Ramblin' with Roger

Justice starts at jury

Jury starts with YOU

A poster on several CDTA buses in my area reads, “Justice starts with JURY. Jury starts with YOU.” I pondered the idea of volunteering for jury duty, which, I suppose, is weird.

A jury summons came in the mail for the October 6 session. My number was 428. When I checked in the previous weekend, they only took folks to 391, but I had to call that Monday night. Nope, I’m off the hook for another six years. Yay, I guess.

Still, I feel vaguely like I OUGHT to serve on a jury at least once. I wrote about my experience in 2007, when I had to show up but just watched, and my only voir dire in 2014. I feel that, since I’ve lived in Albany County since 1979, always been a registered voter, in the phone book when that was a thing, and a homeowner since 2000, it’s weird how infrequently I’ve been summoned.

I’m not saying that this is the issue in my county, but I am reminded of a John Oliver segment from 2020. He examined “an unjust cog in America’s criminal justice system: the unrepresentative makeup of trial juries. Serving on a ‘jury of your peers’ is an ‘essential civic duty…, one enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. But in practice, ‘peers’ are not chosen from a fair cross-section of society. People of color, and particularly black Americans, are chronically underrepresented in jury pools, which can have serious and devastating consequences for verdicts.”

Ah, videos!

NYjuror.gov has videos like The Jury: The Conscience of the Community. “Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson has spoken of jury service as a cornerstone of our democracy and has underscored the importance of jury service in attaining the goal of our Founders to provide juries of we, the people. Taken together, our series of 16 new Public Service Announcements… carries the judge’s vision further by featuring individuals from diverse walks of life sharing their perspectives on the importance of the right to a trial by jury in rendering verdicts that are fair and consistent with the law. The New York State Unified Court System hopes you enjoy them.” Excitingish.

And jurors are paid $72 a day!

I’m contemplating it for 2026. It seems like something I should do, like voting at every opportunity. Hmm…

Sunday Stealing — Stranded on an Island

books, movies, songs

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week, we’re stealing from Jess Riley Writes. She puts a unique spin on the “desert island” concept by allowing us three choices in three categories.

The Desert Island Meme

You’re stranded alone on a desert island …

1) Which three BOOKS could you read over and over again?

One would be the Bible. This is less a theological requirement than the fact that it is very long. In fact, I’d probably opt for the Douay-Rheims Bible, since it contains seven Deutero-Canonical books that are missing from most non-Catholic Bibles, such as 1st and 2nd Maccabees.

When I was a kid, I tried to read the whole Bible more than once, but I was unsuccessful. So I’d start over; I read Genesis a LOT. I have read the Bible all the way through systematically at least thrice, c 1977, c 1985, and c 1997. Participating with the Bible Guys at church this century, I may have managed a fourth. I wrote about the vagaries of the Bible in 2013.

The World Almanac. It is not great literature, of course, but it has a lot of stuff. Before I married my current bride, there was a gathering, and we were supposed to answer questions about each other. I didn’t know that 100 Years of Solitude was her favorite book, but she instantly picked the World Almanac as mine. I wrote about it in 2016, but honestly, I haven’t gotten one since 2018, ending a 40+ year streak.

Top Pop Singles by Joel Whitburn. Yes, it shows the chart action, but it also has background info about the artists.

Cinema

2) Which three MOVIES could you watch over and over again?

I went to this post and decided on King of Hearts/Le roi de coeur (1966), West Side Story (1961), and Field of Dreams (1989), but I could have picked others.

3) Which three SONGS could you listen to over and over again?

How much may I stretch the definition of “song”? Off the top, I thought of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (New World), and the Mozart Requiem.

If I have to pick actual songs? Oh, it is too difficult! Okay. The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel, which someone described here; Biko – the last song on Peter Gabriel’s excellent third album; and Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) – Billy Joel. They are all sad songs.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Mainstream, Alternative Rock #1s in 1995

Bush

These tracks are the Mainstream and Alternate Rock #1s in 1995. The Mainstream Rock charts started in 1981, while the alternative rock tracks began in September 1988.

In 2020, the late Joel Whitburn wrote in the author notes of Rock Tracks, “There has been increasingly less crossover between the mainstream and alternative charts.” Mainstream charts, but there was some similarity back in 1995.

Lightning Crashes – Live, 10 weeks at #1 Main, nine weeks at #1 Alt, #12 pop. I knew a guy named Ed Kowalczyk remotely through work in this time frame. If I remember correctly, he was vaguely elated to the Live vocalist with the same name.

Wonderwall – Oasis, 10 weeks at#1 Alt, #9 Main, #8 pop. Yes, this is on the only Oasis album that most people, including me, own.

December – Collective Soul, nine weeks at #1 Main, #2 Alt, #20 pop

Better Man – Pearl Jam, eight weeks at #1 Main, #2 for four weeks Alt, #13 pop

When I Come Around – Green Day, seven weeks at #1 Alt, #2 for two weeks Main, #6 pop

And Fools Shine On – Brother Cain, six weeks at #1 Main

Name – Goo Goo Dolls, five weeks at #1 Main, four weeks at #1 Alt, #5 pop

Good -Better than Ezra, five weeks at #1 Alt, #3 for two weeks Main, #30 pop

On stage

You Oughta Know – Alanis Morissette, five weeks at #1 Alt, #3 for three weeks Main, #13 pop. Won Grammys for Rock Vocal and Rock Female Vocal. The songs from the album were made into a musical, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, which we saw in May 2023, and liked. One of my favorite bits in 60 Songs From the ’90s was when Rob Harvilla’s girlfriend would play the album, and she would cough when the F-bomb came on to hide it from her mom.

My Friends – Red Hot Chili Peppers, four weeks at #1 Main and #1 Alt, #27 pop

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me – U2, four weeks at #1 Alt, one week at #1 Main, #16 pop, from the Batman Forever soundtrack.

Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do) – Van Halen, three weeks at #1 Main. This is from the Sammy Hagar period, which I know less about than the DLR era.

Tomorrow – Silverchair, three weeks at #1 Main and #1 Alt, #28 pop

Hard As A Rock – AC/DC, three weeks at #1 Main

Misery – Soul Asylum, three weeks at #1 Alt; #3 for four weeks Main, #20 pop. Ha! I didn’t know this song, but I instantly recognized the Weird Al parody.

Comedown – Bush, two weeks at #1 Alt, #2 Main, #30 pop

Glycerine – Bush, two weeks at #1 Alt, #4 Main, #28 pop

J.A.R. (Jason Andrew Revla) – Green Day, one week at #1 Alt, #17 Main, #6 pop

Hand In My Pocket – Alanis Morissette, one week at #1 Alt, #8 Main, #15 pop

Lump – The Presidents of the United States of America, one week at #1 Alt, #7 Main, #21 pop. Not to be confused with Weird Al’s Gump.

Draper Hall and subtractive notation

Roman numerals

From September 1990 to May 1992, I spent much time at Draper Hall, 135 Western Avenue in Albany, NY. That was where I took most of my classes while pursuing my Masters in Library Science. The dean’s office was there, and I was a student intern for Dean Halsey for at least a year.

UA began as “the New York State Normal School (or Albany Normal School) on May 7, 1844… A new campus—today, UAlbany’s Downtown Campus—was built in 1909 on a site of 4.5 acres (18,000 m²) between Washington and Western Avenues… By 1913, the institution… offered a master’s degree for the first time, and bore a new name—the New York State College for Teachers at Albany.

Yes, I knew that. But recently, I walked by the place and noticed something I had never seen before. Look at the information on the facade. The date to the left, MDCCCXLIV, is 1844, as I learned my Roman numerals in grade school.

Subtractive notation

But the date to the right, MDCCCCIX, is… wrong. It’s supposed to be 1909, but it should not have four Cs, but be presented as MCMIX. As noted here: “The numerals for 4 (IV) and 9 (IX) are written using subtractive notation, where the smaller symbol (I) is subtracted from the larger one (V, or X), thus avoiding the clumsier IIII and VIIII. Subtractive notation is also used for 40 (XL), 90 (XC), 400 (CD), and 900 (CM). These are the only subtractive forms in standard use.”

Did the carver get paid by the letter? Or did someone decide that if it had DCCC on one side, it should have DCCCC on the other? Maybe it was an aesthetic choice.

In any case, I can’t believe it took me at least 35 years to notice this error.

Spring 1975 redux

getting back at “the system”

Photo by Andre Carrotflower – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121389827

Here’s a Spring 1975 redux item. When I hit my 20th blogiversary in May 2025, I said I would occasionally repost some items I wrote two decades earlier. So far, I have done that once. I’m excluding my Emmett Till post since I added so much new data. If I add information, it will be [bracketed]. I substituted a later recollection link about Boys in the Band.

At the end of the fall 1974 semester at the State University College at New Paltz (NY), I broke up with the person who would soon be my ex-wife, the Okie. She moved to Philadelphia for reasons that were unclear to me then, and certainly no clearer 30 years later. [Or 50 years later; I suppose I could ask her. Or I could let it go.] The primary relationship issues were religion and money.

I drifted to Binghamton, my hometown. In January 1975, my sister Leslie and I kidnapped our 75-year-old grandmother and took her by train to Charlotte, NC, where her daughter (my mother) had moved the year before. Gram was getting lame. She had a coal stove, and it would have been dangerous to get up and down the stairs to get it. Nor could she walk up the steep street on which she lived.

13 Maple Street

When we came back a couple of weeks later, I didn’t have any idea what to do next, so I ended up living in my grandmother’s home. Funny thing, though: as often as I had seen her tend to the coal fire in my childhood, I could not keep it going at all. I suffocated it, essentially. I even got help from a friend, but no success.

Eventually, the pipes froze. It was an old wooden house with old wiring, so I could run the refrigerator or the space heater, but not both. Given the cold of the house, I opted for the latter.

In February 1975, I spent virtually the whole month in bed watching television. My grandmother’s TV only got one station, the VHF station Channel 12. So I watched the soaps, Hee Haw, and whatever was on CBS that month. It was undoubtedly the deepest state of melancholy I’d ever been in. [And that is still true.]

My mom rescued me

The space heater was on the ground and, of course, I had every cover I could find. One night, a blanket, handmade by the Okie, fell off the bed in front of the space heater. Fortunately, the acrid smell woke me up, and I was OK. My sister Leslie told me later that my mother (in NC) THAT NIGHT woke up from a dream in which I was surrounded by fire, and stayed awake for a time. Perhaps my mother woke me up, six states away. I don’t dismiss that out of hand.

Occasionally, I’d go to the library to listen to music on the record player and headphones. I remember once listening to the Beatles’ Abbey Road. The song that ended the first side was I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. [I LOVE the Billy Preston organ!] During the dirgelike instrumental ending, I cranked it up louder and louder. So when the instruments suddenly stopped, I really thought for a half-second that I had died.

Now and then, I’d visit my friend Carol, where I got cleaned up.

The janitor gig

I didn’t have a phone, so I missed at least a few job opportunities. Eventually, though, I got a position as a janitor in the brutalist Binghamton City Hall. There were 4 or 5 of us covering the building. I used to empty the wastebaskets from the desks of the police officers, clean the holding cells, wash windows, buff the floors of the common areas, and perform other tasks. Two of the guys started calling me Flash because I would get my work done by the end of the sixth hour of my eight-hour day, at which point I’d hide in the bathroom or a storage room and read. It wasn’t that I was so fast; they were very slow.

I really liked the police captain, and we would occasionally have erudite conversations about issues of the day or my future (which seemed bleak to me, but I’m sure I didn’t say that.) The police officers, however, were a more hostile lot in general, and I often felt that they would intentionally make a mess so that I would have to pick it up.

Drudgery

Now, some folks ABSOLUTELY were making a mess I had to clean up; they were the prisoners. These were holding cells they were in, and the detainees were usually there only one night before being arraigned in the morning. So they thought nothing of taking a lighted match and melting the paint from the walls. More than once, they would take their own bodily wastes and smear them on the walls. Perhaps they thought they were getting back at “the system,” but all they did was make more work for a college dropout.

As the weather warmed, my spirits brightened somewhat. I started going out with this woman named Margaret, but it was a classic rebound situation that lasted about a month. At the same time, I ended up doing a play, Boys In The Band. In the fall, I successfully returned to school at New Paltz.

It was one of the more difficult periods of my life, and I figured that if I could survive that, I could survive just about anything.