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Exiting my jobs over the years

I have no idea about these things

exiting Since I am about to leave my job of 26 years plus, I thought I’d mention exiting my jobs in the past.

The majority of the slip and fall cases according to the statistics happened at work, most of the time this accidents could have been prevented by the employer, that is the reason why this cases end up in court.

IBM, Endicott, NY, 03-09/1971: I was working the evening shift, 5:12 p.m.-2 a.m., though it was usually until 4 a.m. I worked on putting this laminated gel on computer boards, then heating these boards in ovens, then attaching plastic plates to the board.

I was very good. Too good, in fact, because the first process was so easy that the job quota went from 60 items/hour to 80/hour. The day shift had been slacking off. In retaliation, the day shift did a ton of the first process, leaving the more precise second task for me.

When I left, my manager was disappointed, but I needed to go to college.

Some box factory, 2 weeks in the summer of 1973, described here. After they gave me grief about my productivity, they begged me to stay.

Albany Savings Bank, teller, 02/1978 – two days after my training was over, and I was on the window by myself, spending an hour trying to find a five cent overage, I quit with two days notice. They weren’t happy but they were only paying me $6000 a year, less than what I had in my drawer every day.

Schenectady Arts Council, 03/1978-01/1979 – I took this job, which, BTW, paid $8200. It was a lot more fun and interesting.

Ostensibly, I was the bookkeeper, but I solicited ads for a fundraiser to fix Proctors Theatre, I was a dance partner for the choreographer when she taught disco to school, and most regularly, I ran the biweekly Artisans’ Arcade in the Proctors’ walkway.

When the federal funding was suddenly cut, a bunch of us went out drinking. I’m fairly sure I called my girlfriend to come pick me up.

Empire Blue Cross, 02/1979-03/1980 – described here.

FantaCo, 05/1980-11/1988 – the comic book store/publisher/mail order place. It was a great job for a long time. But as I wrote here, I was just burned out.

I thought I would never have a job with a tenure more than the 8.5 years I worked at FantaCo. Yet I was at the NY SBDC greater than thrice as long, proving I have no idea about these things.

Listen to I Quit – Blotto

For ABC Wednesday

June rambling: hope, not optimism

Libraries Are ‘Second Responders’

TheFour

We need hope, not optimism

In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen N.S.A. Tool Wreaks Havoc

Alarm Over Use of Facial Recognition as Groups Demand Federal Moratorium

This is not sustainable: Analysis shows massive gap between CEO and workers’ pay is getting worse

Trade Wars: A Real-Life Game of Thrones

The tax cuts effect

The Arctic Is Thawing So Fast, Scientists Are Losing Their Measuring Tools

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Medical device approval process and the Equal Rights Amendment

Amy Biancolli: Women always know their bodies are not their own

The Catholic Church spent $10 million on lobbyists in a fight to stymie priest sex abuse suits

Auschwitz Is Not a Metaphor – The new exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage gets everything right — and fixes nothing

Human remains on Canadian beach are Irish famine victims from 1847

How archaeologists found the last American slave ship and one famous descendent of that passage

Let Your Voice Be Heard! Radio: A Criminal Injustice Story – The Central Park Five have been exonerated and their story is finally being heard. But, there is still so much work to be done and Why I Can’t Bring Myself to Watch “When They See Us”

Why Narcissists And Gaslighters Blatantly Lie — And Get Away With It

When Libraries Are ‘Second Responders’

Vlogbrothers: On Sharing the Walk

Dooky Chase owner Leah Chase

What James Holzhauer’s Jeopardy Streak Meant

To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World’s Worst Sandwich

How to Prepare Your Bedroom for an Emergency

8 City Names We Bet You Can’t Pronounce – Skaneateles, NY, U.S.A. I can, actually

The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years

What’s My Line? – Doris Day’s FIRST Television Appearance in 1954

This film was entirely made with AI

When you get that ‘friend request’ from someone… who’s really not your ‘friend’

Now I Know: The Goalie Who Wouldn’t Stop and Why You Shouldn’t Tick off a Tiger and Where No Kidney Stone Has Gone Before and Why you may be playing basketball in your slippers and The Casual Slur in Your Utility Drawer and The Coffee Brand That is a Total Lie and The Desert’s No Fly Zone

MUSIC

Why We Build the Wall – Original Cast of Hadestown

‘Be More Chill’ parody of Michael in the Bathroom

2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Dr. John on Letterman

The Monster Song – Freezepop

Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve

Dog Breath Variations of Frank Zappa

A tone poem from the symphonic cycle Ma Vlast (My Country), From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields – composed by Bedrich Smetana

Propane – Pinkard & Bowden

I’m Still Standing – Sonny Vande Putt

Africa and If I Needed Someone – MonaLisa Twins meets Mike Massé

That Year – Brandi Carlile

First Suite in E-flat – Gustav Holst

Coverville 1264: Cover Stories for Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle and CeeLo Green

People who sing daily live longer

THE FIRST YEAR AND THE WHO yes, we mean Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey

Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony Completed Using AI

Clarence Devan Williams: grandfather

I don’t remember my maternal grandfather

I’ve seldom mentioned my maternal grandfather, Clarence Devan Williams. It’s because I don’t remember him. He died in July 1958 in Owego, Tioga County, about 20 miles from Binghamton, Broome County, at the age of about 71.

From what I knew, he was the son of Margaret, or Marguerite (1865-1931) and Charles Williams, who was a year older or a year younger, depending on which Census you check.

Clarence had a brother Charles Nathaniel Williams (1885–1923) who was about two years his senior, and they both reportedly played Negro Leagues baseball somewhere.

In 1900, they lived on 103 Paige Street in Owego.

But there’s a record in the New York, Census of Inmates in Almshouses and Poorhouses, 1830-1920 suggesting that a Clarence Williams was the “illegitimate child of Mary Williams – December 20, 1887.”

Someone suggested in a note in Ancestry.com that Clarence might have been adopted. Presumably Mary was the sister of the elder Charles.

Clarence was a laborer at some point in his early twenties. I have no idea how he met Gertrude Williams in Binghamton, but they apparently got married in 1927 and had two children. One was my mother, born in 1927, and the other was a female child who died in early 1929.

The family lore suggested that Gertrude’s mother somehow drove Clarence away. But Lillian Holland died in 1938, yet he mostly stayed away.

There’s a guy, a black male, named Clarence Nat Williams, who had a 1942 draft registration card, though he was 55. If it’s the same guy – by then he was living in Deposit, Broome County, with a Charles Williams. Did he take his brother’s middle name as a tribute?

This was just a quick and dirty search in Ancestry for less than an hour, and it was like falling into a wormhole. I acknowledge that some of my assumptions may be wrong.

This is why I need to retire, in order to track these and other familial mysteries down. I have a feeling it’s going to take awhile, especially since I have no contact with the Williams tribe, and, of course, I can’t ask my mother.

Maybe sometime I’ll go to Evergreen Cemetery in Owego. I don’t believe I’ve ever been to the grave site of Clarence Devan Williams, unless my mom took me there when I was very young.

Singer Lionel Richie turns 70

He has sold over 90 million records worldwide

Lionel Richie grew up on the campus of Tuskegee Institute where his grandfather worked. He attended the Alabama school on a tennis scholarship.

I knew him initially as a member of the soul group the Commodores. Early on, their songs were quite danceable. But eventually, Richie wrote and sang more sometimes syrupy ballads. It was probably inevitable that he’d become a solo artist in 1982, and he became even more commercially successful.

“Over the course of his musical career, Richie has sold over 90 million records worldwide, making him one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time. He has won four Grammy Awards including Song of the Year in 1985 for ‘We Are the World’ which he co-wrote with Michael Jackson…”

He composed “Lady” for Kenny Rogers, which hit #1 pop and CW in 1980 and he wrote and produced “Missing You” for Diana Ross (#10 Pop, #1 RB) in 1984.

“In 2016, Richie received the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award.” He received one of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017, which he threatened to boycott if the White House resident attended.

I haven’t watched American Idol for over a dozen years. Yet I’m oddly pleased that he has been one of the judges for the past couple seasons. He is still touring; his “epic 33-date Hello Tour across North America” started May 10th and runs through August.”

Lionel Richie turns 70 on June 20.

Commodores

Brick House – #5 pop, #4 RB in 1977
Easy – #4 pop, #1 RB in 1977
Three Times A Lady – #1 pop AND RB for two weeks in 1978

Solo

Endless Love, with Diana Ross – #1 for nine weeks pop, #1 for seven weeks RB in 1981
All Night Long – #1 for four weeks pop, #1 for seven weeks RB in 1983
Hello – #1 for two weeks pop, #1 for three weeks RB in 1984
Say You, Say Me – #1 for four weeks pop, #1 for two weeks RB in 1985, won the Oscar for Best Song, from the movie White Nights
Dancing on the Ceiling – #2 for two weeks pop, #6 RB in 1986

Plus

We Are The World – USA for Africa, #1 for four weeks pop, #1 for two weeks RB in 1985, sold over four million copies in the US

TD Ameritrade TV Commercial, ‘All Evening Long’

His official website

(RB – soul/rhythm and blues; CW – country; stats from US Billboard charts)

More susceptible to falsehood than to truth

Anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited

truth I receive Quotable Notes daily. One from March: “Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.” –Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), a Dutch humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance. I don’t know that “the first editor of the New Testament” is correct. But it WOULD appear so.

For the past couple years, in order not to write about him ALL THE TIME, I’ve posted on this date some links about a person who has described himself, more than once as a “an extremely stable genius”.

This has turned out to be an extremely difficult task. It’s not that there’s a dearth of examples of unsettling behavior but rather a plethora of them.

He feels compelled to comment about his claimed expertise in all subjects in some way, even when it comes to offering advice about something for which he is completely unqualified. He offered unsolicited advice on the best way to fight the Notre Dame Cathedral fire. It was met by derision and laughter because the weight of dropped water on a rooftop fire would have collapsed the structure and made things much worse.

He prevaricates brazenly, having lied or misled the American people more than 10,000 times.

He berates senior officials constantly. It’s remarkable how many times his aides ignored his dodgy or possibly illegal requests. He is tired of hearing “You Can’t Do That.” We should all be afraid.

Back in March, his 32 tweets were noteworthy, from a Saturday Night Live rerun he groused about to several attacks on the late John McCain.

He “railed against Shep Smith and other Fox hosts he doesn’t like; called on the network to defend Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, two hosts he does like.” He’s since dissed Chris Wallace, and the network in general for allowing Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg on the platform.

Nation of Change noted: “No one has yet assessed the full disaster from stripping the office of dignity and competence, plus shredding prestige overseas. When ‘anything goes,’ even changes weekly, then anything can be corrupted, polluted or discredited.”

Frank S. Robinson says he has plan-free fact-free anal sphincter foreign policy. He CLEARLY has no idea how tariffs work.

Robert Reich wrote that, as a result of the tax cuts, “business is booming for connoisseurs of private planes. That’s because the tax law allows businesses to deduct the full cost of buying a plane in the first year of purchase… Some wealthy individuals have even created shell businesses to utilize the deductions.” His golf habit has cost American taxpayers $100 million.

Most Americans believe he has made race relations worse. He again targets transgender people – this time in new proposal to rescind Obama-era healthcare protections.

I could go on, and on, but it’s exhausting. He says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents; he feels no responsibility to protect the integrity of our democracy.

Should he be impeached? Probably, and for all these reasons. Even Justin Amash, a Republican, finds his actions “inherently corrupt.”

That said, as awful as I find him, he can win re-election in 2020. And THAT depresses the hell out of me.

A fugue