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Alexander Hamilton: “Just you wait”

the world turned upside-down

By our calculations, my family has listened to the original cast recording of the musical Hamilton a minimum of 250 times in the past four years. This is not an exaggeration, and for my daughter, who had it on REPEAT as she went to bed, probably a vast undercount.

She knew/knows all the actors in the original cast and which roles they played. She has books, pictures, calendars about that production. For her part, my wife has finished the lengthy Ron Chernow book that Lin-Manuel Miranda read which eventually led to the musical.

We’ve watched Lin-Manuel Miranda’s performance at the White House Poetry Jam Writer on May 12, 2009, accompanied by Alex Lacamoire. This was Six Years Before the Play Hit the Broadway Stage.

We’ve seen, more than once, Hamilton’s America which debuted on October 21, 2016 as part of PBS’s “Great Performances”. We viewed the Tonys when the pop culture Broadway phenomenon won 11 of the 16 Tony Awards® for which it was nominated.

The creators received a special award at the Kennedy Center Honors. We’ve listened to the Weird Al parody.

And around Albany, NY, in particular, there’s the Hamilton Effect, with several sites of significance to him and especially the Schuylers, the family he married into. The Albany Institute of History and Art has an exhibit The Schuyler Sisters and Their Circle right now.

By coincidence, the Park Playhouse in Albany staged a production of In the Heights in July, Miranda’s FIRST Tony-winning musical. My wife and I enjoyed the show, puzzled by a local critic’s dis of the lead’s performance.

When we knew that Hamilton was coming to Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady, we bought three tickets each for the six shows in the package, back in May of 2018. (We had purchased two season ticket the year before, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch.) We weren’t going to throw away our shot at seeing the show. The wait seemed interminable.

Finally, it’s H-day, August 18. My wife switches out her purse because large, non-clear ones are banned.

For a piece I already know so well, will it be as enjoyable as I anticipated? The answer is an enthusiastic YES. This in spite of the fact that they used a standby, Wonza Johnson, usually played by Edred Utomi, for the title role.

My buddy Amy Biancolli wrote on Facebook: “It’s more than a musical. It’s an opera and a ballet and a discourse on grief and a thrilling, epic poem on the arc and nature of history. And it’s hilarious. And mesmerizing. And infectious. And moving.”

I did learn there are a few spoken-word bits in the story. My wife picked up on some plot points. I don’t think I cried more than three or four times. I’m convinced that understanding the libretto beforehand enhances the appreciation of the story. Even before the performance, Hamilton has been firmly lodged in my Top Five favorite musicals, along with West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof.

Renoir: “a hedonist’s dreamland”

Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow

Renoir.Clark Art My wife and I went to the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, MA. We’d surely been there at least a couple times before, though I don’t seem to have mentioned it in ye olde blogge.

The featured display was Renoir: The Body, The Senses. As the description notes: “From the late 1860s and early 1870s when he attempted to find fame at the Salon, through his Impressionist phase, and until his final years working steadfastly in the south of France, Renoir returned repeatedly, almost obsessively, to the subject of the body—clothed, certainly, but especially nude.”

And it wasn’t just his work, but that of his contemporaries such as Manet and Monet. While I wasn’t formally part of the tour, I listened in to one of the guides. She gave me a greater appreciation of the techniques used in the paintings, some of which are deteriorating somewhat. The display will be up until September 22.

We also viewed Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow. Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe (1889–1961) had some talent. More interesting, though, were the relationships. Georgia actively discouraged the artistic ambitions of Ida and their sister Catherine. Catherine abided by Georgia’s wishes; Ida did not.

Earlier, Ida often visited Georgia and Georgia’s husband Alfred Stieglitz. He took several photos of Ida, and it is thought that Alfred had a non-reciprocated flirtation with his sister-in-law. Ida once noted that she too could have been more famous if she had “a Stieglitz,” someone to promote her. The Ida O’Keeffe show is up through October 14.

My friend David Brickman discussed both of these displays HERE.

Then we did what we had never done. We went on a tour of the original building from the 1950s with two young women as our guides, one who just graduated from Williams College, and the other an incoming junior. It is an eclectic mix that reflected the taste of art collector Robert Sterling Clark and his wife, Francine.

The docents noted that during the Cold War, the Clarks worried about the safety of their artworks. Anticipating a possible attack on New York City, where they lived, they started looking at sites in rural New York and Massachusetts in order to found a museum for their art in a less vulnerable location.

Admission to the Clark Art Institute is $20, but free to students and those under 18. Since we have a card that reflects a reciprocal arrangement with a library in Albany, the visit was free. Last time, I bought some books; maybe I will next trip as well.

The title of this piece is from a Wall Street Journal review.

The I states: IA, IL, IN, oh, and ID

The Second City is now third

I map — Created / Published: New York, Published by G. Woolworth Colton; agent, Chicago, Rufus Blanchard, 1858. From the Library of Congress.

An interesting thing to me: of the four of them, three of the I states, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, are in a line, east to west. I had been to NONE of them in the 20th century. OK, I rode a train through Indiana in 1998, and I had been to Chicago, Illinois’ O’Hare airport a few times. But I never counted those.

Then in 2008, I made it to Chicago, for real, which I wrote about HERE. That was state #30 I visited. And in 2019, I made it to West Lafayette, IN, making the tally 31. At this rate, I’ll have visited every state by the year 2228.

ID Idaho Abbreviation is first two letters The usual traditional shorter version was Ida. My great aunt’s sister was named Ida. Capital and largest city: Boise. It’s in two time zones, Mountain (primarily) and Pacific.
That B-52’s song Private Idaho is irrationally stuck in my head.

IL Illinois Abbreviation is first two letters, traditional version is Ill., which is kind of sick.
Capital: Springfield, home of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
Largest city: Chicago, which used to be referred to as Second City – thus SCTV – because it was the second-largest city in the US, but now it’s third, after New York City and Los Angeles.
Arthur pointed out recently that this season was the centennial of the Red Summer, a painful picture of America’s racist past.
Here’s Chicago by Frank Sinatra.

IN Indiana Abbreviation is the first two letters, traditionally Ind.
Capital and largest city: Indianapolis.
Here’s a Wikipedia factoid: “As of 2013 Indiana has produced more National Basketball Association (NBA) players per capita than any other state. Muncie has produced the most per capita of any American city, with two other Indiana cities in the top ten… The 1986 film Hoosiers” – which is very good – “is inspired by the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions Milan High School.”
Vice-President, and former Indiana governor Mike Pence has been feuding with South Bend, IN mayor, and Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (pronounced like it’s spelled).
Strange song on a Motown label: Indiana Wants Me – R. Dean Taylor

IA Iowa First and last letters in the abbreviation, which is the traditional abbreviation, if people bothered to shorten it at all.
Capital and largest city: Des Moines.
The state gets outsized attention because it holds the first presidential caucus in the country, even before the first primary, which is in New Hampshire. Gatherings of voters select delegates to the state conventions.
The Iowa State Fair claims to be the inspiration for a novel and three movies. It is home to the world-famous Butter Cow, weighing about 600 pounds and standing 5.5 feet tall.
Here are a bunch of songs about the Hawkeye State.

For ABC Wednesday

Labor Day: unions; corporate greed

eating a salad isn’t going to fix the systemic problems at your workplace

unions.afl-cio.2013 It’s Labor Day, my first not working in a very long time. Among other things, I was thinking about unions. To the best of my recollection, I have never belonged to one. Yet I have been a big fan of them.

“The early labor movement was… inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from… the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship.”

Organized labor unions have “fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.”

One of the conclusions I’ve come to as a former business librarian is that when ownership/management treats workers equitably, the need/desire for unions declines significantly. I have been aware of employees who were offered membership in a union but declined because the benefits seemed fair.

On the other hand, I have some knowledge of the formation of two unions. Both are in Albany, created in the past quarter-century, and both were as a result of the churlishness of management.

In other labor news, I’ve read that the immigration crackdown is targeting labor protections. “Undocumented immigrants are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, but the administration has quietly eroded protections within a federal program for immigrants who come forward to report labor trafficking, sexual harassment and other forms of abuse. The administration is also attempting to crush a union representing immigration judges.”

Truthout says The Answer to Burn Out at Work Isn’t “Self-Care” — It’s Unionizing. “It’s true that healthy food, exercise, and sleep are important ways to deal with stress, and we could all use more of each. But eating a salad isn’t going to fix the systemic problems at your workplace.”

1 in 4 Americans works for a federal contractor. The regime is proposing to drop protections for LGBTQ employees. “Their latest proposed regulation out of the Department of Labor” adds “unprecedented religious exemptions to a long-standing executive order prohibiting discrimination against the employees of federal contractors that includes protections added by President Obama for sexual orientation and gender identity.” His successor promised to keep this order “intact,” but he’s gone back on his word.

Top executives are now earning 278 times more than the average American worker, up from a ratio of 58-to-1 in 1989. A new study, released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows CEO pay has grown more than 1,000% since 1978.

Pay for average workers, though, grew just 12% in the same time period. America’s chief executive officers were paid $17.2 million on average in 2018. Corporate greed is eviscerating the working class.

Here’s My Heart: Matthew 14

who’s got the buttons?

walk on water The Friday Triennium features Matthew 14: Here’s My Heart. The story was specifically about verses 22-34. After the death of John the Baptist, and the feeding of the 5000, Jesus sent the disciples off on a boat while he dismissed the crowd.

This is the section where Jesus walks on the water, freaking out his chums until they recognize him. Peter walks on water too until he doubts. “Oh ye of little faith” has been considered a put down of Peter – hey, none of the others even tried! – but in fact, the message of the day is that, to quote Pete Townshend, a little is enough.

You do not need to believe in the miraculous nature of the story. The bottom line is that stepping out into stormy waters is a difficult thing to do. We try anyway.

One of the tasks of the Albany group plus our two Connecticut friends was for each of us to write a note, ostensibly positive, to each and every other person in our group. I was touched by the comments I got from our tribe.

The most fascinating phenomenon I witnessed during the week was the exchanging of pins/buttons. Almost everyone was trying to get buttons from other locales. Some had garnered a couple hundred. Think about how fascinated five-year-olds are with stickers and multiply it twentyfold.

Our folks got about 20 pins each, the I Love NY variety that our coordinator got from the state tourism department for free. We probably should have brought far more. O the other hand, they became a desired commodity.

The intergenerational group played a trust game; no leaning backward was necessary. One had to guess how many different types of pies, Presidents, books of the Old Testament and elements the next team cold name. The second-oldest guy in the room got the OT question and nailed it; he was, we later learned, a minister.

There were tables of various entities of the church, where one could pick up their literature. One was called U Kirk, which “provides professional support, empowerment and community for those engaged in campus ministry on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)” It turns out that the woman at the table knew our pastors and even shared the first name of one of them.

Another involved becoming a Matthew 25 church. “Matthew 25:31–46 calls all of us to actively engage in the world around us, so our faith comes alive and we wake up to new possibilities. Convicted by this passage, both the 222nd and 223rd General Assemblies (2016 and 2018) exhorted the PC(USA) to act boldly and compassionately to serve people who are hungry, oppressed, imprisoned or poor.” As it turned out, only three days earlier, the Session of my congregation at home had already agreed to join the effort.

Lots of the Purdue students were riding rented bicycles and scooters this week, and a few of the Presbyterians tried the scooters as well. If I had brought my helmet, I might have rented a bike myself.

Another great sermon, I believe involving a LEGO movie. It’s been a good time, but I’m ready to go home.