I got married in 1972 at the age of 19. Yes, we were young and foolish and in love. By 1974, we were fighting, mostly about two things: money, or the lack of it, and religion, or my lack of it.
On the money front, she was working as a nurse. I was in still in school. I did the grocery shopping with my neighbor Debi, going to two stores to get the best prices. We loathed it when our significant others wanted to go shopping too. They were always wanting to buy off-budget things like Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
On the religion front, she became a Baha’i, while I was pulling away from my traditional, near fundamentalist Christian ways to a place of serious doubt about organized religion altogether. Baha’is aren’t supposed to proselytize, but she was pretty isolated and wasn’t aware of that. And the primary target of her conversion tactics was me.
Also, she had this annoying tendency to bring strays home. I don’t mean stray dogs or cats. I mean people. Two different women were sleeping on our couch for considerable periods of time. I didn’t know them, I didn’t invite them, and they weren’t even paying any rent.
Early in the summer of 1974, we bought tickets to see Joni Mitchell on August 22 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, something I was really looking forward to. We rode up from New Paltz to Saratoga, a distance of some 90 miles, with my friend Mark and his then-girlfriend. They were in the front seats. For 90 miles, I (and they) heard a tirade of everything that I had ever done wrong in the relationship, including things I thought were resolved, things I had no idea bothered her from months earlier, and things I had no idea what she was talking about. This continued out of the car, through the SPAC gates, into our seats. Certainly she would stop when the music started. No, she kept on, even when the opening act, Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, who would also be Joni’s backing band, started playing.
I got up and sat somewhere else, some 20 rows behind her and my friends. There were people checking tickets in the amphitheater to make sure people were in the correct seats, so I moved around. At intermission, I went back to our original seats. My wife was crying hysterically because the ticket checkers had misread one of the tickets of another patron, was going to put him in her seat and throw her out because she didn’t have a ticket at all. (I had them both.)
We saw the second part of the show without incident. (This was the tour reflected in the Miles of Aisles album.) We went home, and I doubt any of the four of us uttered 10 words for that 90 miles home.
We separated shortly after that, wrote bilious letters back and forth, then less angry correspondence. We finally got to a point of being quite civil.
I went to visit her in 1981. By then, she was living in Philadelphia. There was an outdoor concert that we went to see. I don’t remember much about the performance. I was just glad we had gotten to be in a better place. The performer, of course, was Joni Mitchell.
Artist/Band: Joni Mitchell (b. Roberta Joan Anderson, 11/7/1943)
Are you male or female: Lucky Girl
Describe yourself: Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire
How do some people feel about you: Real Good for Free
How do you feel about yourself: Pirate of Penance
Describe what you want to be: Don Juan’s Restless Daughter
Describe how you live: Impossible Dreamer
Describe how you love: You Turn Me On-I’m a Radio
Share a few words of wisdom: In France They Kiss on Main Street; God Must Be a Boogie Man
Bottle Entrepreneurs
New York State has a bottle and can return law, five cents on beer and soda. There’s conversation about expanding it to bottled water, bottled iced tea and other beverages.
The return rate for these containers is about 70 to 80%. Shockingly (to me), people I know actually THROW AWAY these containers. (Shocking, because these people drink a LOT of beer.) This is problematic for a couple reasons. One issue is that the behavior adds waste to the landfill. The other is that it fuels unfortunate behavior in those people I call the “bottle entrepreneurs,” those people who pick up the cans that other people throw away.
In general, I believe the bottle entrepreneurs perform an important public service. After a concert I attended at Washington Park in Albany, the BE were out in force picking up redeemable containers. I swear that the city officials actually waited for them to come through with their bags and (presumably stolen) shopping carts, before starting the clean up. And why not? It creates less work for the city people to do, and less waste to go to the ever-burgeoning landfill.
In the city, municipal trash is supposed to be separated by the homeowners and renters. Newspapers, recycled aluminum cans, and bottles (only the #1 and #2) are supposed to be placed in blue plastic containers issued by the city. Lawn waste (leaves, e.g.) goes in long paper bags. The rest goes in the regular garbage.
The problem occurs when the BE come down the street on trash night, looking for returnables. They look in the blue containers, which sometimes HAVE returnables. They even go through some trash that ins put in clear plastic bags when they can see potential nickels in waiting. One of my neighbors has a note on her blue container, not a handwritten note, but a an 8” X 5” message on a label maker that says:
This Container Does Not Have ANY Returnable Bottles or Cans. KEEP OUT!
Another neighbor saw a man walking onto her porch; she was across the street at the time, and yelled, “May I help you?” The BE said, “Oh, I ring the doorbell here all of the time.” The neighbor disputed this report, when ANOTHER BE shouted, “Oh, give him a dollar, he’s hungry!” The neighbor, not liking being lied to, declined the offer.
I have no solution to the problem unless people start returning bottles at a much greater rate, rendering the garbage picking behavior unprofitable. I mostly favor the expansion of the Bottle Law to include other containers. I figure that the BEs will merely have to make fewer stops before their carts are full. At the same time, it’s really annoying when your recycles are rifled through so that containers are all over the lawn and the city fails to collect what you put out.
I guess this is meant by “The joys of urban life.”
WWOD?
3 Voting ?s
One year, in 1976, I voted five times, in the Presidential primary, the regular primary, the general election, and two school-related votes. Do I think it makes a difference? I’m not sure. But I keep doing it, just in case. Also, I’ve had ancestors who fought for the right to vote, so I’m just not willing to just give it away.
This year, one race where voting won’t make a lick of difference is in the Albany mayoral contest. I know the challengers HATE that kind of talk, but I believe it, as do most observers. This is a one-party town, Democratic, and the incumbent, Jerry “How-Many-Events-Can-I-Make-In-One-Day?” Jennings, will get his fourth four-year term.
Naturally, I will vote for someone else. In this case, that would be Alice Green, coincidentally the Green Party candidate, and unrelated to me. (But she lives less than two blocks from my house.) Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary came to her house for a fundraiser. When Ralph Nader endorsed her, he practically challenged Jennings’ manhood for failing to debate her; there was also someone in a chicken costume outside City Hall.
There is a Republican candidate, Joe Sullivan, but he is practically Harold Stassen.
The mayor used to be a school vice-principal, so he tries to run the school board as well, though it is not in his purview. We received a very well-crafted flier for three of the six candidates. As it turns out, those three are the ones supported by the mayor.
I don’t know one of the other three candidates; the second is a decent incumbent. But I am familiar with Judy Doesschate. In fact, I’ve known Judy for 30 years. We were in student government together at the State University College at New Paltz in 1974 and 1975. She was the editor of the student newsletter I worked on. Good luck, Judy!
In New York State, there are two Propositions. Prop 2 is easy for me. It’s a $2.9 billion bond issue for transportation. I’m in favor of the things that the bond issue would pay for, but not via that payment methodology.
Prop 1 is harder. It would “reform” the state budget process, which Allah knows we need, since 20 of the last 21 budgets have been late. It pushes back the budget due date from April 1 to May 1 (that’s OK), and if there is no budget, would provide for provisional amounts to go to school districts, instead of them having to borrow, which is great news. Yet it seems that it allows the state legislature, which will be stronger vis a vis the governor in this new paradigm, not to bother working to meet the new deadline for the budget at all. People whose opinions I value come down on both sides of the issue.
So, my three questions for you are of an electoral nature; my tresponses will be in the answer section as well:
How often do you vote? Every election? Just the general elections in November? Every two years? Every four years? Never?
Why do so few Americans vote? Is the registration process in your state too onerous? (Registration is very different from state to state.)
Will you ever run for elected office? For what office? And why? (And if not, why not?)
BONUS QUESTION FOR NEW YORKERS: What’s YOUR take on Prop 1, or for that matter, Prop 2, the Albany mayor’s race, the NYC’s mayor’s race, or anything else electoral?
Rock Meme-Arthur Garfunkel
After the success of Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park in 1981, there was work on a new S&G album. But Paul ended up wiping Artie’s vocals off the tracks that turned out to be the basis for Paul’s solo album Hearts & Bones. People were so infuriated with Paul – I found myself defending him – that it was his least commercially successful effort up to that point. It took Graceland to turn things around. I always wanted to know what “Allergies” or “Think Too Much” would have sounded like a a duet.
Songs may be Simon & Garfunkel or Art solo.
Artist/Band: Art Garfunkel (b. 11/5/1941)
Are you male or female: Most Peculiar Man
Describe yourself: I Am a Rock
How do some people feel about you: Old Friends
How do you feel about yourself: Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Describe what you want to be: Keep the Customer Satisfied
Describe how you live: Somewhere They Can’t Find Me
Describe how you love: I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever; I Only Have Eyes for You
Share a few words of wisdom: Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall
My Summer Vacation
Here’s one of those posts that just got away from me.
I was going to talk about how, during the last week in August, on the only vacation trip we took all summer, how the gas went from $2.579 to $2.699 to $2.999 to $3.209 in four days.
I was going to say how well Lydia got along with the daughters of a friend of Carol;’ who she hadn’t seen in about seven years; the daughters look like:
this, and
this, and
this.
But what has still struck me, over two months after the visit, is the bizarre juxtaposition of agrarian and suburban life in another leg of the trip. One of my brothers-in-law lives in Chester County, PA, which is right next to Lancaster County. Lots of new suburban developments for people commuting, necessarily by car (unless they telecommute), to Philadelphia, close to an hour away. Not at all condusive to mass transit, with all the attendant ecological considerations.
I was most fascinated by bikers in gear that Lance Armstrong would covet on the same roads that the young Amish kids on their black one-speeds rode on.
The very week we came back, there was an article in Metroland on the agriculture wars, which says, briefly, that the people who move into the country want it to sound like the suburbs (no tractors at 5 a.m.) and smell like the suburbs (no manure!), but that if they want to move out there, they need to recognize that it IS working farm territory.
In the brief time I was in Chester County, I did not see the clash of cultures that was portrayed in the Metroland article, but I wonder if it’s just a matter of time.