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.
The Wife DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed.
I know I go kicking and screaming over learning new technologies. But, sometimes, my (somewhat younger) wife is as old-fashioned as I am. Possibly more so.
I am on Twitter and Facebook, albeit grudgingly; she is not, though she plans to start with the latter. She is one of the few people I know who still has an AOL account; actually, I do too, but I seldom use it.
She’s still using her bank register to check for charitable contributions at the end of the year. I just go to the bank online. I’m not even sure she uses her ATM card.
However, she DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed; rebooting actually did the trick. She’s clearly more mechanically inclined than I, since, if there are four possible ways of doing something, I will have tried the other three first, while she intuits that stuff a WHOLE lot better.
Since she’s a teacher, she has the summer off. (“Off” being a relative term, since she’s got to get the contractor to finish the bathroom, and to watch The Daughter on the weeks she’s not at summer camp, and do SOMETHING with that former pool area in the back yard…) Plus she has to sort through all the stuff in the home office to decide what would make good lesson plans for the fall, and what has become outdated.
But she’s also pegged this summer as a time for discovery. Perhaps by the end of the summer, she’ll be reading on that Kindle she got a while back.
This is less an essay, and more a series of links to bits about Albany, New York’s past and present.
I just realized, though, that I’ve now lived in Albany, capital of the Empire State, for 35 years now. At least thirteen addresses, staying at the current one for the past 14 years.
The area’s airport has a great set of letters, ALB. Do you know how newspeople identify a state or country by its capital? “Moscow is thinking… Washington reacts…” People say that about our historically inept – though a little more ept in recent years – state government. “What’s wrong with Albany?” They MEAN the state; guess that’s the curse of living in the capital city.
Not that Albany itself doesn’t have its quirks. The current mayor is Kathy Sheehan, the city’s first woman mayor in its over 325-year history. The guy before her served 20 years; two guys before him, 41. *** Here’s a 17-minute video about the creation of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a controversial project which meant dozens of houses and other buildings being razed. Then-governor Nelson Rockefeller, as the joke goes, developed an edifice complex.
It concerns a diplomatic visit to Albany from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, during Rockefeller’s first year in office, and the new Governor’s embarrassment and chagrin when she rode in his limo through the “Pastures”, and witnessed the seediness of the neighborhood around the Mansion– this was the moment, it is alleged, that Rockefeller resolved to build something monumental, fitting the grandeur of his administration, so that foreign dignitaries could pay calls without having to see the slime and grime of a typical Northeastern city. The story may contain a grain of truth–and the visit was certainly real–but it also seems clear that Rockefeller even before his swearing-in, had begun… to think about fixing up the deteriorating neighborhood where he’d be spending the next few years
I’d see Michael, dubbed the Archangel by a local judge, on Lark Street often, especially in Trinity United Methodist Church in the 1990s. My girlfriend at the time (now The Wife) was a tad afraid of him, and understandably so, but I usually got along with him. When I saw him with a legitimate job at the flower shop in the aforementioned Empire State Plaza, I was floored. But the gig, to no one’s surprise, didn’t last long. There will likely be a casino in the area – for me personally, a big yuck – but Albany’s Exit 23 is now out of the running. Dan thinks that’s a good thing.
Crossing the street in Albany is difficult. Fundamentally true. Albany, in an alternate future. A comprehensive plan for redeveloping the city of Albany — as proposed in 1963. As Albany Archives commented: “A convention center on Elk St, housing at Jennings Landing, ‘The Washington Park Arterial’… it’s so scary! Here’s the takeaway quote: ‘By 1980, the central area of Albany, like cities all over the United States, will be almost completely rebuilt.'”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
As someone who takes the bus at least part of the way to work most days, I am regularly reminded why I hate listening to other people’s cellphone conversations, and why some public conveyances thankfully ban the use of those contraptions.
I’m sitting across a woman and her daughter, about ten, give or take a year, on the CDTA (local) bus. The mom is on the phone talking to her friend, and I’m not paying attention, until she says: “Do you know what I really hate about Eddie*? He comes into the bathroom when I’m trying to pee and s###!” Then she goes on about how, when she closes the bathroom door, he pounds on the door and demands to know what she’s doing in there. And she repeats her intentions.
At this point, the daughter says, “TMI, mommy!” She actually used the initials, rather than “too much information.” But either the mom doesn’t hear her or feels the need to continue with this important telephonic conversation.
The girl is sitting right across from me and looks at me with this exasperated gaze. I give her the “what can you do?” shrug. She says a little louder, “Mommy, everybody on the bus can hear you!” This was probably true.
But the mom continues. She said, on her phone, just before I got off, “You know, we were going to get married today. Well, THAT’S off!” And I know TMI, so I nod affirmatively to myself. *** Sidebar: I went to the Tulip Festival on Mother’s Day weekend. As soon as he sees me, the guy at the CDTA booth immediately knows me by name. The one thing he noted is that, in my LAST blog post about CDTA, I mentioned a crazy woman on board. I’m sure he’ll love this one as well.
I don’t know if you’ve answered this one, but I’d like to know in what city/country would you live if you could live anywhere else in the world. And why. 🙂
The default answer for a lot of Americans is Canada. It’s like the US, except they have better health care and don’t fear the metric system, the argument has been. And if the globe is warming, Canada might be a thought. But those waves of cold weather this past winter in the US, all stored to our north, and fueled by the Arctic melting, worries me.
The United Kingdom my wife loves. But it appears broken economically and is subject to that same nasty weather we experience on this side of the pond.
I don’t know enough about Belize, but moving closer to the equator doesn’t interest me much. I loved Barbados, but, in addition to too much heat, and hurricanes, I can’t imagine living on a small island. Not diverse enough geographically, and too expensive.
Ultimately, I think it’d have to be in the Southern Hemisphere. While Australia seems interesting, the ghastly warm weather that has been experienced in the interior the last couple of years, north of 125F/50C would keep me away from everything except the east coast cities.
Another option, I suppose, is New Zealand. This is in no small part because Arthur the AmeriNZ has described it so well in his blog and podcasts. It’s reasonably progressive. Now I may NEVER figure out its electoral system the way I know the US system. Then again the US system is broken, so no big loss.
Climate change will affect NZ too, but the southern landmass of Antarctica may make that a LITTLE less terrible, for a time. Now, it IS on the ring of fire of volcanic and earthquake activities, which makes me nervous. Still, I guess I’ll say New Zealand because at least I’d know someone there. *** SamuraiFrog wants to know:
At what point is an argument over for you? I know someone on Tumblr who recently engaged in victim-blaming just to end an argument. He felt bad about it, knew it was wrong, admitted it, and sincerely apologized. But some people are still invested in making him feel bad about it. At what point do you let something like that go?
It all depends. What is the “crime”, first of all? Some dumb comment someone makes in the heat of the moment might get a pass unless it’s so hateful and vicious that you have to surmise that, deep down, that he or she must be a really awful person.
Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame gave a really nasty racist rant, I hear. I didn’t listen to it. There’s a point, though, that it is in the past, and for me, Richards is there.
Of course, it matters if it is a real apology. Richards sincerely apologized. I’m sure I must have mentioned this topic somewhere about bad apologies. Oh, there it is, from 2009:
DON’T use the word BUT. An example would be, “I’m sorry, BUT you started it.” DON’T use the word IF. My least favorite apology: “I’m sorry IF you’re offended.” The clear implication is that you really SHOULDN’T be offended, but I better say it anyway.
Lame apologies get zero points from me.
Nasty words written are more difficult to forgive. I do know that people can get caught up in a debate on social media, though, which is why I tend to minimize my contribution to the same.
But some acts are so egregious that even a sincere-sounding apology is hard to accept: “I’m truly sorry that I molested those boys over a 20-year period.” Not satisfactory.
Now, online fights, I’ll just walk away from, even if THEY think that, by not responding, they think I think they’re right. I suspect that your Tumblr acquaintance, assuming he keeps his nose clean, will come out OK, if only because his critics will latch on to someone else.
Whereas a face-to-face or phone argument might be a different issue, especially among friends or relatives. You may have heard stories of fights that went on for years or even decades. True of my maternal grandmother and her brother over the fact that he was “living in sin” with a woman in the 1960s.
Go, Argentina!
And speaking of arguing – Not an ARA question, but rather a comment by Lisa to this post:
I would encourage you to try and get back into one of the groups at your church. That seems to be an area of importance for you and may be the best place to nurture those human interactions. But you’ll always have us…….:-)
As it turned out, I actually had an odd incident at one of these groups back in April, and it’s not entirely settled.
It was after The Daughter was starting to get better after her terrible March. I hadn’t gone to the previous meeting, partly because it was Lydia’s birthday, but partially because she was still having issues. Getting together with this group was something I was clearly looking forward to, as I had purchased lots of snacks.
But one guy dominated the conversation with references most of the rest of us did not understand for a good half hour. By the time I got to say something, someone made a joke that less upset me than distracted me from what I had hoped to be talking about. I angrily stormed out and didn’t come back for the last three or four meetings before the summer break. I may return in the fall.
Still, it’s not the same as one-on-one conversation with an old friend.
Taylor Kitsch is best known for the acclaimed TV series Friday Night Lights.
The Wife and I went to the Spectrum Theatre on a recent Saturday night. I knew little about any of the movies, so we opted for the film down from four showings per day to two, The Grand Seduction.
From the IMDB description: “The small harbor of Tickle Cove [probably Newfoundland, Canada] is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French (Brandon Gleeson) leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis (Taylor Kitsch) he employs – along with the whole town – tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.”
It takes a bit to set up the premise, but eventually, there are lots of laughs, coming from these folks who are looking for meaning in their life that work used to provide. We enjoyed it quite a bit and related to many of the characters. It also provided an interesting parallel about the value of honesty.
Gleeson is a versatile actor who often plays the heavy. Kitsch is best known for the acclaimed TV series Friday Night Lights. The last movie in which I saw Gordon Pinsent, who played Simon, Murray’s aide de camp, was in the very different Away from Her (2006).
The reviewers were mixed on this, 61% positive in Rotten Tomatoes. One of the negative reviews read, “Loved Local Hero? Charmed by Waking Ned Devine? Then go watch Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine.” Funny that, because right as the movie ended, this woman sitting right behind us said, “It was good but not as good as Ned Devine.” I did see that quirky film 15 years ago, and liked it fine, but don’t remember it well enough to make the comparison.
Don’t know that you need to run out to your local theater to see it – if you can even find it – but it’s worth at least a rental. Here’s a video review that doesn’t reveal too much.
I know I go kicking and screaming over learning new technologies. But, sometimes, my (somewhat younger) wife is as old-fashioned as I am. Possibly more so. 
