1980 music: boycotting the Moscow Olympics

Lennon and McCartney

One of the things I remember the most about 1980 was the Olympics, boycotted by the United States and its allies. It happened as a result of the Soviet Union’s incursion into Afghanistan the year before. So the world learned yet again how difficult invading Afghanistan really was.

Here are the songs from 1980 that hit #1 on the Billboard pop charts. Another One… plus songs by MJ, Lipps, and Babs all went platinum. The others, except for the last two on the list, all went gold.

Lady – Kenny Rogers. #1 for six weeks. #42 RB, #1 CW.

Call Me – Blondie. #1 for six weeks.

(Just Like) Starting Over – John Lennon. #1 for five weeks. After he died in December of that year, I found the sudden irony of this song very difficult to deal with. Still do, actually.

Upside Down– Diana Ross. #1 for four weeks pop and RB.

Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)– Pink Floyd. #1 for four weeks. When I was at FantaCo, I recall co-worker Mark and I came up with new, and bawdy, lyrics

Crazy Little Thing Called Love– Queen. #1 for four weeks.

Rock with You – Michael Jackson. #1 for four weeks. #1 for six weeks RB. From his best solo album.

Magic – Olivia Newton-John. #1 for four weeks. I’ve always loved the first two chords of this song.

Gotta move on

Funkytown– Lipps, Inc. #1 for four weeks. #2 for five weeks RB. It was kept out of the #1 RB slot by Let’s Get Serious – Jermaine Jackson (#9 pop), one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs.

Another One Bites the Dust– Queen. #1 for three weeks. #2 for three weeks RB. Incidentally, it was kept out of the #1 RB slot by Funkin’ for Jamaica – Tom Browne, a song that didn’t rank on the Hot 100 pop chart!

Woman in Love -Barbra Streisand. #1 for three weeks. I picked this video because the compiler didn’t misspell her name.

Coming Up (Live at Glasgow) – Paul McCartney. #1 for three weeks. This helped inspire John Lennon to start recording again.

It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me – Billy Joel. #1 for two weeks. I recently read an article recently about how a lot of songs that namecheck “rock and roll” don’t really rock. This was example #1.

Do That To Me One More Time – The Captain and Tenille. #58 RB.

Please Don’t Go – K. C. and the Sunshine Band. I have no recollection of this song.

Sailing – Christopher Cross. He was going to be the “next big thing.”

9/11: when you don’t believe

memories

9-11-looking-back-looking-aheadTwo articles about 9/11:

An issue of the Now I Know newsletter was particularly fascinating. It was called When You Don’t Believe Your Past Self.

“Think back to a major moment in your life — something which you truly think you remember each and every detail about. Now, try to recall something mundane from that day, something unrelated to the main events of the moment. What you ate for breakfast, which shoes you were wearing, the weather, the day of the week, etc. Unless you have a savant-level recall, chances are your memory of that fact is, at best, a guess…

“But where is that line between ‘important stuff’ and ‘I think it was a Thursday and cloudy out? It turns out that, even on days we think are seared into our memories, those memories aren’t very reliable.

“Actually, it’s worse than that. If one leading study is any indicator, not only do our memories kind of suck, but we can’t really deal with that fact.

“For horrible reasons, most of who were alive on September 11, 2001, can remember a lot about where we were and what we were doing that morning… Plug in just most other dates in the last fifty years, though and that’s not the case. For memory researchers, 9/11 [was an] opportunity to run experiments that are hard to replicate.

“A year after the terrorist attacks, a group of researchers from asked more than 3,000 respondents… to write down their memories of 9/11 — where they were when they found out about the attacks, who they were with, etc. The research made the same requests of the same people a year later and then again in 2011, ten years after the attacks. And what they found… was that stories changed over time…”

eight forty-six

From 8:46 AM 9/11 to 8 minutes 46 seconds, 2020

“The attack on the World Trade Center led to responses that are not possible today. In France the headline of the newspaper Le Monde was ‘Nous sommes tous américains — We Are All Americans…’

“Nineteen years later the French may still remember but it is a different United States they see today. The eyes of the world are still upon us but what do they see now.

“1. They see a country which failed to manage the coronavirus, became the world leader in coronavirus deaths, declared victory, and moved on content to have 800-1,000 deaths a day forever.

“2. They see a country divided by racism preparing to refight the Second American Civil War.

“3. They see a country that has abandoned its world leadership position of its own free will.”

Census enumerators rock!

Since 1790

census2020-storyimageAs I’ve recently noted, I’m one of tens of thousands of temporary Census enumerators working during the past few months. I’ve learned quite a lot, actually. My wife said I just took the job so I’d have something to blog about. While that’s not technically true, the experience has gotten the brain working.

I’ve been working in Albany County so far. One of the things I have discovered is that I’ve gotten to really see houses I’d never actually looked at before. Some are only a mile or two from my home. Some blocks have a thematic design, while others have a crazy-quilt feel. And oddly, I love them all.

What I don’t love, because I’m getting old, are narrow and/or steep stairs. Or handrails that move. On the first day, I walked the route because most of the houses individually were within walking distance. But the collective toll is that my feet ached for hours.

The solution was to take the bicycle. It’s been great, especially when I have to go three blocks to that next cluster of houses. I’ve discovered putting my Census valise and bike lock in my backpack is the way to go. And while I might get a little wet when it rains, my Census material does not. And I can put the bike on the bus to get to those locations that are a bit farther away.

Packing for the day

There are several items I must carry, in addition to various forms. One is a mask. Because I’m paranoid about losing it, I often carry three or four. I need my badge.

The device we use to get our list of houses to visit is an iPhone. I’ve never owned one. But my current Android rather sucks. When I needed to reboot my iPhone, I was told to turn the volume up and down thrice and turn it off, then on; it worked! The stylus is also preferable to using my fingers. But then I read stories like this and say, maybe not.

They’ve stopped teaching civics

I’ve discovered that a number of people don’t know what the Census is. This is despite ad campaigns and local advocates. I just saw a CDTA bus flash, “Please fill out the Census.” It determines the number of members of the House of Representatives for each state, among many other things.

I have explained how we have counted nearly all the people in the country since 1790; it’s in the Constitution. And that the information is by law confidential, not to be shared with the police, IRS, FBI, CIA, ICE, even the USPS.

Can I get a proxy

One of the difficulties of doing the Census in September when Census Day is April 1 is that people move. After a number of failed attempts, we are required to try to find other people to provide information. Sometimes it’s the landlord or the real estate agent.

One of my friends worried that people might lie about their neighbors. It has been my experience that the neighbors are in the main reluctant to share, or simply do not know.

As for some of the folks who are still there, a reported four-in-ten who haven’t yet filled out the U.S. census say they wouldn’t answer the door for a census worker. And proxies are less reliable than getting data from the householder, of course.

It’s been an interesting sociological study. PLEASE encourage people to fill out the Census by paper or online or by phone or to open their doors to one of the many Census enumerators in their area.

The wide, the wide river

His usual minimalist approach

wide riverMy daughter was up early, for her, in the late summer (September 4) around 9 a.m. She went out with a friend but immediately doubled back into the house. What is that sludge that is covering our sidewalk?

Someone at our next-door neighbor’s house has poked PVC tubing through a basement window. A slurry is running down the walkway between our houses. The wide river reaches the sidewalks and goes mostly left, in front of our house. This is because the sidewalk when it was reinstalled by the city, was poorly designed. Every time we get a good rain, it puddles there.

I called the absentee landlord of the property, who I’ll refer to as Tick, and left messages on two phones. Then our contractor, John, calls. He’s going to haul out the defunct water heater from the basement. I suggest maybe he ought not right now. But he and his adult daughter are in the neighborhood, so they come over.

John believes the effluvium is sewage. I call the city of Albany. After two transfers, I get a guy from the water department. “Is there sewage there right now?” I said yes. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.” He arrived in eight.

Do you get the Fugs reference?

By this time, Tick and his wife have arrived. Mike from the city takes pictures and tells Tick that 1) he will be fined and 2) he needs to clean up the mess. Tick askes me if he could borrow my water hose. “NO!” Mike inserts himself. “You have to clean it up. No spraying it out onto the street. You ought to hire someone.” He suggests a local septic company. But Mike, who has seen Tick for maybe 15 minutes, KNOWS Tick won’t spend the money to do the right thing.

This leaves Tick and his wife to literally shoveling…manure. He hauls it to the farthest point in his backyard, where he digs a shallow hole and pours the waste. This is heavy and tedious work. Shoveling wastewater with a shovel is quite inefficient. Mike leaves.

Tick sprays ammonia on the walkway and sidewalk. Then he asks me if it’s clean enough for my satisfaction. I dodge the question: “It’s not to my satisfaction, it’s to the city’s.” But no, it was his usual minimalist approach, which is almost always inadequate.

Wisely, my daughter posted signs from both directions keeping pedestrians away for several hours until the slop largely evaporated.

My doctor, who I had already scheduled to see, recommended 1 part Clorox and 9 parts water to really clean it. But then I mentioned the ammonia. After the rain, we went with that cleaning formula. It was NOT how I had planned to spend my morning.

It’s not unusual

In the decade or so Tick has owned the property, this is not the first time he’s tried to take the shortcut, only the most egregious. Well, maybe his inadequate lead abatement was worse. Any of his former tenants that we’ve gotten to know always have stories to share, often the usual gambit of taking months to return the security deposit, and occasionally something more problematic.

School days in the era of coronavirus

20 percent cut

school daysAll summer, the issues of whether my wife, a teacher, and my daughter, a high school student would return to their traditional school days were up in the air. My wife and I have been watching the seemingly endless stories about the perils of colleges and other schools that have already begun their semesters.

In the city of Albany, there was a big push to allow students and students a choice. The Albany School District had an August 24 enrollment choice deadline. Leading into that, the district held several “virtual forums to provide families with the most up-to-date information and the opportunity to ask questions.” Some were building-specific; these would explain the protocols in those particular spaces. There were also district-wide forums.

To be honest, I didn’t attend any of the events. My rationale was that I was all Zoomed out. I did, however, vote in the enrollment choice poll. We voted Yes to in-class learning. The infection rate for Albany County has remained less than 1%, despite a few stupid college parties.

Also, my daughter wanted to go back to school. She thrives as a social being and hated whatever ersatz learning the school was forced into in mid-March through June.

Plan I

Virtual student orientation for students and parents and guardians were organized. The topics included orientation to the new classroom environment, and health and safety protocols. Also, they provided orientation to Google Classroom and a virtual learning environment. Students would hear about appropriate social distancing protocols, and the use and requirements for masks and face coverings.

After virtual instruction for all students for a week, the schools would begin to “implement identified instructional model (in-person, hybrid, or virtual), with early dismissal each day. By Tuesday, Sept. 29, all schools would “implement full days of instruction” by the preferred mode.

The budget surprise

Oh, geez. Schools Hit with 20% Cut by Governor Cuomo Right Before Start of Tumultuous School Year. “New York State budget office informed school districts statewide that it was temporarily withholding 20 percent of the State’s payments. This presents a major challenge for all New York school districts,”

Cuomo and labor leaders have written to New York’s congressional delegates urging them to provide $59 billion to the Empire State “to avoid what the governor predicts will be devastating cuts on state and local services.”

And suddenly, after all of the planning for options, Albany High School will be all virtual in the fall of 2020. My daughter is not happy. Moreover, she complained that I hadn’t told her the news. Hey, she was just getting up when I was going off to work at 10:30 a.m…

Back to school

Meanwhile, my wife IS going back to in-person teaching. Protocols are in place, but they seemed to be tweaked on a thrice-weekly basis. As a teacher of English as a New Language teacher, she’s hoping to get a face shield. It’s difficult to show visually how to enunciate while wearing a mask.

My wife was less worried about herself than bringing something home to her somewhat older husband. We’re just crossing our fingers. And our toes.

This bit of satire is essentially true.

Ramblin' with Roger
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