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Prince of Egypt at First Presbyterian on Sunday

It’s so odd that Brian Stokes Mitchell started out playing the minor character Jackpot on the television show Trapper John, MD for seven years.

The youth at my church, First Presbyterian in Albany, are putting on, with the assistance of a number of adults, a production of The Prince of Egypt, the musical based on the 1998 animated film. The storyline is adapted from the Moses story in the biblical Book of Exodus. It will take place this Sunday, March 17 at 12:15 pm

In a decision beyond my understanding, I, who am a bit older than 18, have been asked to perform the song Through Heaven’s Eyes, which my character, Jethro, passes along his staff to Moses. Initially, I was reluctant for a few reasons. One is that it was moderately high in my range and modulates even higher. Another reason is that it’s sung in the movie by Brian Stokes Mitchell, only the greatest male singer who regularly performs on Broadway. It’s so odd that he started out playing, as Brian Mitchell, the minor character Jackpot on the television show Trapper John, MD for seven years.

The song also has a lot of tricky lyrics. Thrice it goes “So how can you” or So how do you”, and I had to note that the verbs that follow are in backward alphabetical order – see, measure, judge – which has helped propel the rest of the phrases. Other lines are difficult to spit out clearly in some sections, such as “cool fresh spring”; lots of consonants.

I thought about it quite a bit. But when the director wanted to know whether or not I would participate, I became tired of my own indecision, so I just said yes, masochist that I am.

Meanwhile, listen to the far superior Mitchell version HERE or HERE.

Oddly, this is NOT the first time I ended up singing a Stephen Schwartz song I thought was high in my range. I was in a production of Godspell in New Paltz, NY in 1975 or 1976. Initially, I was given We Beseech Thee to sing, well within my range. Later, though, the director gave me All Good Gifts instead, which was not.

It would have been mom and dad’s 63rd anniversary

In the late 1960s, my mother took to wearing a red wig, which made her look even more fair-skinned.

Did I mention that I was always appreciative of the fact that my parents were wed in 1950? It was always easy to remember how long they had been married; the math was easy. I was a five-day-early third anniversary present to them, my mother used to say.

I wish I could find this particular photo of my parents on their wedding day. Actually, there are a couple of them. One is of them cutting the cake, which is nice. The other, though, was one taken in the living room of my maternal grandmother. There’s the smiling, happy couple, plus Mom’s mother Gert, her aunt Deana, her uncle Ed, and her Uncle Ernie, all looking sullen. Also in the photo, Ernie’s wife Charlotte, looking like myopic people sometimes looked in photos, and their kids, Raymond, ten years to the day younger than my mother, and Frances, looking mildly bored as tweens (a term that didn’t exist then) were wont to do.

Fran was interviewed in 2005, as I noted here in 2010. Fran believed that my grandma’s family’s resistance to my father was because of his skin color. They were rather light-skinned black people, especially Deana and my mom, who probably could have passed for white.

Fran said: “My family on my father’s side was very much impacted by the racial notion of the time, so they liked it that my father married my mother because she was white. That was, you know, really acceptable. When my cousin Gertie — Trudy [my mom], they call her now — started to date the man who eventually became her husband, Les Green [my father], he was deemed too dark for the family. And I think my father and my Uncle Ed had to intervene and say, Listen, I’m not going to be able to ever speak to you again unless you stop this nonsense.”

The Yates clan eventually lived with the marriage, especially after the children came, but there was always hostility between my father and his mother-in-law, with my mother as the uncomfortable DMZ. I thought that it was the fact that he lived in a house that she owned, and that was an affront to his manhood, and that could have been part of it. But I’ve since realized it was also the lack of her acceptance of him. My sisters and I remember this to this day, although it happened at least 45 years ago: We’re eating dinner, and somebody asks my grandma if she wanted any peas; she replied, “I’ll have a couple.” My father, seated nearest to her, and the peas, proceeded to put TWO peas on her plate. (And people call ME a literalist.)

In the late 1960s, my mother took to wearing a red wig, which made her look even more fair-skinned. My favorite story from that period: My father was on a business trip to San Francisco, and my mother went along. While the guys were doing business, the wives were at lunch chatting about the issues of the day. Eventually, something about race came up. One woman said, “What do you think, Trudy?” My mother replied, “Being a black woman…” Apparently, the next sound heard was a bunch of jaws dropping.

Even after my mother came up to Albany to see my daughter, and visited my church, at least one member thought my mother was white, even though he had abandoned the wig decades earlier. This was, of course, after my father had died.

My parents were married 50 years, and 2 days shy of 5 months.

Photo of my parents and me – great shot of the back of my head – at my 1992 graduation from library school at UAlbany; taken by either Zoe Nousiainen or Jennifer Boettcher.

I is for I

There was a lilac bush right next to the house; it didn’t look very impressive, but it smelled wonderful. Still the single smell that reminds me most of growing up.

Lacking any INSPIRATION for a topic, I defaulted to writing about me this week. It is I, during my significant birthday week. But what to write about that I haven’t addressed before?

I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same house, at 5 Gaines Street in Binghamton, NY. Gaines was a very short street between Oak Street and Front Street, with only 16 possible addresses, and actually fewer buildings than that.

At the corner of Gaines and Front was O’Leary’s convenience store. I went there and bought packs of baseball cards, but I also had to buy my father’s Winston cigarettes, which irritated me greatly.

In the yard at 1 Gaines Street was a huge gnarled tree which terrified me. It looked just one of those angry apple trees from the movie The Wizard of Oz. At some point, the family that had moved in there decided to take it down. My father told the owner that the way they were cutting the tree, it was going to crash into their house. The guy told my father to shut up and mind his own business; the tree crashed into their house, doing considerable damage to the roof.

The folks at 11 Gaines had an extra-large lot with a huge garden and chickens. When a foul ball would fall into that yard, the fence was too high, yet too wobbly to climb, and we had to wait for someone to throw the ball back.

The family at 13 Gaines was named Greene. We often got their mail, and vice versa.

There was a factory across from our house, but I never knew what was made there. It changed hands several times.

We had our tiny lot at 5 Gaines, where I played kickball with my sisters. Our house was actually green, with asbestos on the exterior. There was a lilac bush right next to the house; it didn’t look very impressive, but it smelled wonderful. Still the single smell that reminds me most of growing up.

When I was born, we lived upstairs in the two-family dwelling, but by the following year, when my first sister was born, we had moved downstairs, and my paternal grandparents had moved upstairs.

Our half of the house was quite small. When my second sister was born, my room was carved out of what was essentially a large hallway. But it was OK. My father painted the solar system on my ceiling, with the proportions from an encyclopedia entry I found.

Dad was always painting on the walls; I don’t mean painting the walls. In the living room, on one wall, were snow-peaked mountains. On another was a scene in the tradition of a busy Western European marketplace; I assume he tried to recreate an existing painting, but don’t know which one.

I’d go up and visit my grandparents often. One time, when I was about three, I fell down the steps. To this day, I have a bump just below my lower lip where I cannot grow facial hair.

Our Christmas decorations were kept upstairs, “under the house,” which is to say in the room off the kitchen where the roof slanted so that an adult could not stand.

When I was born, our church, Trinity A.M. E. Zion was downtown. But when that street was turned into a city park, the church moved to within two blocks of our house, at Oak Street and Lydia Street. (Hmm – I wonder if the naming of my daughter was affected by the street on which I spent a LOT of time.)

Enough about me for this week.

The guy in the middle is my father; the woman on the right is his mom. Not sure who the others are, though I suspect the boy is a cousin of dad’s; he has the Walker “look.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

It Snows in March in Albany

Some senior librarians took it upon themselves to close the facilities early, which turned out to be the obviously correct choice.

I’ve lived in Albany, NY over thirty years now, and one of those trivia questions I like to ask relative newcomers – people who’ve only been here twenty years, e.g. – is “What are the two greatest snowstorms in recorded Albany history?”

The worst event, by far, was the Great Blizzard of 1888, during the second week in March, which dumped 45 inches (120 cm) on Albany, 22 inches (56 cm) in New York City, and huge amounts across New York State, New Jersey and much of New England. The storm and the frigid aftermath killed over 400 people in the region and crippled the region for days afterward.

The second worst Albany snowstorm was the 1993 Storm of the Century during the second week in March. The storm that started in the Gulf of Mexico created tornadoes that affected Cuba and the southern United States and even dumped a foot of snow as far south as Alabama. It churned up the coast and ended up affecting 26 US states plus eastern Canada. Albany received 26.6 inches (67.6 cm) of snow.

To the surprise of some, I do not remember the 1888 blizzard. I DO well recall the 1993 superstorm, though, for two reasons.

That Sunday, the church I belonged to at the time was closed for service, a state of emergency having been called for the area. However, I lived close enough that I could trudge over anyway. The custodian was busy using the snowblower, but it was inadequate for the task. So I grabbed a shovel and assisted; I believed there were one or two others trying to clean up as well.

The day before, the Albany Public Library was contemplating closing in anticipation of not only a stark forecast but the reports that the storm had already caused to the south. At the time, the library was run by an autocratic fellow I’ll call Bill. He wanted to be notified about all decisions, so the staff attempted unsuccessfully to reach him.

Finally, some senior librarians took it upon themselves to close the facilities early, which turned out to be the obviously correct choice. However, they got jammed up by Bill, who was furious with their initiative. Ultimately, the bad publicity from Bill’s unjustified public pique forced him to back down. This also directly led to the creation of a librarians’ union in Albany.

As spring approaches, Albany, know that the two worst snowstorms on record happened THIS week in history.

Friend Karen is 60

Karen had wanted to be in the music business as long as I could remember.

Karen I’ve known since kindergarten, and we went from K through 12th grade together in Binghamton, NY. Back in seventh grade or so, she really got into astrology. I don’t mean just looking at the daily newspaper column, but doing a serious investigation. While I wasn’t a true believer, I found it eerie how accurate they could be. She was born only 46 hours after I was, so there was some overlap between hers and mine.

When we were in high school, there was this silly rule that, when you were running for student government, you could not give your own nominating speech. I gave Karen’s when she ran for secretary, a speech that everyone said was one of the best ever. She won. The following year, they changed the rules so that the candidate gave the speech; my address for myself, running for president, was not nearly as good, by my own reckoning (I won anyway).

In 1977, when I was adrift, she gave me a real (verbal) kick in the butt. In the early 1980s, she stopped drinking; while, initially, she asked why I hadn’t stopped her, she came to the (correct) conclusion that only SHE could have.

She was there in Boston when I won $17,600 on JEOPARDY! in 1998.

Karen told me that she was relieved that I had had a daughter in 2004. I think she believed, probably rightly, that I had an easier time dealing with girls than boys, going back to when we were kids.

She is a world traveler, having visited Burma, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, and probably locations I’m forgetting; from the e-mails she sends each winter, I think she ought to blog about it, but she’s disinclined.

Karen had wanted to be in the music business as long as I could remember, nagging her older siblings to buy her the new single by the Kinks or the Rolling Stones, or, of course, the Beatles. In sixth grade, we had a class newspaper, and she wrote a (fictional, alas!) story about meeting the Fab Four.

She did, in fact, go into the music industry. From working in a record store on Main Street in neighboring Johnson City, NY, to getting involved in promoting musicians and their albums, trying to get them on radio, sometimes going to their gigs. Early on, she turned me on to The Band. Later, she introduced me to a whole range of artists too numerous to mention, but including the 1990s iteration of Johnny Cash.

She told great stories, which I cannot do justice to. I remember when she was trying to promote Robbie Robertson’s first solo album in the mid-1980s and had to deal with some 24-year-old station manager. He didn’t know who Robbie was, didn’t know who The Band was or that they had backed Bob Dylan, and had never heard of The Last Waltz, the award-winning movie about their final concerts.

Of course, the music business hasn’t gotten any easier of late, but she’s still at it, trying to develop and promote new artists.

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to see her at least once a year for the past few years; unfortunately, the last time was at her mom’s funeral, but it was still a joy to see her.

Happy birthday, Sara Lee! (Inside joke.)