Roger O Green

LaMBS is 60

Lynn was one of my best friends in college, then we lost touch for a good long while.

When I was in college, I was co-editor of a thrice-weekly newsletter, inexplicably called the Wind Sun News, sponsored by the Student Government. They instituted this publication in no small measure because the editors of The Oracle, the student newspaper, decided that political issues such as American involvement in overthrowing Chile’s Allende in favor of Pinochet were more important to cover than the prosaic issue of college governance.

I had a very good friend then, who I’ll call Lynn, mostly because it was her name. She had been kvetching about turning 20. It was a Wind Sun News night, when a bunch of us would work from 8 or 9 p.m. until around 2 a.m., and occasionally later. Normally, Lynn would be there, but her friend Pam convinced her to go out to dinner with her because she “needed” to talk to Lynn about her relationship with her boyfriend. It was an effective ruse because Pam apparently DID talk to her about the beau.

Lynn came back to the office just before midnight, glum because the staff was still all around, which she assumed meant the newsletter wasn’t done. Except that it WAS done, since the other co-editor, Kevin, and I had hustled to do so, largely that afternoon. The staffers were all there to put together and celebrate Lynn’s birthday.

At some point, around 2:30-2:45 a.m. on what was by then her actual natal day, everyone had left the office except Lynn (who fell asleep on some furniture), a Vietnam vet I’ll call Paul, who was in love with Lynn and kept staring at her, and me who kept watching him. Finally c. 4 a.m., he left. I locked the door and slept on a chair or sofa.

About 7 a.m., Lynn wakes up and says, “Roger?” (It’s pitch-black in the room – no windows – so one can’t see anything). I must be half-awake & say “Yes?” We take the newsletter to the printer, go out and eat breakfast at the Plaza Dinner – not unusual – then later pick up the newsletter to distribute. Lynn was one of my best friends in college, then we lost touch for a good long while. But we’ve been in e-mail contact the last couple years. I always remember her birthday because it’s an arithmetic sentence: 4X14=56.

So happy birthday, Lynn, 40 years after that night still stuck in my memory.

The graphic is a blend of two different iterations of the WSN.

Presidential primary in New York is April 19

The polls do not open until 12 noon in most of upstate New York

A grumpy person’s guide to the Presidential primary in New York:

1. If you’re not enrolled in a political party (Democratic or Republican), you can’t vote, because they are closed primaries. New York has, arguably, the most restrictive primary voting regulations in the country. New voters had to enroll in a party by March 25, but previously registered folks would have had to have switched their party affiliation by October 9 of LAST year. There is pending legislation to change that, but it won’t affect this year.

Find out if you are registered to vote if you are enrolled in a party, and where you vote.

2. If you need to vote by absentee ballot, it’s too late to write the Board of Elections a letter requesting it. However, you can pick up an application, or print one out, and deliver the application in person no later than the day before the election, i.e., April 18.

3. The absentee ballot itself “must either be personally delivered to the board of elections no later than the close of polls on election day, or postmarked by a governmental postal service not later than the day before the election and received no later than the 7th day after the election.”

4. You may need that absentee ballot because the polls do not open until 12 noon in most of upstate New York, closing at 9 p.m. In New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, the polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m.

5. You will have the opportunity to vote for the candidates and, on the Democratic side, also their delegates. Whether or not you vote for delegates, the candidates will get delegates proportionate to his or her votes. So if there are seven delegate slots, whoever get more votes, based on the allocation, will be the first one or ones chosen to go to the convention.

The candidates on the Democratic side are U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The candidates on the Republican side are business mogul Donald J. Trump, governor John R. Kasich (OH), surgeon Ben Carson, and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (TX).

Here are some demographics of New Yorkers.

N is for New York State

Seneca Falls is the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement.

When people from far outside from here think of the state of New York, the idea of skyscrapers and concrete usually come to mind.

Surely, people all over tend to generalize a place by its most noted locale – it’s likely people from New York think that everyone in Iowa is a farmer. But I think New York suffers from it more. Not only is New York, New York the largest city in the country, the “it’s so nice they named it twice” phenomenon really locks it in.

Not only that, many of our favorite songs about New York from the ILoveNY website are about NYC, and they’re not even including songs from Frank Sinatra or Daryl Hall.

One expects “finance, insurance, and real estate” to “comprise New York’s most important service industry group and New York City is the prime driver in this area. New York City is the nation’s leading financial center, home to the New York Stock Exchange.”

One knows about the various art museums, the United Nations, the Empire State Building, Coney Island, and the like. (Here’s an NYC story about when pinball was illegal.)

However, New York has a lot of territory north of the Bronx. The Adirondack Mountains region, “encompassing one-third of the total land area of New York State,” has 46 rugged peaks, and is known for “extensive wild landscapes, which includes tracts of an old-growth forest; wildflowers abound, and hundreds of species of shrubs, herbs, and grasses may be encountered in a day’s outing.”

Letchworth State Park, “renowned as the ‘Grand Canyon of the East,’ is one of the most scenically magnificent areas in the eastern U.S.” I’m hoping to visit there this year for the very first time.

Seneca Falls is the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement.

Cooperstown not only has the Baseball Hall of Fame but two other museums, all of which I have visited more than once.

New York is also an agricultural state. Among the 50 states, our rankings:

* Apples – 2nd
* Wine and juice grapes – 3rd
* Fresh Market vegetables – 6th
* Processing vegetables -5th; leading crops are cabbage, sweet corn, and onions.
* Field Crops – “New York produces a variety of field crops largely in support of its dairy industry. Corn, oats, and wheat are most widely grown with soybeans steadily increasing importance. NY is 3rd in corn silage.
* Milk and dairy production – 4th. “Dairy Milk is New York’s leading agricultural product and is produced all across the state. Milk sales account for over one-half of total agricultural receipts.”
* Duck meat and duck – 5th
* Maple syrup – 2nd

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

12 albums

I associate Led Zeppelin I with a bicycle accident,

Here’s an ill person’s guide to blogging. You get some Facebook and blogging buddy to write, on the former platform:

Rules: Copy this and paste in your status update, list 12 albums that have stayed with you, but only 1 per band/artist. Don’t take too long and don’t think too hard… No compilations.

Well, the not thinking part was easy. Links to all songs listed.

1. Revolver – The Beatles. This will always be on the list. Unless it’s Rubber Soul. Many specific memories growing up with this album.
Representative song: For No One; this version is by Paul McCartney

2. Pet Sounds – Beach Boys. Whereas this will ALWAYS be on the list, period. The movie Love and Mercy has only enhanced my appreciation.
Representative song: You Still Believe in Me

3. Sticky Fingers – Rolling Stones. I always bounce between this album and Aftermath, the first Rolling Stones LP I think of as an album as opposed to hits and filler.
Representative song: Sway

4. Sweet Baby James – James Taylor. Lived in every dorm room in the early ’70s.
Representative song: Lo and Behold

5. Court and Spark – Joni Mitchell. Inextricably tied to a short-lived romance.
Representative song: Free Man in Paris

6. Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland. I LOVED the cover, as well as the music therein.
Representative song: Remove This Doubt

7. Puzzle People – Temptations. Barely beat out The Temptations with a Lot o’ Soul. This is part of the wah-wah sound of the group, as David Ruffin left and Dennis Edwards joined an album earlier.
Representative song: Don’t Let The Joneses Get You Down

8. Still Crazy After All These Years – Paul Simon. Inextricably tied to the Okie in my mind. If I ever got it together to pick my favorite albums of the 1970s, this would be in the top five.
Representative song: I Do It for Your Love

9. We Shall Overcome – Pete Seeger. I wrote extensively about this album here.
Representative song: Tshotsholosa (Road Song)

10. Talking Book – Stevie Wonder. He had a series of great albums this year (1972), and the next, and the next, and two years after that.
Representative song: I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)

11. The Band (2nd album, brown cover). Like much of my early music, I was turned onto this album by good friend Karen.
Representative song: King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

12. Led Zeppelin (1st album). Oddly enough, I associate this with a bicycle accident, which I wrote about here.
Representative track: How Many More Times

I didn’t even get past 1975.

Advisory: Presidential Candidates Visiting Albany

Parking Restrictions: Monday, April 11, 2016 from 8:00 a.m. to Midnight

Here’s an email I got a couple days ago, but failed to post:

The Albany Police Department has learned that three presidential candidates will be coming to the City of Albany next week [TODAY, on the same day!]

On Monday, April 11, 2016, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and businessman Donald Trump are all planning on holding events.

Governor Kasich is scheduled to be at the Fort Orange Club, 110 Washington Avenue from 12:00 p.m. to approximately 2:00 p.m. for a private event.

Senator Sanders will be holding a rally at the Washington Avenue Armory located at the corner of Lark Street and Washington Avenue. Doors will open at 11:00 a.m. and Senator Sanders is scheduled to speak at 2:00 p.m. The event will conclude at approximately 3:30 p.m.

[The University Club is only a couple blocks from the Armory.]

Donald Trump will be holding a rally at The Times Union Center, 51 South Pearl Street. Doors will open at 4:00 p.m. and Trump is scheduled to speak at 7:00 p.m. The event will conclude at approximately 9:00 p.m.

[This is a handful of blocks away from the Fort Orange Club, and a couple block s from where I work.]

For full details, view this message on the web.

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