Tag: Albany Public Library

Calendar post: November 2025, et al.

Underground Railroad Education Center

I love my little calendar post. I’ll probably do one of these monthly, if only so I can keep it straight in my own mind. My choir has been rehearsing quite a bit for the December 14 concert. I suppose I should read the tome before my book review. 

ITEM: Marathon public reading of Legs by William Kennedy. Noon to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5. Albany Distilling Co. Bar, 75 Livingston Avenue, Albany, NY 12207 518-949-2472

Want to join the reading? Readers are asked to sign up and select a time slot by Friday, Oct. 31. Just want to listen? No registration is needed to attend. The event is free and open to the public. Drop in anytime from noon to 8 p.m. 

Support a good cause: Donations will be collected at the door to benefit the food pantry and free meal outreach at Sacred Heart Church in Albany, Kennedy’s childhood parish.

The event is the third in a series of public readings of Kennedy’s novels. We read Ironweed in 2023 and Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game in 2024. (I participated in both, and will again this year.)

ITEM: Roselee Blooston, who will be speaking at APL in December, provided this info about her new book, Including the Periphery: 

Main Street Magazine’s author profile, which you can read HERE. She was also included in  Chronogram’s “5 Hudson Valley Books to Read in September.” She will be at:

The Ballad of the Brown King

ITEM:  There will be a concert on Sunday, December 14, at 3 pm at First Presbyterian Church, 362 State Street (corner of Willett) in Albany. The FPC choir will perform in partnership with the Festival Celebration Choir. It will feature a chamber string orchestra (plus harp). Half of the concert will feature carol settings by Alice Parker, including her Seven Carols for Christmas. The second half will feature the cantata The Ballad of the Brown King by Margaret Bonds, one of the most significant black woman composers of the 20th century, with lyrics by Langston Hughes.

ITEM: Connections That Feed Hope – FOCUS Churches Breakfast Club. Donate if you can.

ITEM: Stand with the Underground Railroad Education Center as a sponsor or attendee of the upcoming Arias in the Afternoon: Lifting Every Voice on December 14, 2025, from 1 to 3 pm, at the New York State Museum. Arias in the Afternoon brings Handel’s Messiah together with the Smithsonian’s Voices and Votes exhibit for a powerful experience combining music, history, and inspiration.

ITEM: The current Art at APL exhibit — “Sight Specific” — is on view at the Pine Hills Branch until Nov. 8.

The exhibit is curated by Opalka Gallery and funded by the Friends & Foundation of APL, with additional support in 2025 from the Arts Thrive and Grow grant through The Arts Center of the Capital Region.

Stay tuned for information about the next Art at APL exhibit — “Countenance: The Contemporary Portrait” — which will debut on Dec. 5.

Another book review (moi)

ITEM: Events at the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, on Tuesdays at 2 pm in the large auditorium.

October 28 | Special Program: Andrea Nicolay, Executive Director of APL, will discuss APL and Current Events.

November 4 | Author Talk | Peter Balint, retired international businessman and former US Army officer, discusses and reads from his memoir, The Shoe in the Danube: The Immigrant Experience of a Holocaust Survivor.

November 11 | Author Talk: Ryane McAuliffe Straus, formerly professor of political science at St. Rose College and now an Empire State Fellow, discusses and reads from her book Divided by Choice: How Charter Schools Diminish Democracy.

November 18 |Book Review | On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.  Reviewer:  Mark Lowery, retired from NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

November 25| Book Review | Everything is Tuberculosis:  The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green.  Reviewer:  Roger Green, business librarian retired from the NY Small Business Development Center.  (Not related to John.)
ITEM: Remember to make a plan to vote and take advantage of Early Voting if you can! 
In New York State:
Saturday, October 25 – Sunday, November 2, 2025
Saturday & Sunday: 9:00AM – 5:00PM
Monday & Wednesday: Noon – 8:00PM
Tuesday, Thursday & Friday: 9:00AM – 5:00PM

 

Early Voting Locations for 2025 in Albany County 
You may vote at ANY of the following sites during Early Voting only:

Bethlehem Lutheran Church (Parish Hall) 
85 Elm Ave., Delmar, NY 12054 

Albany County Board of Elections
St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church
Boght Community Fire District
Pine Grove United Methodist Church
East Berne Volunteer Fire Company
Guilderland Public Library
Scams

ITEM: 🚨REPOST PSA🚨

The Albany Police Department’s Center and South stations have received numerous calls regarding scams. Please remember:

The scammers may:
🚨Claim you owe money.
🚨May identify themselves as an officer of APD demanding arrest if you do not pay the amount owed.
🚨Demand payments through gift cards.

Just a reminder:
🚨APD will not call you and demand payment over the phone.
🚨APD will not ask for personal financial information over the phone.
🚨Do not provide any personal information over the phone

If you receive a suspicious call, hang up and report it to the police.

A week in the life for July 2025

money for college

Here’s a week in the life for July 2025. Some were referred to before the fact here. The last time was not. 

Friday, July 4: Lavada Nahon, culinary historian and interpreter of African American history with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, spoke at the Underground Railroad Education Center, 194 Livingston Avenue in Albany. “She has a wealth of experience interpreting the lives of free and enslaved African Americans across the mid-Atlantic region, with an emphasis on the work of enslaved cooks in the homes of the elite class.”

She spoke powerfully about New York State’s Investment in the Institution of Enslavement and Its Legacy Today. Northerners seem to buy the myth that slavery was only a Southern thing, but enslavement existed in New York State until 1827. Frederick Douglass’s famous What To The Slave Is the Fourth of July in 1852 was only a quarter century later.

(Sidebar: I need to write about one of my ancestors who may have been enslaved in New York before 1810, just north of  New York City, per the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI), a “searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers in the states of New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.) 

Also, my church had raised $10,000 for the planned UREC Interpretive Center. The proposed Center has taken a hit with money allocated by the IMLS suddenly terminated.

Songs of Freedom

Sunday, July 6: My family had never been to Hudson Crossing Park in Schuylerville, about 45 minutes north of Albany. As a part of the buildup to the Albany Symphony concert that evening, the UREC singers performed Songs of Freedom at the Pavilion. I didn’t mention that I was one of the singers; my wife was also recruited. Some of us had rehearsed a week before.

Some songs were from George Washington Clark’s The Liberty Minstrel, a “collection of songs and poetry written in the mid-19th century addressing the themes of slavery and the yearning for freedom.” It seemed to have been well received.

But it was really hot and muggy, and my family left before the ASO performance.

Frederick Douglass

Tuesday, July 8: Jack Hanrahan discussed his history/travel book, Traveling Freedom’s Road: Frederick Douglass in Maryland at the 161 Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library. He was very informative and engaging. 

Jack also described his 2022 book, Traveling Freedom’s Road: A Guide to Exploring Our Civil Rights History. “In 2018, [he] and his wife Lisa took a lengthy car trip to the South. They visited big cities and small towns where civil rights history was made decades ago. The trip changed them.” While initially focusing on several Southern States, he expanded the book to most of the country. 

He’s now working on books about Frederick Douglass in New England, and in New York in the next two years.

Money for college

Wednesday July 9th: My wife and daughter, with my input, have been working on a letter to send to our daughter’s college. The college has offered us far less for this upcoming semester than what they had given us in previous years.

They believe that we are lot more well off. That’s in part because I had taken out several thousand dollars from my retirement 401K to help finance my daughter’s semester abroad to the University of Cape Town, South Africa.  This shows up as income on an IRS statement, but in fact I am merely taking money from my extant resource.

The appeals process trying to convey this messsage mechanically involved making a bunch of PDFs and then trying to upload it to the college. It didn’t “take” on Monday, so this was a redo.

Unfortunately, the computers of my wife and daughter are lacking upload capabilities. So they had to purloin my computer for several hours over the two days. My own machine also has upload limitations – I can’t upload Windows 11, which I need to do before October – but I had enough capacity so they could eventually get those documents to the college.

We hope that our appeal is successful, but we do have a Hail Mary Plan B.

Weird random thing

In the past week, two strangers, separately, walked up to me and said how much they like my sunglasses. They fit over my regular glasses. I have had  prescription sunglasses, but they’ve never worked for me, even the ones that change. for a few minutes, they are too dark when I walk indoors and not dark enough when I go outdoors.

These sunglasses I bought for three bucks at Lodge’s, a downtown department store founded around the end of the Civil War. I  should see if they have more.

Eclipsed (theater); ASO

Art at APL

Even though we complain about being too busy, my wife and I had three events in three evenings.

Thursday, June 5: Eclipsed is the third program this season from the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate NY, after Berta, Berta, and Once On This Island. 

The description: “‘Eclipsed’ tells the story of five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War.

“Their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war, the captive wives of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sisterhood. With the arrival of a new girl who can read—and the return of an old one who can kill—their possibilities are quickly transformed.” It was excellent, but very intense, and occasionally quite funny. Here is a review from the Berkshire Edge.

I was unfamiliar with the Danai Gurira play, which played on Broadway about a decade ago. Here’s a New York Times review from  a 2016 production featuring Lupita Nyong’o.

From here: “Danai got the idea for Eclipsed from a 2003 magazine article featuring a female rebel solider named Black Diamond. The influence from that article, Danai’s own African upbringing, and her research in Liberia helped her to shed a light on enormities that are still issues today.”

I’m looking forward to next season from BTTUNY at the Cap Rep building.

Art

Friday, June 6: The Albany Public Library and Opalka Gallery celebrate the latest Art at APL exhibition, “Sight Specific.” The opening that night at the Pine Hills branch of the APL featured The Pine Hills Band.

“The artists in ‘Sight Specific’ are not directly mapping a place, but employing memory, direct observation, documentation, comparison, or abstraction, to tell stories of familiar places like gas stations, rest areas, basketball courts, backyards, living rooms, landscapes, industrial sites, or neighborhood streets… 

“The exhibition features Michael Bach, Seth Butler, Matt Chinian, Sean Hemmerle, Susan Hoffer, Maeve McCool, Rob O’Neil, Andrew Pellettieri, and Laura Von Rosk.” It’ll be in place through November 8. 

I went by myself because my wife had a work thing.

Symphony

Saturday, June 6: Last year, my wife and I attended almost the entire American Music Festival of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at EMPAC. Indeed, on Thursday night, we were invited to attend the open rehearsal, but we chose to attend the play instead. 

This year, we only attended the American Music Festival, which had the theme of Water Music. It started with What do flowers do at night? by Sophia Jani. A cactus species called the Selenicereus grandiflorus blooms only once a year for one night.

Then  Play: A Concerto For Percussion Quartet, Vocalist & Orchestra by Clarice Assad, which was just wack. The percussionists played glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone, toy drums, bells, rubber chickens, and many other instruments. It was excellent, lots of fun, and semi-autobiographical.   

From here: “Indigo Heaven is a clarinet concerto in all but name, laid out in three movements running 27 minutes. The work is inspired by the open Western vistas described in Mark Warren’s novel of the same title.” It premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, composed by Christopher Theofanidis, commissioned for the CSO’s principal clarinet, Stephen Williamson, who also played it at the ASO.  

Bobby Ge’s Beyond Anthropocene was commissioned, premiered, and recorded by David Alan Miller and the ASO. The final movement is solastalgia, which is defined as “the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.” It was a workout, especially for the horns.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

“unlimited growth, an unrestrained cancerous sort of creation”

I was watching JEOPARDY Masters for Tuesday, May 27, probably on the following day, because I don’t watch television in real time. The clue above pops up as a $600 clue. This hit me because, on May 27, I  attended a book review at the Albany Public Library of Braiding Sweetgrass, that very book by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Moreover, it was reviewed by Elaine Garrett, who had appeared on JEOPARDY in 2011. I had met her, likely at a Capital District JEOPARDY  gathering.  

Robin’s father, Robert Wall, was from the Potawatomi tribe in the Midwest. But he was shipped to the infamous Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School, which “opened in 1879 and operated for nearly 30 years with a mission to ‘kill the Indian’ to ‘save the Man.’ This philosophy meant administrators forced students to speak English, wear Anglo-American clothing, and act according to U.S. values and culture.”

He eventually moved to the Syracuse, NY, area and married Patricia. That’s where Robin was born in 1953.  Robin attended the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, where she received a bachelor’s degree in botany in 1975. She later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning her master’s degree in botany there in 1979, followed by her PhD in plant ecology in 1983.

Science or spirituality?

But Robin got some pushback. She was told to pick a lane, either science or natural methods, essentially. But she opted for both/and. As Jane Goodall wrote about Braiding Sweetgrass:  “Robin Wall Kimmerer has written an extraordinary book, showing how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most—the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain, and the meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page.” 

One of Elaine Garrett’s slides described The Sacred and the Superfund about Nanabozho’s twin, who is “committed to imbalance. He had learned the interplay of creation and destruction and rocked it like a boat on a choppy sea to keep people out of balance. He found the arrogance of power could be used to unleash unlimited growth, an unrestrained cancerous sort of creation that would lead to destruction.” The sacred Onondaga Lake is one of nine polluted Superfund sites in the Syracuse area.

Elaine said reading the book changed her tremendously, emotionally and spiritually.  Elizabeth Gilbert wrote of the book: “Robin Wall Kimmerer is a writer of rare grace. She writes about the natural world from a place of such abundant passion that one can never quite see the world in the same way after having seen it through Kimmerer’s eyes. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she takes us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise. She is a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.”

I need to add it to my never-ending pile of books. 

Election Days

Albany mayor

Many voters in New York State have election days in May and June. On May 20, there will be the Annual Budget Vote and School Board Election in most geographies. The polling places may or may not be at the location of the general election.

In the city of Albany, there is also the Albany Public Library budget and selection of two library trustees. You’ll find a lot of information here. “The proposed 2025-2026 tax levy of $8,257,997 reflects a 5% increase over last year’s operating budget tax levy. The increase is under this year’s New York State tax cap for APL.” Yes, I’m supporting the budget. There were a few years in the past decade when no increase was requested, and I thought it was shortsighted at the time.

  • The five candidates, listed in ballot order, are:
    (1) Aidan Hennessey of Grand St., 12202
    (2) Christina Wiggins of State St., 12203
    (3) Shaniqua Jackson of Patroon Creek Blvd., 12206
    (4) Michele Greenblatt of South Main Ave., 12208
    (5) Rachael Vonada of Mountainview Ave., 12208

The trustee forum can be watched using the above link. I attended the May 6 event and have my preferences. 

I’ve seen the earlier printed material for Christina Wiggins when she was running for both the Common Council (the city council) and the library trustee. Even though she didn’t make it on the Common Council ballot, I thought the move showed incredible hubris. Moreover, her “No to the property tax increase” – does she mean the school district, the library, or both? – I disagree with. 

Michele Greenblatt’s recent Facebook posts display a mixed bag on freedom of expression.

This leaves three. Rachael Vonada had the most support in the room. A library insider is a fan, so YES. Aiden Hennessey’s responses were fine, but Shaniqua Jackson’s seemed more thoughtful, so I’ll likely vote for her.  

Albany mayor 

Someone asked me in October 2024 about my assessment of candidates for Albany’s next mayor. At the time, Corey Ellis had not entered the race, but he has since.  

I wrote that by March, I’d know who I supported in the Democratic primary, tantamount to an election. One person I know well is strong on the “outsider.” I have read that he is “in the pocket of out-of-state, right-wing capital.” But I’ve also heard that this characterization was a smear campaign by one of his opponents, the one I don’t particularly like, so I don’t know what to think. 

To date, none of them have filled out a Ballotpedia survey.

Here’s a WRGB debate from April 30. One of my acquaintances rightly complained about the mayoral candidates’ answers about parking downtown. “One chided about getting parking tickets while they live within a mile, another said we can’t grow the city without more parking.” But studies find that, compared to other cities, real estate eaten up by parking vehicles in Albany is not out of the ordinary. I still haven’t decided.

I know even less about other races, such as the city auditor contest. So, I’m open to persuasion. That primary election is Tuesday, June 24. 

Ramblin' with Roger
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