weather Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Ramblin' with Roger

I just want the information, please

1. I get an alert from WSOC-TV in Charlotte, NC on Facebook when a significant news story comes along. On Friday, the sky turned black around 5 pm, the result of a storm. As I watch the picture, a stream of FB emojis scrolls along the lower part of the screen. Sad faces, wow faces, likes at different levels floating along the screen.

A bit later, another alert: an accident that killed two people. A bunch of mostly sad faces, a few wow, and of course, the like button, buzzing across the screen as we see an aerial photo of automotive devastation.

It is a case of “Because we can, we do.” How are you FEELING about this piece of news, Carolina? This not only in bad taste, but a distraction from what’s taking place.

Maybe we can do this for the 2017 State of the Union. Wait, wait, I was saying I thought it was a BAD idea. (Expect someone will do this next year.)

2. I was watching the US Open tennis tournament on ESPN2. There was an exciting 4th Round match going on between Rafael Nadal and Lucas Pouille. They would cut away to commentators, not the ones who were following the match, but other people, interview people with less-than-insightful questions. This is during the match, where we miss some court action to find out, if Pouille wins, there will be three French in the next round. What in the water over there? or something equally banal.

I like watching tennis. Commentators telling me first-serve percentage or the number of unforced errors is fine. Taking me away from the action is not.

3. Meanwhile, I find it really odd that I had seen not one story, on NBC or CBS, at least, about the Standing Rock Sioux protest in North Dakota, with tribes gathering together to block construction of a crude oil pipeline until a confrontation took place, and still zero on the evening news. This story from The Guardian lays it out.

I HAVE read several stories elsewhere, many from the “alternative” press, such as Indian Country Today and Democracy Now and Common Dreams and Nation of Change and Truthout.

I am pleased to note that the Presbyterian Church (USA) offers support for the tribe’s efforts to halt the pipeline beneath the Missouri River.

ADDENDUM (06:10): North Dakota activates National Guard to protect the pipeline instead of our tribes

The winter of my discontent

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station.

It’s cold, it’s snowy, but it’s also winter in upstate New York, so I’m not one to complain. (I save my vexation about the weather for the summer.)

So the stuff outside is not specifically bothering me, though if I were to, it would sound like The Grounds for Violence – Key of Bart. People who don’t shovel their walkways, ESPECIALLY at the corners, and make it difficult to walk; now THEY really bug me.

I did fall down outside recently, trudging through the white stuff, and had a difficult time getting up. You’d think the snow would be more forgiving, but I guess not when it’s 10F/-12C. Landing in it managed to bang up both shoulders, my left knee, and my right thigh; my back and ribs are hurting, too.

This is Black History Month and, at church, I’d somehow gotten myself involved with not only the adult education for February but most of January as well. The annual luncheon process became more complicated by ANOTHER event in February at church.

Because the calendar fell as it did, I was unable to go to the annual Midwinter’s gathering in my college town area, which I often find restorative, because it clashed with RESPONSIBILITIES at church; it’s only a problem when February 1 is on a Sunday.

The Daughter’s church musical is on March 1, which has meant attending extra rehearsals.

A big issue in my life is work, which has become stressful. We had had five librarians working on reference questions. One has been out on maternity from Thanksgiving, returning at the end of February. But another left to take another job at the end of January, and I will miss seeing her every day. Worse, there is no promise the position will be filled.

So for most of February, we’ve had three librarians, except on those days when one of us was out – at least twice because of the weather – and we had but two. Yet the workload did not ebb.

Surely, it’s THREE funerals in seven weeks that have worn on me. They were actually all very nice events in their own ways. I spoke at two of them.

I think that sense of loss has made the deaths of public figures, such as Bob Simon and Lesley Gore – my, I LOVED You Don’t Own Me – somehow more poignant.

Basically, it’s that I’m damn tired. The Tuesday before my cousin Robert’s funeral, a cousin called, waking me at 10:30 p.m. telling the funeral as on THAT Friday. I went back to sleep, but then woke up again at 1 a.m., trying to problem-solve how to get there by looking at Amtrak and Greyhound schedules. I never DID go back to sleep.

When I got home Wednesday evening, I was SO exhausted that I changed into my pajamas at 7 p.m. A half-hour later, the doorbell rang. One of my church buddies was there to pick me up to take me to a meeting, something I had asked him to do only two days earlier. I ran upstairs to get dressed and went out.

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station a half-hour later. Took the Amtrak to New York City, the subway to Queens, and then a bus to the funeral parlor. At the end of the day, got a train to Penn Station, then the Amtrak back to Albany (or rather Rensselaer, on the other side of the river), and waited for the CDTA bus; got home at 11:15 p.m.

It’s all made me rather impatient. After an Islamic center in Houston, TX was torched, some Facebook friend of mine, someone I knew in childhood, wrote: “May HaShem forgive me, but I don’t think it could happen to a more deserving group of individuals…Terrorists, whatever you choose to call them, but human they are NOT…!!!”

Someone unknown to me replied to her, “Such comments are disgusting and a real Chillul Hashem“. I just unfriended her, only the second time I’ve done that. Can’t be bothered with the debate.

Some of this will likely get better. The weather will break, a coworker will return, the play will be over. Now if I can be sure there won’t be any more funerals to attend anytime soon, I’d be a whole lot better.
***
“What Makes Us Happy?” (The Atlantic, June 2009).

Weather or not, I write about it

There are a couple of reasons I don’t write much about the weather:
1) it’s so ephemeral
2) if I complain now, there’s the fear the next time could be worse

Still, the weather last week, for whatever reason, beat me down. It wasn’t 70 inches of snow. In fact, in the city of Albany proper, it wasn’t much snow at all, though some of the outlying areas got more than a foot.

That was the problem, really. The meteorologists, even 36 hours out, were candidly unsure of the forecast. The Winter Weather Advisory suggested 1-3 inches of snow, plus sleet and freezing rain.

Tuesday morning: looks dry. I walk out to go to work and realize that walking is treacherous. As bad as it is on the sidewalks, though, it was far worse on the roads. Crossing the streets was hazardous, not just from the fear of falling, but from the very real fear that some car would run me over since they don’t slow down in recognition of the road conditions.

I take two buses to work each morning. Bus number 1 was 5 minutes late, arriving at the transfer point just after when bus #2 should have been arriving.

I’d never seen anything quite like this: all of the traffic at Washington and Lark heading east on Central Avenue and Washington Avenue and north on Lark were backed up a couple of blocks. I heard dozens of car horns beeping, as though that was going to do any good.

The bottom line is that the second bus I took was over a half-hour late, and I ended up 45 minutes late for work.

By Tuesday evening, it had changed to white rain, or the wettest snow I can remember. I got home to try to shovel it, but the water content made it almost impossible. What I needed was not a shovel a Wet Vac, something to suck up the water. A local friend wrote on Facebook: “The Russian word for SNOW is СНЕГ (SNYEK). But many years ago, my dear friend… coined a new word: SNYUCK. That’s half snow and half yuck (ice, rain, sludge, etc.) – and that’s what’s happening outside in Albany, NY. It’s snyucking out!”

Wednesday morning, there were a number of school closings. Not Albany, and not the rural school district the Wife had to work in. By mid-morning, a blast of snow came into the area. I check the notices and while the outlining districts had closed early or canceled after-school activities, Albany merely noted a suggestion to run to pick up pone’s children early.

Still, I called The Wife to pick up the Daughter early, and a good thing too, because her 40-minute trip took an hour. While she was en route, I received a call from the after-care at 3:30, saying they were NOW closing at 4:30.

I went out to catch my bus, only to discover people waiting over an hour for the PREVIOUS bus. I took the westbound bus to Everett Road, deciding to walk home when I saw no connecting bus; this was a TERRIBLE idea. There were no shoveled sidewalks on Everett Road, which is an exit for Interstate 90. I’m walking part of the time in the street, in the dark, wearing a black coat; not recommended.

Thursday morning, Albany was the LAST of the schools to call for a two-hour delay. Surrounding school districts either had declared one 45 minutes or earlier, or had closed. Fortunately, the Wife’s school was also delayed.

I was grateful when The Wife offered me a ride home Thursday night.

So it was oddly enervating.

Picture, taken Wednesday, December 10, used by permission.

A post for ABC Wednesday.

Bring back the bad weather!

The Daughter has almost exactly the same symptoms.

Mother’s Day, May 10, was absolutely beautiful. Blue skies, decent temperatures, no rain, flowers in bloom. Had a nice dinner with an extended troupe of in-laws in Catskill, an hour south of Albany. Got home that evening, went to bed with a hacking cough, which led to a sore throat, in lieu of sleeping. This was not a cold or the flu; this was an allergy, to trees, and grass, and pollen. There are conflicting theories as to whether a long and harsh winter could lead to an equally irritating spring allergy season because it postpones the budding.

All I know is that I was miserable, despite getting injections every four weeks for several months. Now I’m on Fluticasone (nose spray), Advair (an inhaler), and am taking Zyrtec tablet (actually the OTC equivalent); the latter makes me tired, so I take it only at night. I’ve been sleeping sitting up for most of last week and a half. Oh, yeah, The Daughter has almost exactly the same symptoms.

Saturday night, The Wife and I went to the concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in nearby Troy. EMPAC is a technological marvel, but more than that, it is really cool. Inside the glass enclosure, it reminds one of a ship, in a good way.

I was so looking forward to the concert. ASO highlights living composers. But shortly after the beginning of the first piece, by John Harbison, I felt a coughing jag coming on. Since I was smack dab in the middle, I had to quickly climb past several people, and leave the theater. Couldn’t stop coughing for about ten minutes. Finally, the hacking subsided, and I caught, outside the doors, most of the second piece, also by Harbison.

But I was happy to sit in the back while catching Scattered, a “Concerto for Scat Singing, Piano & Orchestra,” written and performed by Clarice Assad. Here’s the second movement, performed a couple of years back; that section is much slower than the first or third movements.

After intermission, composer Joan Tower, who is quite funny, introduced her piece that featured famed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie in her return to the Albany Symphony; she played on the ASO’s Grammy-winning recording, awarded this year. Glennie, not incidentally, has been deaf since the age of twelve.

The concert was not a total bust, as I did to hear more than half of it. Still, I want this lousy feeling to GO AWAY.

Mother’s Day: no mother, again

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone.

Here are a couple more pictures of my mom, before she was my mom. I don’t know exactly when they were taken, if I saw them before, I don’t recall them. Funny how she has that head tilt in both, albeit in different directions. My sister Marcia is doing a yeoperson’s job of finding photos, scanning them, and putting them on Facebook.

I’m fairly sure I know where the first one was taken.

It looks like the front of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, 35 Sherman Place in downtown Binghamton, NY, where I would later be baptized, in August (?) of 1953.

The Sherman Street church, indeed, all of that street was razed in the late 1950s to build a playground right across from the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street, where my father spent a lot of time working on social justice issues.

The church congregation moved to 203 Oak Street, at the corner of Lydia Street, only two short blocks from my home at 5 Gaines Street.

Don’t know much about this clearly earlier picture, except that the man in the car is almost certainly her Uncle Ed Yates, her mother Gert’s brother.

The freaky weather in Albany last month (80F on one day, 27F and snow 36 hours later) reminded both of my sisters of something that happened to my mom one Mother’s Day, or perhaps before: she slipped on ice on the front porch of our house and ended up in the hospital for at least a week. I think it was 1966; the week before May 8, the low temperature was 31 to 33F, and down to 26F the night before in Binghamton, NY. Though it COULD have been 1967, when it was 33F to 35F the evenings of the week before May 14.

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone. I’ve had more than my share of the latter thus far in 2014.