prove he’s smart to American readers, because he’s an immigrant.”
And I looked at her with these anime-style star-struck eyes.

TRUTH.

If you’ve been casually “taught” the meaning of a vocabulary word from a Dr. Seuss book by someone you can’t possibly get mad at because you know how well-meaning they are, you too might find yourself in need of pursuing some heterodox pedagogy of the epistemological dead-end of big fat multi-syllabic words.

That reminded me of:

Living in Charlotte, NC, in the flea market, for only 4 months back in 1977, I became acutely aware of using multi-syllabic, but very common words, such as “acutely”. It seemed to them that I was putting on airs, but it was just the way I always spoke!

Stalking?

Arthur wrote about following a guy following a woman he felt was a bit creepy. I’d admitted to having done so a few times myself, usually in the evening.

That reminded me of:

Participating in the recent CROP walk against hunger on May 1. I hadn’t actually signed up but The Wife and the Daughter, and her Young Friend – daughter of a friend of ours, and a Classmate of The Daughter’s all had registered. I was on my bike, trying to keep up with the girls. Over time though, The Daughter and the Young Friend got separated from The Classmate. I’d slow down when I could see both sets, but speed up when I could not see the pair.

Some guy on the route asked me if I were with the walkers, and I explained the situation. He was checking ME out, directly. And that was OK by me.

Binghamton (NY) Public Library

One of the local Binghamton media outlets received a tour of Binghamton’s Carnegie library, built in 1904, but abandoned for a decade and a half. The local community college has plans to turn it into “a culinary and events planning center.”

That reminded me of:

I worked in that library as a page for seven months in 1969, retrieving old magazines from the closed stacks, reshelving books, and assisting people with the microfilm machines. Becccye Fawcett was perhaps the first black librarian in the city, and we attended the same church, Trinity AME Zion at Oak and Lydia Streets.

November rambling #1: Rebecca Jade’s new video, and Confessions Of An Idiom

What happens if the Elephant in the Room decides to make the Skeleton in the Closet bring the truth to light?

What Evanier said about Paris. Ditto. This is the second time this year my cousin Anne, currently working there, has had to report that she is safe.

Samaritan Lives Matter.

Fall of the House of Bush.

Marilynne Robinson warns against utilitarian trends in higher education.

Middle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Prisoner Re-entry.

The First County Clerk in the US to Approve a Same-Sex Marriage License. In 1975.

Egypt’s women-only taxi service promises protection from male drivers.

A New Alcott Emerges From The ‘Annotated Little Women’.

Now I Know: How Matthew Broderick Helped Shape American Computer Law and The World’s Most Prolific Author.

Berowne’s participation in the French Revolution. No, not that one.

A tumor stole every memory I had. This is what happened when it all came back.

Renaissance Geek: Eddie is 51, which is divisible by three.

Simply Red: The Con-Man Behind the Rightwing’s Starbucks Cup Freak-Out.

Wondermark: Throw Back the Dead Man’s Coin.

Binghamton, Now & Then.

Stop expecting artists to work for free — or worse, for “exposure”.

God, on Lawns.

Tosy has 10 opening sentences to short stories that do not exist, yet. But one of them could.

David Kalish: My imagined contract with cockroaches.

The new music video Weather the Storm by Rebecca Jade, the eldest niece.

Allen Toussaint – seven of his greatest songs. Plus Top 10 Allen Toussaint Classic Rock Covers, and finding a big hit in Toussaint’s trash can.

K-Chuck Radio: The WABC Sonic Experience!

Dustbury’s Feel Bad songs. Plus Connie Stevens (!) sang the original of a soul classic.

The Beatles: A 5 Minute Drum Chronology – Kye Smith.

“Love and Theft” – The Veiled but Tangled Roots of Jimmie Rodgers and Tommy Johnson.

Confessions Of An Idiom. What happens if the Elephant in the Room decides to make the Skeleton in the Closet bring the truth to light?

Mad magazine: Overheard at the New Amazon Bookstore.

The Absolute Best Way to Reheat Pizza.

Mark Evanier continues to list the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968, including Jackson Beck (Bluto, King Leonardo) and Dick Beals (Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Davey of Davey and Goliath) and Clarence Nash (Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie) and Bill Scott (Bullwinkle J. Moose, Mr. Peabody).

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the first-ever Disney character and a long-eared precursor to Mickey Mouse, features in this long-lost animated film. Another, obscure, Disney film, John Henry.

The finale of a recent episode of Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, a program I forget was even on the air.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

What comics creator has most changed the way people think about comics?

From Where the Lion Roars: The Hunt for an American Education in Binghamton

Dr. Kitonyi’s grandmother took him to a school run by missionaries at the age of 9 and it was then that he began to view education as key to his future.

A library friend of mine asked if I were familiar with a book called From Where the Lion Roars: the hunt for an American education in Binghamton by Peter N. Kitonyi. It is in the Local History room of the Albany Public Library. From the book information, Kitonyi attended Binghamton North High School, the “other” public high school besides Central in my hometown, back in the 1960s.

I was not familiar with the surname or the book. But I posted the information on a few Binghamton-based Facebook pages, and while no one remembered him, one person found an article in the Ithaca Journal, Ithaca being a small city about 50 miles from Binghamton, about how the American Civic Association helped him, as it has assisted immigrants for many years.

The ACA was familiar to me. My late father spent time volunteering there, and sometimes the family would be with him. My 16th birthday party was at that venue. And unfortunately, it was the site of one of those terrible mass killings in 2009.

The article read:

Kitonyi…was a teenager living in Kenya when he came across a letter in a magazine from a Binghamton resident, a letter that discussed the need for better education programs for disadvantaged children.

Kitonyi wrote to the author, expressing his desire for an American education. The ACA, along with the Rotary and Lions clubs and local churches, rallied around the cause, and Kitonyi came to the United States in 1961 at age 17.

The ACA worked with Kitonyi even while he was still in Kenya to find a host family for him.

“The ACA was instrumental; they really played a role,” said Kitonyi, who works in Albany in correctional education. “Because of their experience in knowing how to place families or children or refugees, they were in a position to help the Rotary Club and Lions Club to determine what neighborhood was good for me, what family would be good for me.”

Once he arrived in New York, the ACA continued to assist, helping with his paperwork and providing a social environment where he could meet other immigrants coping with adapting to life in the United States.

“Being an immigrant, it doesn’t matter what nationality you are – we were all undergoing the same assimilation process,” he said.

Even though Kitonyi dived into his studies, that process of assimilation wasn’t always easy. About a year after he arrived, he felt homesick; he missed his parents. Sometimes when he was feeling down, he’d go to the ACA. There, he’d talk with a volunteer – the same woman who signed the very first letter he’d received from the organization, back when he lived in Africa.

“It was a place to go if my chips were down,” he said. “I could go there and say what was going on. The door was open … and everybody knew I was Peter.”

I Googled the book title, and found several references to it, apparently out of print. But then I came across a RESOLUTION COMMEMORATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2013 AND HONORING THE EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS TO THE NATION AND THE CITY OF ALBANY. This is something that has happened annually here, though I don’t know for how many years. On page 17, I come across this:
***
WHEREAS, residents of the 7th Ward are proud to nominate and honor Dr. Kitonyi during Black History Month for his many years of exemplary community service. Dr. Kitonyi’s remarkable story begins with his childhood in the 1950’s and early 1960’s in Kenya, Africa. During this period, Kenya was a British colony that practiced racial discrimination. Many Africans worked on coffee and sisal plantations in deplorable conditions.

A civil war, the Mau Mau Rebellion, was underway in the 1950’s and according to Dr. Kitonyi, many innocent people were unjustly incarcerated or killed. He and his family lived in fear for their safety. Dr. Kitonyi’s grandmother took him to a school run by
missionaries at the age of 9 and it was then that Dr. Kitonyi began to view education as key to his future. Child labor was the norm in Kenya, however, and Dr. Kitonyi was working full time by the time he was a young teen.

He would stop at a U.S. Information Service Library in Nairobi on his lunch break from work and it was then, browsing American publications, that he learned about life in America. Dr. Kitonyi’s native language is Swahili and, though his English was limited, he began corresponding with individuals from Binghamton, N.Y….

Though Dr. Kitonyi only had the equivalent of a fifth grade education and spoke limited English, he persevered, graduating from high school in Binghamton and then, college, at the State University of N.Y. at Delhi. Dr. Kitonyi studied agriculture while in college and after completing his associate’s degree went back to Kenya for five years to assist people in his homeland by teaching basic, subsistence farming skills in rural areas.

Dr. Kitonyi returned to the United States, to work and go back to school. He received a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Oneonta and pursued both master’s and doctorate degrees at the State University of New York at Albany. Dr. Kitonyi’s long career in public service in New York State included years at the Division for Youth, the Department of Education, and the Department of Corrections, retiring in 2012. During his years of public service, Dr. Kitonyi taught vocational skills to incarcerated youth and adults, and administered numerous educational programs…

Dr. Kitonyi continues to assist people in his homeland through programs such as Eyes for East Africa, a program that helps destitute individuals with various medical afflictions to their eyes, and programs that improve access to water in impoverished and drought-stricken areas of Africa.

Dr. Kitonyi and his wife Yolanda are proud parents of four adult children. Their two sons are police officers in the Albany Police Department. Residents of the 7th Ward are grateful for Dr. Peter Kitonyi’s many years of service to our community and believe he is most deserving of this honor…
***
OK, so this guy spent time in Binghamton; maybe my father even knew him. He’s lived in Albany for a number of years, which explains why the book is in the ALBANY collection, but, despite his accomplishments, I was totally unaware of him.

I’ve reached out to this man through some Africans in the area; it’s a tight-knit community, even though they came from a number of countries, to see if anyone knows him. Whether or not I meet him, I need to read that book.