Tag: ABC Wednesday

O is for being optimistic, in spite of myself

More women are running for office in the United States

I’m pretty much on the record that “being optimistic” and I are at an arm’s length relationship.

This past Friday, I was feeling particularly satisfied at work, as I got five reference questions and two or three blog posts done. I was really enjoying the eclectic music I was playing, which included Al Green, Willie Nelson, Joss Stone, Ella Fitzgerald, Iggy Pop, and Glen Campbell, all of whom have April birthday, plus latter Johnny Cash. What a rush.

So naturally, the ride home was EXTREMELY annoying. This woman was on her cell phone, screaming at her off- and on-again boyfriend “Rodney.” Not only did I hear her, ten rows away, the whole damn bus heard her imaginatively vulgar, eight-minute rant that I wished I had recorded, it was so memorably obscene. Well, everyone heard it except, apparently, the bus driver, who drove on obliviously.

Isn’t it always the way? When I’m feeling good, something has to come along and ruin it? But just as I was looking at this as a bummer of an event, harshing my mellow, I discovered something else. There was this odd camaraderie among the passengers, at least the ones within my line of vision.

And we analyzed aloud, since she couldn’t hear us over the sound of her own voice, the nature of her relationship with Rodney. She kept saying – no exaggeration, at least a dozen times – that she didn’t care about him. But that were the case, why not just hang up on the jerk?

About four stops after she got off, some guy comes on the bus and announces, to no one in particular, that passengers on a bus represent a “microcosm of society.” Several of us laughed and said, “You have no idea!”

Earlier that day, I happened to run into a woman I’d met in a bookstore, a friend of a friend. I told her that I needed to write something for my blog by Tuesday, that usually I’ve written SOMETHING long before then. But she said she was optimistic that I would get it done.

Initially, I was going to write about things that make me feel optimistic, such as the healing, and persistent, power of kindness or how Great Britain is now a Fox News-free zone or how more women are running for office in the United States.

But I was optimistic that I could get to 300 words without describing those sentiments at great length. And I did.

For ABC Wednesday

M is for the US marijuana laws

Jeff Sessions is doing the bidding of an out-of-date law enforcement establishment that wants to wage a perpetual weed war.

as of 22 Jan 2018

Those of you not living in the United States may not understand the odd complexity of the marijuana laws across the country.

Several states have legalized the use of medical marijuana. A growing number of jurisdictions have made it available for recreational use.

The states have been serving as laboratories of democracy. It is “a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis…to describe how a ‘state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'”

Though marijuana remained on the federal books as a controlled substance, the US Justice Department had agreed not to go after users and sellers who were operating legally in their states. That is, until early 2018, when the Justice Department rescinded that policy.

The Rockefeller Institute of Government released a policy brief on how U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recent actions put the Justice Department on a collision course with states. Know what to do and can marijuana actually help for PTSD treatment?

Even members of the GOP have blasted the new policy. US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said, “By attacking the will of the American people, who overwhelmingly favor marijuana legalization, Jeff Sessions has shown a preference for allowing all commerce in marijuana to take place in the black market, which will inevitably bring the spike in violence he mistakenly attributes to marijuana itself.

“He is doing the bidding of an out-of-date law enforcement establishment that wants to wage a perpetual weed war and seize private citizens’ property in order to finance its backward ambitions.”

This issue has affected my job. Even before the Sessions ruling, but since January 20, 2017, the SBDCs have cautiously determined that they cannot knowingly serve a business associated with marijuana, even in states where it’s legal.

Moreover, there is a very real fear that if centers were to go after alternative funding to serve those businesses, they could lose their SBA (federal) funding. So I can’t answer a reference question on the topic, or even refer them to NORML or another organization.

US Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote: “For decades, the failed war on drugs has locked up millions of nonviolent drug offenders, especially for marijuana-related offenses. This has wasted human potential, torn apart families and communities, and squandered massive sums of taxpayer dollars.”

He has introduced the Marijuana Justice Act, which will remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances. I’m personally agnostic about marijuana use, but am vehemently opposed to its recriminalization.

For ABC Wednesday

L is for Lodge’s, Albany’s oldest department store

I usually shop at Lodge’s on Tuesdays, since they give a senior citizen discount then.

Lodge’s, or more formally, B. Lodge & Co., was founded in downtown Albany, NY in 1867, a couple years after the end of the American Civil War. When I stopped working downtown, and our office moved out to Corporate (frickin’) Woods in 2006, one of the things I wrote was that I would miss is that eclectic department store, and I did.

It is the place where one can find school uniforms and medical scrubs. One Yelp review notes: “They mainly sell the essentials here, nothing particularly fancy, ” and that is quite true. Another writes: “The staff is almost unerringly helpful and knowledgeable.” And the prices are quite reasonable.

A 2009 piece in All Over Albany described the place as “eclectic” and that’s certainly the case. It’s open Monday – Saturday, 8:50 a.m. to 5:25 p.m. – who DOES that? – and is closed Sundays.

You can read its extensive history here, but basically, it has been at four different locations, all but one on North Pearl Street, changing as a result of business expansions or a devastating 1952 fire, after which it moved to its current location at 75 N. Pearl.

The Lodges sold the business in 1960 to the Ginsburgs. Jack and Elaine Yonally bought it in 1995; as of 2011, it’s now owned by their children, Mark Yonally and Sharon Freddoso.

The December 2017 Times Union article about the store notes: “Lodge’s does not sell any items online, does not have a business Instagram or Twitter account and first added a website several years ago.” It does have a Facebook page.

Now that I’ve been back working downtown since 2015, I’m happy to be able to shop at Lodge’s again. It’s usually on Tuesdays, since they give a senior citizen discount then. Mark and Sharon and some of their other employees know me by sight, if not by name.

I’ve purchased shirts, pants, socks, a belt, winter gloves, and cheap sunglasses in the past few months. As someone who loathes shopping generally, it’s my favorite place to buy clothes.

I have to think that Barrington Lodge and his two sons, Charles and William, would be pleased that their family business has celebrated its sesquicentennial.

For ABC Wednesday

J is for the Johnson amendment

Preachers can preach on feeding the poor and clothing the naked, and that a just society ought to be doing that.

In the midst of the process of creating the massive tax bill at the end of 2017, the US Congress attempted to remove The Johnson Amendment. Fortunately, Congress’ own rules prevented from happening in that particular manner.

From the Wikipedia: It is “a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. [These] organizations [range] from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, [later the 36th President] who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.”

Recent claims suggested that the provision was some sort of attack on the First Amendment’s freedom of religion and speech. Defenders of the Johnson amendment, including me, believe that when the churches and other nonprofit organizations that are exempt from taxation, the prohibition against “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office” is appropriate, for it would otherwise be the state establishing religion.

Now the law is fairly narrow in scope. “Nonpartisan voter education activities and church-organized voter registration drives are legal. Pastors are free to preach on social and political issues of concern. Churches can publish ‘issue guides’ for voters.” In other words, preachers can preach on feeding the poor and clothing the naked, and that a just society ought to be doing that.

As it turns out, the piece to quash the Johnson amendment in the December 2017 budget bill was blocked by the Senate parliamentarian. “Because of a requirement called the Byrd Rule, reconciliation bills — which are passed through a simple Senate majority — cannot contain ‘extraneous’ provisions that don’t primarily deal with fiscal policy.”

Nonreligious people have said for decades that we ought to be taxing the churches, and I disagree. But if a religious entity wants to engage in partisan politics, endorsing candidates, it should give up its tax-exempt status.

For ABC Wednesday

H is for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Yeah, I know the whole system is all rather archaic,

I’m not much of a monarchist, though I take passing notice of the activities of Prince Harry and Prince William of England, they being, roughly, my wife’s 20th cousin once removed, or something like that. Lady Diana Spencer, about whom a musical is planned (!), and my spouse had a common ancestor in the middle of the 14th century. Really.

The fact that Harry was going to marry an American actress named Meghan Markle who I, frankly, was not familiar with, really didn’t interest me that much. I have never seen or heard of the TV series Suits.

That is until the racial backlash began. Meghan’s mother, Doria Radlan, is African-American, and her father, Thomas Markle, is Dutch-Irish. She was raised by her mother when her parents were divorced when she was six, raised by her mother and often estranged from her father.

Meghan describes herself as “a strong, confident mixed-race woman.” after growing up enduring racial abuse because her mom’s skin tone wasn’t the same as hers. “While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that.”

I wonder if such a match with Harry were possible if he were closer to the throne. With not only his father Charles and his brother William, but now nephew George, niece Charlotte and William and Kate’s new baby in line, Harry can be less restricted, I would think. Not that QEII would have cared, but would the United Kingdom accept a divorced, mixed race mother of the future king or queen?

Yeah, I know the whole system is all rather archaic. At the same time, it has allowed for a bit of measuring of societal change over time and that intrigues me.

Incidentally, despite the close relationship my wife has with Harry, we have NOT been invited to the wedding. I suspect the invitation got lost in the overseas mail, alas. We’ll have to watch it on the telly on May 19 like the rest of the commoners.

For ABC Wednesday

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