Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster: Academic Achievement

The Daughter just graduated from sixth grade. It was really nice having her attend at a building that was literally a stone’s throw or two from our house for a half dozen years.

This fall, she will be taking the bus, as she moves on to middle school, what they used to call junior high when I was of age.

In June, there were a lot of awards given. She was recognized by the school board for being first in First in Math in the state of New York, the only person in the Empire State to be in the Top 100 in the country. She gave the board two terse sentences of explanation.

Her school gave out a set of achievement recognition. There were LOTS of these – I’m guessing a couple reams of paper worth – and I could see from a distance that she was disappointed that she got only three awards, two for honor role, and one for music, while some of her classmates were collecting quantities in double digits. She thought she might get one for citizenship, as the only active student in the PTA, e.g. She didn’t even get the award for math, which we both had expected.

Finally, there was graduation. There were awards from the state comptroller, the attorney general and other luminaries. A couple kids, including her best school friend, received The President’s Award for Educational Excellence, which “recognizes a student’s academic success in the classroom.”

Then The Daughter and another student received The President’s Award for Educational Achievement, which “recognizes students who show outstanding educational growth, improvement, commitment to or intellectual development in their academic subjects.”

It goes on to say in the description on the website: “This Achievement award should not be compared to the President’s Award for Educational Excellence or be seen as a second tier award; it recognizes a very different type of academic achievement. It is meant to encourage and reward students who work hard and give their best effort in school, often in the face of special obstacles to learning.”

I do not know what “special obstacles” the award is referring to, but no matter. The Daughter is thrilled by the award, “signed” by President Obama, which totally eliminated the disappointment of four days earlier.

I should note she got a paper certificate, rather than the pin.

The First Ward of Binghamton

My maternal grandmother is buried in the northeast corner of Spring Forest Cemetery, less than two blocks from the house she grew up in.

I went to the Olin family reunion last month. I told my sisters, who are in California and North Carolina, that I was going to our hometown of Binghamton, NY. But, for reasons of time, that proved not to really be the case. I went THROUGH Binghamton, on Route 17, heading west to Endicott, as represented in the northern portion of this map, right past my stomping grounds in the First Ward.

When I was growing up, there were houses where that highway is now located. They razed dozens of homes to build a road that would make getting to somewhere else much easier. This broke my heart.

The vast majority of my growing up is represented in this graphic. This is approximately the eastern half of what was known as the city’s First Ward. See Route 11 to the right (east) of the map? That’s Front Street, and there’s a one-block stretch off it, Gaines Street, where I used to live.

In fact, one of my sisters found this video of 5 Gaines Street, the house I grew up in, posted in 2014. When WE lived there back in the 1960s, it was green, rough material that was probably made of asbestos on the exterior. Though I spent 18 years there, none of the interior structure looks familiar, though the backyard does.

Every weekday, I’d walk from Gaines Street to Oak, Lydia, Murray, Meadow, Mygatt to Dickinson Street – I loved the zigzag – to that circle near the southwest corner of this map, on Starr Avenue and Dickinson. That’s where my school, Daniel S. Dickinson, used to be. I attended there from K to 9. They razed it a few years later.

My maternal grandmother lived on Maple Street, off Prospect Street, so we’d go to her house, via Mygatt Street, at lunchtime, and, when we were younger, after school. That building’s gone, too.

Philadelphia Sales was on Clinton Street, but we almost always entered from the Dickinson Street side, through the parking lot. That was the basement entrance where the best popcorn ever was located, or so we thought at the time. It’s also where we bought our records, 45s mostly. That story now defunct.

I often took a circuitous route home. There was a candy store on Mygatt Street between Dickinson and Clinton that had that red shoestring licorice I loved. Friend Bill lived across the street. Heading north on Mygatt Street, we’d say goodbye to Lois near Meadow, and Karen near Spring Forest Avenue. Walking east on Cypress Street, I’d say adieu to Carol, and then cut through Ray’s property through Canny’s trucking, then back home.

We played at Valley Street Park, just north of our house. I tried to learn to play piano at Mrs. Hamlin’s house on Elm Street, between Everett and Mygatt.

The Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church used to be downtown, but when the block was torn down to build a playground, the congregation moved to a building at the corner of Oak and Lydia. That’s still there.

That massive expanse of greenery to the northwest is Spring Forest Cemetery. My friends and I would cut through it to play baseball at Ansco field on the other side. My maternal grandmother and her sister Deana are buried in the northeast corner of the cemetery, less than two blocks from the house they, and my mother grew up in.

My newspaper route started at Clinton and Oak, at the barbershop I used to go to, and went one block east, comprising a chunk of Front Street, including a long-gone apartment complex known as the Dwight Block, a nice little street called McDonald Avenue by the river, and a chunk of Front Street towards my house.

The First Ward, or The Ward, as we referred to it, was always a bastion of immigrants. A lot of Slavic folks, even now. But according to the 2010 Census, there are now Arabs, who weren’t there in 1970.

It’s been a rundown part of town for a while. But the city is trying. They’ve taken down the behemoth that was the Magic Ice building, formerly Cutler Ice in my time. Half a block from my old home, there will be new homes. The First Ward is a Brownfield Opportunity Area

Maybe next time I go to what they now call Greater Binghamton, I’ll actually GO to BINGHAMTON, see the old homestead, visit the graves.

Special thanks to Arthur@AmeriNZ, who manipulated the BOA map.

Louder Than Words: Rock * Power * Politics

If you miss Louder Than Words in Cleveland, it opens January 6, 2017, at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH, Thursday and Friday, July 14 and 15, 2016

In the Belkin Gallery on Levels 5 and 6 of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was Louder Than Words, a “special exhibit created in partnership with the Newseum in Washington, DC, exploring rock music’s power to change attitudes about peace, equality, patriotism, and hope.”

It was magnificent.

On the wall Up the stairway are some lyrics from Patti Smith’s People Have the Power: “And the people have the power To redeem the work of fools From the meek the graces shower It’s decreed the people rule.”

There were kiosks about all the Presidents, from Truman to Obama, describing the music they used in their campaigns. But mostly it was music, graphics, and artifacts about how the country dealt with a variety of conflicts.

Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone was one of the songs representing the civil rights movement.

In the Vietnam War period, you heard Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete Seeger and Ohio by CSN&Y, but also The Ballad of the Green Berets, a 1966 hit by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

There was a display about the Parents Music Resource Center versus Rock, with Tipper Gore, Al’s wife leading the charge against the “pornography” of Prince’s Darlin’ Nikki and other songs, and succeeding in getting parental advisory labels on CDs.

Pro- and anti-Iraq war songs were represented, as were anthems from Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ Same Love.

The song that played constantly: a Michael Jackson song, They Don’t Care About Us. More recent struggles, such as songs associated with Black Lives Matter were described.

If you miss Louder Than Words in Cleveland, it opens January 6, 2017, at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

Did I mention that the Hall would be closing early on that Saturday, and closed all day on Sunday so that delegates from the Republican National Convention could tour the facilities? I would be VERY interested to get their reaction.

In fact, the first day we were there, we could tell security was tightening. But the second day, it was much worse, with a tent making it much more difficult to enter the facilities.

A couple more highlights of the Hall: a 13-minute movie called Artist Unite about the rock benefit concert, from Bangladesh to Live Aid, tied to Louder THan Words.

There was a walkway with displays of recently deceased musicians, including Prince, Percy Sledge, Gerry Goffin, Bobby Womack, Tommy Ramone, Maurice White, George Martin, Jack Bruce, B.B. King, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Allen Toussaint, Paul Kantner, and William Guest of the Pips.

Possibly the best thing: Because we are Supporters of the Albany Institute of History & Art, and we also got an annual membership to the North American Reciprocal Museum Program, we received “free admission and other benefits at more than 500 museums throughout the United States and Canada.” This included the three of us going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, twice.

G is for grass

While mowing, I was getting conked the head.

When we bought our house in 2000, while about 2/3 of the backyard was grass, perhaps 1/3, maybe a bit more, was actually brick. There had been an above-ground swimming pool once upon a time, long before we moved in, but the indentation, framed by railroad ties, was still there.

Our yard had a unique design, and we liked it, for a time. That is until the bricks started to wear down, the railroad ties no longer walkable due to deterioration. We decided two summers ago to have the brick area torn up – with said bricks filling in part of the hole – and putting in more grass instead.

Though I had agreed to it, this was not thrilling to me, since I was the one who mows the lawn. After all, lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.

As I’ve noted, I’d been using a reel push mower. But my parents-in-law got us an electric mower last season. I did not use it because the new grass wasn’t coming in very well, but was mostly a swampy marsh.

Now, though, we have a full lawn, and I have capitulated to using the new machine. It IS especially helpful in the dandelion season when the only way to keep up with them would be to reel mow twice a week; THAT wasn’t going to happen.

Ouch! While mowing, I was getting conked the head by some low-hanging branches in our yard. And the manual hedge trimmer we have wasn’t going to be able to cut through them. But what I COULD cut were some of the ancillary branches, which would raise the predator branches an inch here, a couple of centimeters there, until I could walk beneath without being attacked by flora.

Thus armed with my implement of destruction, and inspired by the city workers who had trimmed branches away from the power lines on our street that very day, I also walked up the street, pruning branches of trees that would otherwise have slapped me in the face.

You’re welcome, neighbors.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

There was a special section on Graham Nash: Touching the Flame, featuring the photos and drawings he and his friends created during his time with the Hollies and CSNY

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH, July 14-15, 2016

Since it’s only about an hour away from the Ashtabula reunion, the family was unanimous in agreeing that we would HAVE to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

I had been there before, in 1998. They had special displays for the Carls Perkins and Wilson, who had recently died. But much has changed in the intervening 18 years.

They recommend that you start your tour on the lower level, and this is appropriate. It has a film about the 2016 induction ceremony. I spent a LOT of time, and could have spent more, in the Stewart Gallery, reading about and listening to “The Roots of Rock: Blues, Gospel, R&B, Country, Bluegrass, and Folk.”

The Elvis Presley exhibit featured a 14-minute film about him, which was worth watching. Then “The Legends of Rock and Roll” were portrayed in various ways. Each of the Beatles’ albums was described in short films. There was a film on the Rolling Stones, which I did not have time to watch. Lots of outfits of artists from Hendrix, Bowie, the Who, the Supremes, Michael Jackson, and others.

A couple of displays were geographically oriented Cities and Sounds, and The Music of Cleveland and the Midwest. There was an area about the radio personalities, such as Alan Freed, who delivered the music. Also, I watched the 30-minute film Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

There was a special section on Graham Nash: Touching the Flame, featuring the photos and drawings he and his friends created during his time with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young). A sound booth allowed one to sing along with Bus Stop and Teach Your Children, and see how off-key we were, at which point, the recorded Graham would indicate that you shouldn’t quit your day job. (I wanted to try this solo, since I was more familiar with the songs, but never had the chance.)

Finally, on the Lower Level, was Right Here, Right Now, a display of videos of more recent songs, most of which I had never heard. I spent 20 minutes there but could have spent two hours.

The escalator skips Level 1 going up (but it lands IN the gift shop going down – no fools, them.) There were segments about the architects of rock and roll; watching Les Paul play was hypnotic.

A multimedia exhibit Video Killed the Radio Star was 11 minutes of very strange stuff, but I liked it. Peter Gabriel and others were represented.

The Daughter could have spent all day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listening to headphones listening to the “songs that shaped rock and roll and one-hit wonders,” and more the Hall of Fame Jukebox on the 4th Level, with a collection of songs by all the inductees.

I watched a short film, The Life and Music of Smokey Robinson. There were displays of the evolving technologies, “from Wax to .Wav.”

On Level 3, the Induction Ceremony highlight films from over the years that interested me greatly, but there was still so much to see, I watched only a couple of years’ worth, limited by time.

There’s also a cafe on this level, where we got some snacks and sat outdoors, with a nice view of Lake Erie. We were only bothered by the people who insisted on feeding the seagulls, despite signs prohibiting this.

I should note what on the wall on Level 4: Pink Floyd: The Wall, this giant paper mache-looking thing.

Hmm, I didn’t get to Levels 5 and 6. Seems like another post about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soon…