Roger O Green

Y is for yield

“NOW he stops,” I thought.

Back in February, I had arranged for a certain speaker to give a talk at one of the Black History Month sessions in adult education at my church.

Unfortunately, about a week and a half before she was scheduled to visit, she was hit by a car at the corner of Central Avenue and Henry Johnson Boulevard, a major intersection in Albany. She survived with some broken bones and bruises, but she was in no shape to give her talk.

Now, I wasn’t there. But I would not be surprised if she were hit because some car failed to yield the right of way to her as a pedestrian. I believe this because I have seen three accidents at that very corner, and two of them happened that same way. The third was a car that failed to yield to an ambulance that had its siren and flashers.

Since that recent accident, I’ve seen more signs like this one. But in my limited experience, it has not made an appreciable difference in (bad) driver behavior.

Cars yielding to the pedestrian at intersections is a fundamental rule of traffic law in most places. I remember being at an intersection in San Diego when I waited for the car to inevitably rush through the corner. Instead, the driver stopped and looked at me with a look that said, “Hey, dummy, what are you waiting for? Cross the street!”

I’m more used to this: one winter’s day, crossing the street with the light, I was nearly being hit by some car coming from my right, who, under his incorrect reading of the Right on Red law – and illegally on his cellphone – failed to STOP and yield to the pedestrian traffic (me). I was so angry, I picked up a snowball and hit his back windshield as he was pulling away. The driver stopped, got out of his car, and yelled something. “YOU ALMOST KILLED ME!” I growled as I walked away from him. “NOW he stops,” I thought. (I was REALLY impressed with my snowball prowess that day.)

One of the trickier pieces of recent traffic law in New York State is the notion that, at an unmarked intersection, drivers should yield to pedestrians at crosswalks. This works well at intersections that are specially marked with signs, not so much at others.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Polly ticks, again

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with three characteristics.

It’s been a very newsworthy period, and I haven’t been able to write about any of the polly ticks of it. I was mourning my friend. I’ve been ill.

So here is a potpourri of stories, some of which I think are interrelated.

I have been told to my face, “Racism will go away if we would only stop talking about race!” Exhibit #666 to the contrary is Rick Tyler For Congress, a third-party candidate from Tennessee, who has an unapologetic racist campaign. He has borrowed Donald Trump’s slogan and “improved” on it. There’s been outrage over the candidate’s “Make America White Again” billboard, which he has, reluctantly, taken down.

But it DOES point out the obvious: Not everyone enjoyed the past ‘greatness’ in America.

SCOTUS got one correct

Abigail Fisher’s Supreme Court loss: A massive blow to mediocre white people coasting on their racial privilege. Here’s the relevant piece of information:

“In 2008, 47 such students were admitted who had lower grades or test scores than Fisher. Forty-two of them were white. Only five were people of color.

“Fisher and her lawyer Blum were not challenging the admission of the 42 white students.

“Instead, Fisher’s argument was narrowly that she should have been admitted instead of one of those students of color. It was the case that collapsed any distinction between opposing affirmative action and demanding that white people be given preference.”

BREXIT

Now that UK has left the UN EU, we discover that people are surprised that the position they voted for – as a protest – actually is coming to pass.

There were huge Google spikes in search inquiries for “What is the EU?” in the UK, after the polling closed but before the results were announced. Of course, this doesn’t mean it was just the folks who voted for the annoying portmanteau Brexit who were looking it up; it may also been the 28% who didn’t bother voting at all. The fervent nationalism, anti-immigrant and anti-elite drove the anti-EU agenda.

The vote means a second Scottish independence vote ‘highly likely’. I was opposed to the first vote when Scotland stayed (barely); not so sure about the next one. And will Ireland unite?

The lesson of the Brexit: Take Donald Trump very seriously.

The House of Representatives sit-in

After the massacre in Orlando, there was a boring conversation about whether the events constituted terrorism. Naturallymit does. From the FBI:

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:
Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

SO the church shootings in Charleston, SC: terrorism. But one should balk at limiting the term to those actions perpetrated by a Muslim.

Speaking of which: the National Rifle Association called civil rights icon John Lewis a terrorist “for giving a speech on gun control and staging a sit-in at the House of Representatives.” As the quote goes, “They know not of what they speak.”

This is clear when you hear the primary complaint about the sit-in, which is that it was just a publicity stunt. Obviously, they are not versed in non-violent direct action, for OF COURSE it was a publicity stunt. Most protests are.

Another complains that the Democrats didn’t have a sit-in for other issues. True enough. But sometimes things just reach a tipping point. As Lewis said, “The time to act is now. We will be silent no more. The time for silence is over.”

Forty-nine people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub primarily from a Sig Sauer (modeled in the AK-47, for the pedantic who try to negate the gun control debate with semantics.) Then a Senator from Connecticut, who filibustered for four bills to be voted on; there was a vote, and they were all defeated. The sit-in created a tipping point.

The flaws in the various bills can be discussed. But I think there’s some reasonable bill that would ban assault weapons, get background checks for those buying weapons at gun shows, have a seven-day background check for those who are on the no-fly list to ascertain if they really represent a risk – the aforementioned John Lewis was once on the roster. The NRA has essentially blocked the Centers for Disease Control from getting funding to study the issue of gun violence on communities. A bill would require what has become a dirty word; compromise.

That the Democrats used the opportunity to raise money is definitely true, as I got my fair share of solicitations. But I’m used to both parties using any opportunity to pass the hat; I wish I could be more outraged. I think is true: House Democrats Didn’t Win The Battle, But They Are Preparing To Win The War.

This is a picture of the remains of a banner set on fire on the front lawn of the Albany (NY) Damien Center’s temporary home at the city’s First Lutheran Church this past week. As the Facebook comment read: “In the wake of the Orlando tragedy, it is very disheartening to have this happen in our local community. We appreciate all of our community’s support and love extended and stand in unity with our LGBT community during this time.”

This Broadway sings for Orlando video always makes me verklempt.

News Cliche

My current pet peeve in news articles is the use of the phrase “that no one talks about” or the variation, “that no one is talking about.” For instance, ‘Richard Burr’s the most vulnerable Republican Senator that no one’s talking about’. It seems arrogant. The words suggest that Everyone Else has missed this important angle of a larger narrative, but that writer, singularly, is sage enough to have unearthed it.

The Lydster, Part 146: art and artist

So This happened back in February 2016; text courtesy of the Albany School News Network:

“Student works inspired by the famed modern art collection at the Empire State Plaza will be showcased through March 20 in the plaza’s South Concourse.

“Some 258 pieces of art by City School District of Albany students from kindergarten through eighth grade are on display at the plaza in celebration of National Youth Art Month. The display consists of artwork from all 15 district elementary and middle schools, as well from 11 other Capital Region school districts.

“On display are student reinterpretations of the modern masters whose works are featured on the walls and in the spaces of the plaza.” The Daughter had two pieces in the show.

The first design was supposedly in the style of Calvert Coggeshall (1907-1990), an abstract painter from Whitesboro, Oneida County in upstate New York.

The second item was reportedly reminiscent of Kenneth Nolan (1924-2010), originally from Ashville, North Carolina. Our friend Alexis, who took the pictures, and I thought it was more like some of the work of Jasper Johns, born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia.

The Daughter had heard of NONE of these artists. She was just doing what interested her.

The medium for these pieces was duct tape. She had made little purses made of the material for her mother and a friend this past Christmas.

There was to be a group picture of the young artists present at the Empire State Plaza. The Daughter was reluctant to participate for some reason until her teacher, Ms. Rhatigan, who I met for the first time that day, encouraged her to do so.

Incidentally, “The Empire State Plaza Art Collection consists of 92 modern art paintings, sculptures, and tapestries that were bought in the late 1960s to early ’70s, including works from Alexander Calder, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.”

Her flag piece was also chosen for the Albany Institute of History and Art’s school show in May.

Music Throwback Saturday: I Got A Line On You

Some of the music community had worried that a guilty verdict could open up a flood of suits of this kind – justified or otherwise.

One of my favorite songs in college was I Got A Line On You, the first song on the second Spirit album The Family That Plays Together. I could have sworn I’d linked to it before, but can’t easily find it. It went to #25 on the Billboard charts in 1969.

I’ve had the band in mind since the heirs of the late Randy California, a/k/a Randy Craig Wolfe sued led Zeppelin in 2014 over the similarity between the Spirit song Taurus and LZ’s classic Stairway to Heaven.

The problem with Zeppelin was that the band was notorious for swiping other people’s songs, as I have complained myself. The difficulty for the plaintiff was that both songs were similar to earlier tunes, from the Baroque era to Mary Poppins’ Chim Chim Cher-ee.

The ruling this week in a Los Angeles: The song royalties will remain the same, “after several nail-biting dramatic moments in the courtroom where it seemed the decision could go either way.”

As Salon noted: “The decision isn’t entirely shocking, but some of the music community had worried that… a guilty verdict… could open up a flood of suits of this kind – justified or otherwise. The $40 million the plaintiffs were asking for, and the song’s status as perhaps the most famous in the classic-rock canon, meant it was likely to have a serious impact. The decision against Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines,’ which was based on a far-less famous Marvin Gaye song and settled for a much smaller amount, has already provoked similar cases (including, indirectly, this one.) A win for Spirit’s camp could have led to a huge number of ambulance chasers.”

I am happy about this decision and frankly thought the Blurred Lines claim was dubious as well.

I Got A Line On You – Spirit (1969) HERE or HERE

I Got A Line On You – Spirit (1984 version) HERE. It appeared on their comeback album “The Thirteenth Dream” (issued as “Spirit of ’84” in the US).

Taurus – Spirit HERE or HERE

Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin HERE

Norm Nissen (1958-2016)

Norm was a great hugger.

I always thought of Norman as a surprise. He was this bear of a man, who might have been a Viking warrior at a different time. He was farm-boy strong. I learned that many years ago when he accidentally put a Roger-sized hole in the baseboard of our mutual friend Bill Anderson’s apartment.

He had that young man with the gray-to-white hair as long as I’ve known him. He wore it well. I met him, as did a few of us gathered at his funeral, at FantaCo, the comic book shop shop on the first block of Central Avenue, where Broome and Bill and I all worked at some point in the 1980s or ’90s.

I specifically remember the surprise party that was thrown for Norm on his 30th birthday party. Almost all the presents had a bovine theme.

He was this farm boy with a sometimes goofy grin, who was book smart. I could always count on him to make, sometimes unsolicited, great recommendations about what to read, which is why he was so good at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza or its Troy location, Market Block Books, where he worked for many years.

It was difficult to try to explain Norm Nissen to other people, except to say that Norman was the GUY. He was the best man for Carol’s and my wedding in 1999. You WANTED Norm Nissen to be your best man. Not only did you KNOW he wouldn’t forget, or lose, the rings, but that he would be a steadying influence on the nervous groom.

I had a shed that needed deconstruction a couple years, and of course, he had the tools, which he brought to me. He brought this young man with him, who had a beard and a deep voice. It turned out to be his son Sam. I can’t keep track of the number of times Norm mentioned that Sam and I were roommates, when I was in the midst of a romantic breakup in 1994, and that Norm and Jay let me stay in Sam’s room for a couple of weeks.

Though I only needed the tools for less than a month, he hadn’t picked them up until nearly a year later. Norm and I sat on the front porch of my house, just talking for over an hour. He was my sounding board, as he always had been.

Norm was such a sweet guy. A couple years ago, my wife and I were talking with our friend Bonnie, who, unfortunately, died last year. She worked at the Bruegger’s Bagels in Stuyvesant Plaza, and she was going on how nice the folks from the Book House were, but ESPECIALLY this guy named Norm.

For a lot of years, we played racquetball, three, four, even five times a week, at the Albany YMCA on Washington Avenue in Albany, only a block from the comic book store. We played regularly from the late 1980s until March of 2010, when they, most unfortunately, closed the place. We played sporadically at Siena after that, but it wasn’t the same.

You get a sense of a person when you play racquetball with someone regularly. A friend of Norm’s, who I know as well, wrote on Facebook that he was going to miss the big galoot, and I appreciated the sentiment. Still, I looked up the standard definition of galoot, and it is “a clumsy or oafish person”. The example: “I was expecting the big galoot to trip over his own feet.” Yet, in his racquetball prime, he was surprisingly quick and agile, and smart.

We used to play this guy who made questionable calls in his own favor, a minister, as it turns out. This used to irritate ME. But instead of getting upset with him, Norm would redouble his effort to whup him on the court.

For a number of years, there was a coterie of us who’d show up at the Y, Danny, Charlie, Mike, Alan, Tyrone. Depending on numbers and arrival times, we would play one-on-one, or three of us in a game of cutthroat, or four of us playing partners. Norm was facile no matter what the game. I loved as a partner, because we developed an often unspoken strategy of how best to cover the court.

Norman was funny. He laughed easily. His humor tended to be self-deprecating, and it was almost never mean. Recently, he was talking with my wife. He had indicated that his daughter Abby was going to go to Europe with a friend, but the friend got sick, so now Abby’s going with her mother. Somehow my wife thought she meant going with the FRIEND’S mother, rather than Abby’s mother, Jay. They both laughed for five minutes.

You know how you say you’re going to get together, but you never do? Well, my wife arranged so that Norm and Jay, and my family got to finally go out to eat this past March at the Old Daley Inn. We had a marvelous time. I paid, only because I had a vague recollection that I probably owed him dinner from some racquetball bet. We played pretty evenly most of the time, but when wagers were made, he was almost always victorious. We agreed that, once he had knee surgery, we could get back to playing again; alas, it was not to be.

Norm was this sweetheart of a guy. The only time I could predictably get under his skin was to start singing the song Norman by Sue Thompson – peak Billboard position # 3 in early 1962. It went “Norman , ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Norman, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.” He HATED that song; his aunt told me she used to sing it to him when he was young, and he hated it even then. Listen to the song Norman HERE or HERE.

Finally, Norm was a great hugger. The problem now is that I could really use one of his bear hugs right about now.

Norm Nissen died last week in his sleep at the age of 57. Here’s a lovely article in the Times Union, written by Paul Grondahl.

Invocation of Peace by Fiona Macleod, read at Norm’s funeral.

Pictures from May 15, 1999 – TOP: Norm giving the toast; BOTTOM: my brother-in-law John Powell (d. 12 Feb 2002), my college friend Mark, me, and Norm.