Roger O Green

In-person FFAPL book reviews are back!

also, author talks

The Albany Public Library announced that is opening meeting rooms and resuming in-person programs starting Monday, April 4. This means that the book reviews conducted by the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library (FFAPL) are back every Tuesday at noon, starting April 19 at the Washington Avenue branch!

The Friends of the APL, one of the antecedents to the FFAPL, held book reviews or author talks Tuesdays every week when the library was open literally for decades. In recent years, these events were scheduled primarily by Eugene Damm and Jonathan Skinner. They continued until… well, you know what.

For a while, there was no book review programming at all. Then someone suggested that maybe we should utilize that new-fangled electronic device known as ZOOM. I got involved with this mostly because my computer was more robust than Jon’s or Gene’s, and because had retired. Some of the talks were recorded; you can find some of them here. A few we don’t have because the technology failed. A couple that was done outside at the Bach branch had too much noise from neighbors and the wind.

The Upper Hudson Library Council noted the effort that Jon and I had done in the remote world by awarding us as UHLS volunteers of the year. We were among several folks honored in June 2021, online, of course.

We’re BACK

Here’s the schedule thus far for the Tuesday talks. Albany people: if you can pass the word, it would be greatly appreciated.

19 April Book Review | Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess. Reviewer: Joseph Krausman, MA, MFA, retired policy analyst, poet, and teacher.

26 April Book Review | The Color Of Law by Richard Rothstein. Reviewer: Roger Green, a former librarian and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.

3 May 3 Author Talk | Pippa Bartolotti, Cornish/Welsh human rights and climate activist, discusses & reads from her poetry book, The Symmetries: Book 1 Poetic Symmetry.

10 May Book Review | The Trial of Leonard Peltier by James W. Messerschmidt. Reviewer: Larry Becker, lawyer, activist, past member of Albany’s Community Police Review Board, & producer of the Radio Free Blues Show.

17 May Book Review | Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know About the Ocean by Naomi Oreskes. Reviewer: Jonathan Skinner, Ph.D., retired statistician & amateur classicist.

24 May Book Review | A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks by Brad Edmondson. Reviewer: Tom Ellis, educator, and activist.

31 May Book Review | Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M. E. Sarotte. Reviewer: Gene Damm, former journalist and past president of the Friends of Albany Public Library.

Actor Marilu Henner turns 70

She remembers almost everything!

I’m most familiar with the actor Marilu Henner from the sitcom Taxi, which aired on ABC for four seasons and NBC for one, from 1978 to 1983. She played Elaine Nardo, the only female cabbie in the regular cast.

I also watched her on Evening Shade, a show about retired football player Wood Newton (Burt Reynolds) moving back to rural Evening Shade, AR with his attorney-wife (Henner) and their four children. It ran on CBS from 1990 to 1994 She appeared in the movie L.A. Story (1991).

But I wouldn’t have written about her here but for one specific trait. Marilu Henner has hyperthymesia or total recall memory. She claimed, and it was verified by researchers, that she can remember specific details of virtually every day of her life since she was a child.

I remember her appearance on 60 Minutes on December 19, 2010. In fact, as Henner discusses in 2015 for EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG, CBS could have had a story about the subject of extraordinary memory with another subject around 2006. But correspondent Lesley Stahl knew her friend Henner had a very good memory and thought it was no big deal.

Later, Stahl discovered what an extraordinary gift her friend had. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of Endless Memory, which also features other people with hyperthymesia and the researchers investigating the phenomenon. 60 Minutes Australia ran a similar story, featuring Henner, in 2018.

The performer was a consultant for a TV show called Unforgettable. “Carrie Wells (Poppy Montgomery), a former police detective, has a rare ability to remember virtually everything she experiences including detailed visual recall. She returns to police work and uses her ability to solve crimes.”

What do I remember?

I was on an FFAPL Zoom talk with author Isaiah Rashad on February 15. He asked us what do we remember about 1997, and most of us struggled. I was in a wedding in 1996. In 1998, I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and appeared on JEOPARDY!

But 1997? Nothing came to mind until hours later. I was in a Bible study in 1996-97, 34 weeks and I read the whole thing. One of the latter exercises was to attend a worship service, not in my tradition.

As I mentioned, in passing here, I went to a Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) church on Madison Avenue in Albany for a three-hour service. Afterward, I went to the coffee hour. And one of the parishioners, discovering that I was a Protestant, said, very casually and seemingly without malice, “You do know you’re going to hell, don’t you?” THAT happened in 1997.

But Marilu Henner could likely tell you what shoes she wore on any given day in 1997. She has a very meticulous closet, with all of the hangers the same. Her pairs of shoes always have one toe and one heel out.

Interestingly, of the five people in the original 60 Minutes segment, only Henner was in a relationship, her third marriage. This one seems to be the charm, especially after she helped discover Michael Brown’s bladder cancer.

ARA: Baseball and the Olympics

Designated runner rule – yuck

Kelly, who’s now been writing over at ForgottenWorlds.net, asked a few questions for Ask Roger Anything.

Should we still be having the Olympics? And if so, is it time to just pick a permanent location for the Summer and Winter Games and stop all this business of Olympic bids and cities and countries spending billions for this stuff?

I had been just having this discussion about the outsized impact of sports on society. Is it social good, exercise, comradery? Is it glorified too much? I know that there are folks around Albany trying to restart youth baseball in a particular neighborhood, not just for sport’s sake but to encourage discipline and teamwork.

On the other hand, I’m rather annoyed by corporate welfare. Specifically, New York State taxpayer money is going towards building a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills.

Here’s a video about how the Olympics hurt the poor of the host city and add to the militarization of the communities where the games are being held.

Optimally, I would like to see the Olympics, and the Paralympics continue. But the power needs to be ceded to some non-IOC entity that includes athletes. Perhaps they could root out cheating far earlier than what happened with that poor Russian 15-year-old skater this year. The grownups have to do better.

Finding a single country, or two, for the Olympics, will be quite difficult, I’d think. I mean, it can’t be Russia, China, the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, or a bunch of others. One could certainly make the case for Greece for the Summer Olympics, although the 2004 games were a fiscal debacle.

And what of the Winter Games? Politically, I doubt they could have both sets of Games in Europe. I’d love to see them in southern Africa or southern parts of South America. Or Uruguay in the summer and Switzerland in the winter.

Peanuts and Cracker Jack

You can make ONE change to something about Major League Baseball. What is it?

Let’s go with two because I know you already agree with the first. The baseball playoff games and World Series should start by 7 pm Eastern at the LATEST. How are you supposed to generate a new generation of fans when the premier games finish after their bedtime?

The other change is controversial, I imagine. And for a baseball traditionalist like myself, it’s surprising. Allow for a tie after 12 innings. This would only apply to the regular season.

And count the ties as half a win and half a loss. This is why this matters: in a 10-game pretend season, one team could go 6-4 and another 5-3-2, If you ignore the ties altogether, one team would have a .600 record, and the other .625. I don’t want to reward the tie.

Many pro sports have ties: NFL football, NHL hockey, soccer. Chess has the stalemate.

I thought about this because the bizarre thing MLB implemented during COVID, the designated runner rule, may not be dead. It’s that… thing established in 2020 and 2021 to shorten the game. A runner mysteriously is placed on second base in extra innings. I HATE, HATE HATE this rule, WAY more than I dislike the designated hitter.

Totally unrelated, Deep Space Nine Innings: A Star Trek Spinoff’s Unlikely Baseball Obsession.

“Content of their character”

History is not a feel-good story

I know that I have railed against people using literally one line from one Martin Luther King, Jr. speech out of context. You have heard it, a lot. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

This was, obviously to me, an aspiration. I came across an article from 2013, a half-century after the speech, which addressed a cultural debate.

“The meaning of King’s monumental quote is more complex today than in 1963 because ‘the unconscious signals have changed,” says the historian Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed trilogy ‘America in the King Years.’

“Fifty years ago, bigotry was widely accepted. Today, Branch says, even though prejudice is widely denounced, many people unconsciously pre-judge others.

“‘Unfortunately race in American history has been one area in which Americans kid themselves and pretend to be fair-minded when they really are not,’ says Branch, whose new book is ‘The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement.'”

Two of King’s children, Martin III and Bernice, offered similar sentiments.

The “real” anti-racists?

Conversely, “Conservatives feel they have embraced that quote completely. They are the embodiment of that quote but get no credit for doing it,” says the author of the article [in the RightWingNews.com blog], John Hawkins. ‘Liberals like the idea of the quote because it’s the most famous thing Martin Luther King said, but they left the principles behind the quote behind a long time ago.'”

For me, the latter sentiment suggests, not only have we’ve all been to the mountaintop, but that we’ve gotten to the Promised Land. This is a reference to MLK’s speech in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. He says, “I MAY NOT GET THERE WITH YOU.” We had not, and have not, yet overcome.

Jim Crow

So how do we assess this conundrum? We look at the data. And I’ve suggested before that we set aside slavery in the discussion because most people agree; Slavery Was Bad. (And those who think otherwise… well, I’ve got nothing.)

By looking at it, we see the failure of the 40 acres and a mule to come to fruition. And 4000 lynchings of black people, often as public spectacles; let’s have a picnic! Voter suppression still happens today. Property loss from New Deal policies that didn’t apply to black people to the GI Bill that didn’t apply to black people to roads going through neighborhoods where black people lived. Oh, and mass incarceration. And why Black Lives Matter. (RIP, Trayvon Martin. Ten years gone.)

Or we can talk about the lack of black representation in many areas and not just NFL ownership.

There is evidence that the information is easily retrievable. But we can’t talk about this because it might make us “uncomfortable. It especially might make our poor, innocent children, “uncomfortable.” So we build boogie men, such as Critical Race Theory, and shut down discussions about race. Because we’re all equal now.

And while we’re at it, let’s not talk about gay people or transgender people or the Holocaust because, if we do THAT, it’ll be traumatic for our children! (I’m talking about YOU, Florida.)

Jaquandor

I’m recommending a post by Kelly Sedinger, which he wrote at the end of February 2022. It’s titled “History is not a feel-good story.” And touches on some of the issues I’ve addressed here. It links to a very good John Oliver video on the wringing of hands over CRT.

Kelly notes, correctly: “History isn’t about feeling bad or feeling good. History is about learning what we’ve done, the good and the bad, so we can make better decisions later.” OR we can just ostrich our way through life.

1972: the Easter break

Kentucky State College Concert Choir

Robert Yates.Aaron Yates.Audrey — **Robert, Aaron, Audrey Yates on Easter Sunday (April 2), 1972 at 29 Ackley Avenue, Johnson City, NY, home of Les and Trudy Green**

In the 1972 annals, I had totally forgotten that the Okie came home with me for Easter break, beginning March 28. She drove us from New Paltz to Johnson City, near Binghamton. She met our family friends the Pomeroys.

The next day, we went to my old high school, Binghamton Central, and talked with my friend Carla [we’re still in touch] who yelled to me from a third-story window until a teacher closed it. Also, Amy H. [recently reconnected] and others [who I’ve lost track of]. Saw one of my favorite teachers, John Kellogg [RIP].

March 31 – My good friend Carol and her then-beau drove the Okie and me up old Route 11 from Binghamton to Syracuse to see the new movie The Godfather. [Was it not yet playing locally? Possibly.] Other films I had seen in March 1972: The Importance of Being Earnest; Gimme Shelter; Billy Jack; 2001: A Space Odyssey; and Performance, which I described as “weird”.

April 1 – My cousin Robert Yates, his wife Audrey, and their two-year-old son Aaron came to visit. Robert was my mother’s first cousin. But she was born in 1927, and he in 1946, so he was actually closer to my age. Robert, Audrey, my sister Leslie, and I went bowling at two different venues, in JC and the Vestal Plaza, a total of six games.

Easter Sunday

April 2- A bunch of returning college students, including me, were acknowledged at church. Inspired sermon by Rev. A.C. Bell. After dinner, lots of card games (whist, hearts) with Robert and Audrey, who returned to NYC that day, my parents, the Pomeroys, and me. The Okie also left for her parents’ house.

[Young Aaron was murdered – shot or stabbed, I understand – when he was 18 or 19. This devasted his parents, of course, but Robert became a great father figure, not just to his nieces and nephews, but to kids in the neighborhood. He died in 2016.]

April 3 – I was “supposed to meet some people @ Bing. Pub. Library… but no one showed. Someone mistaking me for an employee I assisted w/ card catalog.” [I did work there as a page two or three years earlier.] Saw familiar faces, including Vito [RIP, 1991], Michael Butler, Don Wheeler, and others.

Later, I interviewed my father for my economics paper.

April 4 – participated in a memorial for MLK, with participation by my church’s choir. Later, my mom’s bowling team won the championship. The US recognized Bangladesh.

KSCCC

April 5 – Adam Clayton Powell died yesterday, and baseball DIDN’T start today.

A concert by the Kentucky State College Concert Choir (KSCCC) was held at First Presbyterian Church. Rev. Roberts, the father of my HS friend Catherine Carson, gave the invocation. The Broome County Urban League officers, which probably included my father, were introduced.

“Guys in black tuxes with white shirts. Gals with pink blouses and light purplish long skirts. They sang four very beautiful classical numbers; I liked to listen to them with my eyes closed. Then a Slavic song and a chant-like song they had done last year. Males sing semi-spirituals and a female soloist sang an operatic song and another piece…

“Mom and I noticed that dad didn’t applaud at all for Motherless Child. Perhaps it means too much for him.” Someone announced that my sister Leslie “has won a scholarship to KSC.” [No, she did not end up going there.]

“Four spirituals with African drums… After the standing ovation, they sang Ain’t A That Good News (like it’s supposed to be sung) and The Battle Hymn of the Republic with a piano intro full of discords, which dad dug.”

Afterward, some co-ed seemed to be flirting with me, which was both awkward and nice. “Leslie auditioned sans choir as the audience like I had last year. [I have no recollection of that happening in 1971.] She sang a capella I Wish I knew How It Would Feel To Be Free rather well. She went with the KSCCC to a party at the Treadway Inn.”

Note that KSC, an HBCU, became Kentucky State University in 1972.