Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

C is for Canajoharie’s Arkell Museum, featuring Beech-Nut

The over-a-century long relationship between Canajoharie and Beech Nut is captured at the Arkell Museum.

beechnut ad.RockwellThe food manufacturer Beech-Nut has roots going back to 1891, “to the Mohawk Valley town of Canajoharie, New York,” about an hour northwest of Albany. A number of men, including Bartlett Arkell, “founded The Imperial Packing Co. with the production of Beech-Nut ham.”

The company was incorporated as the Beech-Nut Packing Company in 1899. In 1900, the company’s sales were $200,000. Engineers from Beech-Nut patented the first vacuum jar with a design that included a gasket and top that could remain intact in transit and became a standard of the industry.

During the first 25 years of the 20th century, the company expanded its product line into peanut butter, jam, pork and beans, ketchup, chili sauce, mustard, spaghetti, macaroni, marmalade, caramel, fruit drops, mints, chewing gum, and coffee.

While the former Canajoharie plant was sold by Beech Nut in late 2013, the over-a-century long relationship is captured at the Arkell Museum, which my family visited in August 2014. Because we got a pass from the Albany Public Library, the museum stop was free. It is located in the building of the Canajoharie Library.

Check out just a piece of the Beech-Nut collection. Like many businesses in the first half of the 20th century, there was a circus motif with some of the advertising. In the 1930s Beech-Nut Gum and Candies toured the country with six miniature circuses housed in custom-built buses. “Illustrator Frederic Stanley created artwork which featured Rosie Rieffenach, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey bareback rider.”

Other name artists, including Norman Rockwell (graphic above), also contributed to the advertisements. He has captured a real phenomenon of the period, the Beech-Nut gum girls, who would give away sticks in order to entice folks to buy packs of gum.

The museum is well regarded as a hidden jewel. Read this 2008 Metroland article and this review from the Caldwell Gallery and this piece from the AIArchitect.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

The Lydster, Part 130: Bonnie Deschane

The night before Bonnie’s death, The Daughter was crying, had trouble going to sleep,

heart-in-handsAbout ten years ago, The Wife met this woman named Bonnie. She worked at a B&B just a block from our home and also was employed at a Bruegger’s Bagels.

She was looking to make some extra money and wanted to know if The Wife knew anyone looking for someone to do some house cleaning. Since we had had a new baby and were still in that always-tired state, my bride engaged her to come to our house once every week or two. Eventually, we all became friends.

Four or five years ago, she had a bout with, I believe, emphysema, and we visited her in the hospital. The good result of that event was that she quit smoking.

Bonnie called at least once a week, and we probably saw her at least twice a month, going out to eat at Friendly’s restaurant or some diner. She was a classic Luddite, and never did get to really do much with the computer.

She had a massive coronary “event” on January 13, and died the next day at the age of 68.

Bonnie was the first person The Daughter really knew who died. She had met my mother, but that was from a series of infrequent visits, many of which she no longer remembers. But she related to Bonnie quite well, appreciating how she would say “Good morning, Carol, Roger, and Lydia” when she left messages on our phone.

In fact, the night before Bonnie’s death, The Daughter was crying, had trouble going to sleep, and woke up about 4 a.m.

That makes THREE people I knew personally who had died in the first TWO WEEKS of 2015.

Don’t give up the fight

“Why AM I dehydrated and thirsty when I drink so much water?”

no standingIn that flurry of blog posts that Arthur wrote in December 2014 was one called Get Up, Stand Up, where he links to a video about how sitting too much will probably kill you. I relate to this greatly.

In my job at FantaCo (1980-1988), I stood at the counter, stood at the table where I did mail order, even usually stood when I did the bookkeeping. But in my current job (1992-present), I sit a lot at a desk, at a computer. It explains not just my weight gain, but more specifically why my bad cholesterol (LDL) was too high, even when I am exercising.

Obesity has been associated with numerous chronic medical conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, depression, and even certain cancers. Yet, there is so much misinformation in the media on weight loss from claims that everything from acai berries to costly supplements is the secret to obtaining a slim body. But truthfully, there is no quick fix for weight loss. Weight loss requires a very conscious effort to implement changes to ones’ habits and lifestyle. To get more tips, visit Mensjournal.com.

Ever since I saw one on TV a couple of years ago, I have coveted one of those treadmill desks. But that’s not going to happen. The suggestions from the video – getting up regularly, drinking plenty of water – are good ideas that I know intellectually but can stand the reminder.

Someone recently sent me this article about magnesium deficiency, and it set me to wondering. “Why AM I dehydrated and thirsty when I drink so much water?” Hmm.

Anyway, I gotta get up and dance to Arthur’s Bob Marley’s reggae groves.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Imitation Game

The film The Imitation Game flashes back to Alan Turing’s childhood prep school.

2014, THE IMITATION GAMEIf it weren’t for Alan Turing, you might not be reading this or much else on the Internet. He “was an English mathematician, wartime code-breaker and pioneer of computer science.”

But he was pretty much just a name to me until my friend Mary and I went to see The Imitation Game last week, as usual at The Spectrum in Albany. It was a story about how Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and fellow mathematicians (including Matthew Goode, from the TV show The Good Wife, as Hugh Alexander) try to crack the enigma code that the Germans were using to transmit their movements.

The code was thought to be unbreakable because the number of calculations needed to suss it out was far greater than the human mind could tally in hundreds of years. But, Turing wondered, what would happen if one could devise a MACHINE to figure out what another machine was doing?

This was a difficult sell, in part because Turing was awkward, and, understandably, arrogantly confident in his talents. He was not a “people person.” When he finagles some control of the project, he uses a crossword puzzle to recruit a couple more people, including a young woman (Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke).

The film flashes back to Turing’s childhood prep school, where he was bullied and had but one very good friend. It also jumps forward, where the police, investigating a break-in at Turing’s house, discover secrets about his past and present life, including his homosexuality, which was a crime in 1950s Britain.

Despite his current popularity – type in BEN in IMBD, and Benedict Cumberbatch is the first name to pop up – I had only seen the lead actor in one other role, a small but important part in August: Osage County; he was quite good.

Here he carries the film, though Knightly and the other actors are also very good. The film uses some stock war footage, and, interestingly to me, it doesn’t look as obviously different as in some films I’ve seen.

The negative reviews – they were 90% positive on Rotten Tomatoes – chide the movie for taking Turing and making him less interesting, less nuanced than he should have been portrayed. Moreover, the screen overlay coda of his ultimate fate was considered a bit of a cheat. Since I knew only the name, I can’t speak to the former. The latter argument has some validity, I suppose, but a late scene in the movie does explain the situation to my satisfaction.

Bottom line: I watched what was on the screen, without the background on Turing, and found myself quite entertained and informed.

Introspective or Narcissistic?

When I write something two or three days, or weeks, or months later, its lack of immediacy is actually valuable to me.

introspectionA few months back, David Brooks, a columnist with the New York Times, who I disagree with more than agree, asked the question How do you succeed in being introspective without being self-absorbed? He concludes: “The self is something that can be seen more accurately from a distance than from close up. The more you can yank yourself away from your own intimacy with yourself, the more reliable your self-awareness is likely to be.”

As someone who has had to periodically defend the fact that I engage in the (perceived) navel-gazing that is the personal blog, I do believe there is something to be said for this methodology: “We are better self-perceivers if we can create distance and see the general contours of our emergent system selves — rather than trying to unpack constituent parts.”

He suggests three ways of doing this.

“First, you can distance yourself by time.” Somewhere in my life, I have learned to do this. My first instinct in a situation is not always the best. Facebook debates are not only non-productive, generally speaking, they make me uneasy. So when I write something two or three days, or weeks, or months after an event, its lack of immediacy is actually valuable to me. It is less fraught with emotion.

“Second, we can achieve distance from self through language.” Sometimes, I am watching my own movie, and it’s not me commenting, but some iteration of me. This may not make sense to you, and I wish I could explain it better. But I have hit on a self-duality that’s useful.

“Finally, there is narrative… We should see ourselves as literary critics, putting each incident in the perspective of a longer life story.” Isn’t almost everything we experience in a broader context?

So, unintentionally, I’m taking life lessons from David Brooks. I can deal with that.

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