Category: Uncategorized

The Health Report

St. Peter’s Hospital had a free prostate cancer screening Thursday night, and I participated.

Albany County, NY has had the first confirmed case of West Nile virus in a human this month. It is not shocking, given the number of mosquitos I’ve seen lately, due in large part to all the rain we’ve had. There have been mosquitos in our home office, and Thursday night, the biggest mosquito I’ve seen in a while sitting on a choir member’s arm. I have bites on my arms and legs, even with long sleeves, and even on the top of my head.

I don’t think that’s what made me so sick on Friday morning while I was at work. My stomach was audibly growling, as though I hadn’t eaten, though I had. Then about 11 a.m. – well, let’s just say I spent about an hour out of the next three in the loo. I would have gone home except that I wasn’t well enough to take two buses home; I did leave a little early.

My head’s also stuffed up. It’s so bad that if I sleep on one side, my own wheezing wakes me up. I’m sure it’s allergies, though I don’t know what, specifically; the grass pollen was moderate last Friday, while the mold and weed were low, according to Weather.com, which tracks it for the contiguous United States.

I was still feeling tired on Saturday, so between vacuuming the first floor and mowing the lawn between rainstorms, I took a nap for over an hour; I just don’t nap, so this was significant.

St. Peter’s Hospital had a free prostate cancer screening Thursday night, and I participated. The urologist said I was fine, but they’ll still analyze the blood work. Since my father died of prostate cancer, and because I’m a black male pushing 60, living north of 40 degrees latitude – yes, those are all risk factors – I need to get tested every year. One of the other guys getting checked pondered, “Does EVERY disease have its own colored ribbon?”

Anyway, I’m still dragging a bit, so I’ll sign off until tomorrow when I start answering your questions; you may still submit.

K is for Kennedys

Caroline Kennedy released a new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, that was published on September 14, with a two-hour ABC News preview the night before.

Like a lot of Americans, I was most fascinated by the lives of the children and some of the grandchildren of Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first President I REALLY remember, though I was born shortly after Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated. Naturally, I recall the assassination all too well.

I’ve expressed my ambivalence about Bobby Kennedy.

And I was terrified when Teddy Kennedy decided to challenge Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination for President; I was convinced if he won the general election, he would die, not just because his brothers all died violently, including his eldest brother Joe, in World War II. It was also the 20-year curse that every President elected or re-elected in a year ending in zero since 1840 had died in office (WH Harrison, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, FD Roosevelt, JFK), which Ronald Reagan finally broke.

Both Teddy, who became the “Lion of the Senate” for working effectively with both Republicans and Democrats; and Eunice Shriver, a strong advocate of the Special Olympics, died in August 2009. Ted’s daughter Kara, who spoke at his funeral, died in September 2011 at the age of 51.

The public interest in the Kennedys continues. Perhaps it’s because 2011 is the 50th anniversary of JFK’s inauguration as President of the United States, with us trying to decipher what that means today.

Programs continue to be made about them, including The Kennedy Detail, a 2010 documentary about the JFK assassination, and The Kennedys, an eight-hour 2011 miniseries that was dropped by The History Channel as historically inaccurate but run by the little-known ReelzChannel, which garnered 10 Emmy nominations, and a win for Barry Pepper, who played Bobby Kennedy.

And this month, the transcripts of historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s more than eight hours of interviews with JFK’s widow, Jacqueline from 1964 are being released by daughter Caroline in a new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, that was published on September 14, with a two-hour ABC News preview the night before.
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Fred Hembeck’s essay about Tom Clay’s version of Abraham, Martin and John, features me.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

The Lydster, Part 90: Talking about Tragedy

There’s the broader question of explaining the news when there is so much distortion of the facts by some outlets.

It’s been relatively easy to talk to my daughter about individual deaths, such as my mother’s earlier this year. She understands that my father, and my wife’s older brother, died before she was born, and has only photos by which to identify them, and that was helpful in the discussion.

But how does one explain the assassination attempt of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a shooting in which six people were killed, including the pictured nine-year-old girl – not that much older than she is – whose last name was Green, no less? The natural desire is to protect her from such news, and I don’t think she caught the initial story. But there have been plenty of follow-ups, and I know she’s heard at least bits and pieces of those. What does one say? That there are bad people out there? Crazy people out there?

Then there’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Of course, the event took place before she was born, but all of the recollections are hard to miss. And those guys are even more difficult to explain. Does this show up in the school curriculum yet? And if so, what does IT say about those events of a decade ago?

(And there’s the broader question of explaining the news when there is so much distortion of the facts by some outlets.)

I went to lunch with a friend of mine who’s around 30 who has decided not to have any children because the world’s just too scary. If the maternal instinct strikes, she’ll adopt, taking care of someone who’s already on the planet anyway. I must admit that I understand her wariness. The environmental and economic troubles alone are sources of concern.

Ultimately, as it turned out, we watched the evening news – the three of us – on September 11 this year. Not sure how much of it she got. Still, my girl is rather resilient; I’ll keep trying to figure out a way to explain the world to her, somehow. Even when the question is “Why”? Why did people fly planes into buildings? Why do we need to remember?

Random memory of my father

My father and I took a car trip, just the two of us, from Binghamton to Lake George. I was 9 or 10 and was supposed to be the navigator, but we got off course, and we ran out of gas somewhere called Speculator, in the middle of nowhere. I thought Dad would get mad, but he took it all in stride. We walked along the road, and the stars in the sky were huge, as he pointed out. He stopped at someone’s house, got us enough gas to get to a gas station, and we went on to Lake George. Truth is, I don’t remember that much about Lake George, but I do remember the night before quite well.

My dad would have been 85 tomorrow.

Pride in the Job QUESTION

The Moolala story was going to be on Good Morning America Tuesday morning; instead, the story was on World News Tuesday night.

What have you done at a job, either your current one or an earlier one, that you took real pride in? I had one of those experiences this past month.

I was answering the phones in my office on the Friday afternoon before Labor Day; the office manager was out sick, and since the secretary retired, there is no backup. Understand that answering the phones is NOT specifically part of my job description. But I simply can’t stand an unanswered phone at work. (TOTALLY different at home, BTW; that’s why God invented caller ID and the answering machine.) In fact, over a year ago, I specifically requested and got phones that would pick up the main lines.

There’s this woman on the phone, Lauren from ABC News, who calls about 2 pm. She’s working on a series of stories about people who lost their jobs but subsequently started their own businesses. The trick for me is that it’d have to be someone who had waived confidentiality as one of our clients.

As it turned out, at our annual meeting in May, I happened to be seated near the Rosenbergs, for whom I also did some library reference work. They were receiving an award from us for their startup, Moolala, a “self-serve yogurt café.” I pointed Lauren from ABC News to their story, and a couple of others, on our webpage. Then I requested that Lauren send me an e-mail to explain what she wanted, so I could forward her message to our internal listserv. She did, and I did; the director of one of our Long Island centers facilitated the connection between the network and the entrepreneurs.

Lauren had told me the story was going to be on Good Morning America Tuesday morning; this turned out to be incorrect. Instead, the story was on World News Tuesday night. Here it is.

If I hadn’t insisted the phone be answered, the Rosenbergs, and by extension, the organization would have missed an opportunity.

I’m rather happy about this outcome.

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