Category: Uncategorized

Great American Smokeout 2020

“They all are”

Great American SmokeoutIn a normal year, I would have been long aware of the Great American Smokeout 2020. I might have written about it a month or two ago. Of course, I needn’t tell you the obvious.

“The American Cancer Society Great American Smokeout® is an annual event that encourages and offers support to smokers to make a plan to quit smoking or to quit smoking on the day of the event – the third Thursday in November each year. By quitting – even for one day – smokers will be taking an important step toward a healthier life and reducing their cancer risk.”

Yeah, but you’ve given up so much already this year! Someone wants you to quit tobacco too? Well, yeah.

“Being a current or former cigarette smoker increases your risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

“If you currently smoke, quit. Now, if you used to smoke, don’t start again. If you’ve never smoked, don’t start. Counseling from a healthcare provider and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medications can double the chances of quitting smoking. For help quitting smoking, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visit smokefree.gov.

My sort of relative Arnold

Arnold Berman, the brother of my late great-aunt Charlotte I loved communicating with. He died in 2018, I believe, though my sense of time is shot to heck. He noted a few years ago, “You should know that the US Surgeon General was shamefully late with that first report.

Then this personal reflection. “I started smoking in 1939 at the age of 15 – I was pretty sophisticated. In 1952 I read the reports from Sweden clearly linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer. I discovered that this was old news with such reports dating back at least 10 years. Weighing this against the benefits of smoking I quit cold turkey – I was pretty sophisticated. In 1953 my wife of three years and I split. Wallowing in self-pity I started smoking again.

“In 2001 I discovered that I had an advanced abdominal aortic aneurysm and agreed to have open surgery for repair. My California daughter, a nurse-midwife, called the surgeon’s office to inform them that I was a smoker. She reported to me that the response was ‘they all are; that’s why they’re here.’ I gave up smoking for good.”

Empire State Plaza fireworks with sound

Corning Tower

Empire State Plaza pic
c. 2020 Chuck Miller. Used with permission.

It wasn’t that I needed another piece of “stuff.” But there was something both familiar and wacky about this piece of art and craft by Chuck Miller that I had to put in at least an opening bid on. And, as it turned out, I won.

Here is one of Chuck’s photos of the Empire State Plaza fireworks, this from 2018. He’s taken quite a few of them over the years. As he explains here, “I’ve dabbled with electro-luminescent wire projects – mostly my neon sign recreation projects that later became successful art sales at Historic Albany Foundation’s BUILT charitable auction.

“So I wanted to build another one, and this time I wanted to integrate sound-activated lights in it.” And he did and offered it to the HAF auction.

Yes, it does light up with sound activation, such as talking or clapping. Playing music on the CD, though was less successful unless I played it very loud. But two things really work to create sustained lighting. One is to sing Om at approximately the F below middle C. That is amazingly effective. And fun. One can do that for only so long, though.

The other is to take the sleep machine I use every night. For most purposes, I set it to Stream, which replicates a babbling brook. For this exercise, I put it on Calm, which sounds a bit like a chant. Maybe sometime, I’ll bug my wife to pull out her clarinet to see what sound is most effective.

Sight and sound

I’m musing on this piece’s appeal to me. It is a fine photograph. It’s also the Albany connection. The Corning Tower, at 42 stories, is the tallest building between Montreal and New York City.

The picture is a reminder of something approaching “normal” in 2020, though the shot was taken in 2018. I hadn’t gone down to the plaza to watch the fireworks n a couple of decades, as it’s too crowded and noisy. But I had done so frequently last century.

The combination of sight and sound connected with me. I always find my own photographs of fireworks depressingly lacking. And I have no skills whatsoever on the mechanical front.

If nothing else, I can put Empire State Plaza fireworks with sound below the front windows. If anyone tries to commit a break-in, the burglar will be startled by the flashing lights.

The Couples Club, with Trudy Green

The treasurer?

couples clubMy father was SO involved with activities that my mom often was overshadowed. My father’s first cousin Ruth sent me this photo of members of the Couples Club.

In the front row is Billie Anderson (I remember from the choir), Trudy Green (mom), and Eleanor Powell. In the back is Walter Smith, Midgett Parker (pillar of the church), and a guy neither Ruth nor I can identify. Cousin Ruth wrote, “This pic was taken from a 1970 / 1971 Trinity AME Zion yearbook.” She’s been “buried working on church history stuff.”

When I searched for Couples Club in Newspapers.com, I found a lot of churches and synagogues had them in that period. They were social groups but would also provide some services to the community. I wasn’t paying that much attention to their activities at my church. After graduating from high school in January 1971, I got a job at IBM in March and was working an average of 56 hours per week.

So I forgot Mom’s nice ‘fro. I’ve said this before, but she was a proud black woman. She might have had to work harder at it actually because she was so light-skinned. My mom and I talked a lot over the years about an array of topics. But I don’t remember us talking about that.

Balancing the checkbook

We did occasionally discussed being overshadowed by dad, the singer/artist/florist/activist. She didn’t, in my estimation, seek the limelight. But she had an ego too and enjoyed being appreciated like almost everyone else.

I have no idea, but if I were to take a guess, I imagine she was probably the treasurer of the Couples Club. She was very good with numbers, first as a bookkeeper at McLeans department store in Binghamton, NY. Later, she was a teller at First Union Bank in Charlotte, NC.

Whereas my father was terrible, awful with money. More specifically, dreadful at keeping track of expenditures. He’d buy items for their various flea market projects in Charlotte but fail to give the receipts to mom or their frustrated accountant Cecil.

Once, in the presence of the whole family, in January 1997, she really lit into him over money issues. It was quite uncharacteristic of her and wasn’t the topic we had been discussing. But she was correct on the facts.

Trudy Green would have been 93 today.

This is the comic strip Mark Trail?

Jules Rivera

Mark Trail 1991Of all of the comic strips in the various newspapers I’ve read in my life, one seemed particularly stilted. Mark Trail, my wife noted, looked old-fashioned even when we were growing up. The three-panel stories advanced the plot incredibly slowly.

The “handsome hero and outdoor man” was created by cartoonist and national parks guide, Ed Dodd. It debuted on April 15, 1946, complete with a Saint Bernard named Andy. While Jack Elrod had become an assistant on the daily strip around 1950, he didn’t get credit until June of 1979. Then in August 1991, Ed Dodd would retire his name from the strip, though Elrod had been doing the work for some time.

Right from the beginning, Tom Hill was the artist for the Sunday pages, though he didn’t get his name in the signature ball until July 1967. He did much of the drawing of the daily strip as well. He kept that job until he died in 1978. Then the creator for the daily strip generally completed the Sunday version as well.

Around 2004, Elrod “took on James Allen as an assistant and trained him to take over the strip when the time came. From 2014 Allen and his writing partner Brice Vorderbrug ran the show. After the July 25, 2020 strip, King Features Syndicate abruptly dictated that the new Mark Trail would end, right in the middle of a storyline. You can read the full chronology here.

Curveball

Surprise! For the strip of October 12, 2020, Jules Rivera took over. She is the creator of the webcomic Love, Joolz,. Rivera said, “I want to respect the legacy. I appreciate what the fans appreciate,” including Trail’s love for nature and dedication to protecting the environment. But “there are going to be jolts galore.”

And there are, for sure. Mark Trail wants to know if he has a “dadbod”?

Mark Trail.2020

It may be a cliche, but this simply is NOT your parents’ Mark Trail. It looks different, it reads differently. From a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “Rivera, 37, is of Puerto Rican descent. She is the lone Latinx producing a daily newspaper comic strip, a field that is almost solely the domain of white males. But she’s not intimidated by that because she’s been in that situation before.”

Given the fact that I used to use Mark Trail as a tranquilizer, I’ll be checking out the Rivera version for a while. Go to the Comics Kingdom site and see the past week’s strips for free. Or subscribe for $20/year and access its 60,000 comics archive.

Thoreau as a finder of things

Beck

ThoreauThis, or a variation of it, happens to me all of the time.

I bought a new phone. It’s an Apple 8 or whatnot, my first iPhone ever. I open it up and start trying to figure out whatever needs to be done. Invariably, I get interrupted. A couple days later, I’m back trying to set it up. But the iPhone apparently wants some settings on my old Android phone. And, of course, I can’t find it anymore.

Then my wife comes home. She’s been to the farmer’s market. She doesn’t have enough cash, and the vendor doesn’t take credit cards or checks, But he does take Venmo. She doesn’t have Venmo, but I do, on my old phone, naturally. After she tells me she needs to make this payment, I redouble my efforts. Not in the backpack or in any drawers or in some clothing in the hamper. After an hour, I give up.

The Albany Public Library had a book sale the previous weekend, which I worked at. I bought a few items, one of which was a CD called Best of Beck. This is by Jeff Beck, not the other guy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t open it, because the plastic encasement was locked. Alas, a dollar wasted.

Wait, I’m going to try to liberate the disc without destroying it. Using a couple of pairs of scissors, I succeed. I need to put the CD in a new case. Fortunately, I have a bunch of empties. I go to that drawer. Sitting right next to that dresser, in the bay window, is my damn Android phone.

It always happens

This happens a LOT to me. When I stop looking for something – total surrender – I often find it. There is a saying attributed to Henry David Thoreau that goes, “Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you.” But why is it always inanimate objects for me? it’s most often keys because I have an irrational disdain for them.

But it is also true that “if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” Though the woods are never the same. Or wherever.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial