Tag: Albany

Too close to exploding manhole covers

Don’t know how energetic I will be to reply to comments after my procedure on this coming Wednesday.

For about four days, it started hurting when I would eat while using tooth 19. So this past Wednesday morning, I finally called my dentist’s office. Amazingly, I got an appointment that day at 2 p.m. (if not that day, then it would not have until tomorrow). From my symptoms, he believes I need a root canal. The tooth had been capped many years ago, not by him, and it’s a good chance that it has an infection, though nothing ominous is on the X-ray.

He referred me to an endodontist who has done work on his teeth, who can take me in a week. The bad news is that the specialist doesn’t take my insurance, which means that I’ll have an outlay of $1000 to $1500. The semi-good news is that my insurance company will reimburse me about 50% after the fact.

As I am making my appointment, my wife and daughter arrive for their scheduled cleanings. After I hang up, the reception asks, “What was that?” I have no idea what she was talking about, though the lights did flicker momentarily.

I get on my bicycle and was about to depart. But as I’m departing the building, I see a bunch of folks standing around looking northward up the street. It turns out they were looking at a hole from where a manhole cover had flown up in the air. It looked like this:

There were multiple police and fire vehicles on the scene, plus a truck from the National Grid utility.

I go back into my dentist’s office, and I apprise them of these facts. I didn’t know at the time that there were in fact multiple explosions from an underground fire. Soon, some parking attendant advised the dentist’s office to clear; it was all hands on deck to respond to this event, which had happened before.

Anyway, don’t know how energetic I will be to reply to comments after my procedure this coming Wednesday. Eventually, I will respond to your comments, and go visit your sites as well, if I’ve done so in the past.

A Jade Element December Rambling

Carried Away by The Jade Element- My eldest niece is the lead singer.

There was some anti-gay marriage pledge that the GOP candidates were supposed to sign this month. Of course, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum agreed to it, as one would expect. But the third was Mitt Romney. Not only is his position unfortunate, but it also cements that “pandering” problem he has. Beyond that, pandering didn’t work in 2008, and in fact, backfired. Oh, and this was widely circulated, but I still like it: the best message for marriage equality.

Where Roger Ebert stands on the Occupy movement, which is not dissimilar to my position. Or Ken Jennings’. Still, it’s impressive/amazing that Occupy Albany was still going strong earlier this month, a model operation; it has gotten permits from the city and everything. Then it got closed down – badly, as these things usually are. Expect the energy will not dissipate.

Bertrand Russell’s Liberal Decalogue, courtesy of Chris Black

When Blackwater, or Xe, or ACADEMI changes its name again.

Harry Morgan died on Pearl Harbor Day. Here’s his New York Times obit. I’m old enough to actually remember him in December Bride and its spinoff, Pete and Gladys. Of course, I watched him in Dragnet, where he was a great counterpoint to the dry Jack Webb. But of course, he’s best known for playing Colonel Potter in MASH. He was one of those you look familiar people who actually had an earlier role on the show as a crazy colonel, before showing up as the MASH commander a season later. Ken Levine remembers Harry; he wrote for MASH and its lesser sequel AfterMASH.

When I was watching MAS*H a couple of decades ago, Col. Potter seemed to be particularly bad spirits. It turned out that he was “the last survivor among several of his World War I U.S. Army buddies, and thus inherited a confiscated bottle of French cognac.” That was the very first time I remember hearing the word tontine, which generally refers to an investment plan.

I must admit knowing Christopher Hitchens more for his fight with cancer than his previous writings; still, an interesting guy. Arthur comments here, and Kevin Marshall provides a number of written and visual reflections of the man.

How to talk to someone with cancer, something I’ve had some experience with.

A fond farewell to the hard-wired phone; from “Superman” to “I Love Lucy,” a look back at the role this outdated device played in television and film

Mark Evanier remembers Batman artist (and much more) Jerry Robinson and one of the first superstars of comics, Joe Simon, as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Spike Jones; I forgot to bring my kazoo.

I’m sad Vaclav Havel died; he headed a free Czechoslovakia, and, just as remarkably, its division without bloodshed.

Music video Carried Away by The Jade Element. My eldest niece is the lead singer.

The Uffizi and Upside-down

Re: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – Surely Joan Jett deserves to be there. I’m still hoping that Chaka Khan gets in sans Rufus. My real problem is that they, and Heart, all predated three of the male groups that got in: GnR, Beastie Boys, and the Chili Peppers. Unfortunate. But happy about Freddie King in as early influence, and Donovan and the sole woman, the late Laura Nyro.

Animated Comic Covers by Kerry Callen

GOOGLE ALERTS

Christmas Jumper: Name of beer leaves a bad taste
Head brewer Roger Green insisted the name had been a complete coincidence after the beer started life with a pump clip showing Santa in a big woolly pullover. However, that explanation failed to stop the dark ale from making headline news… Roger Green, of the Beachy Head Brewery in East Sussex, insisted there was no malice behind the title and that its meaning had been misconstrued. Relatives of people who have died at the notorious 530ft (162m) suicide spot near Eastbourne…

On the fifth day of Christmas my council gave to me….5p a mile Tribute was paid to the late Councillor Roger Green of Wisbech who had advocated the extra 5p a mile for councillors on official business. “One of the amendments that the late Cllr Green had made great play of was that the mileage had been held at 40p.”

Plane-parts suppliers charged in $6M Ponzi scheme in Fort Lauderdale
Victor Brown, 54, of Hollywood [Florida], and Roger Green, 78, of Stuart, were taken into custody Wednesday on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit first-degree racketeering, authorities said. [A bunch of variations on this story.]

It was the sixth time in eight days the Roger Green-coached Lady Tigers have won.

Create a harvesting plan for retirement assets, by Roger Green
Retirement planning does not end at retirement. The need to grow assets for income remains important for most – especially those who have not accrued enough assets to last them throughout today’s longer retirement periods.

Running for Office QUESTIONS

For some reason, the city of Albany holds its school board vote in November, rather than in May, when most other locations do. In fact, the school BUDGET IS voted upon in May, along with the library board and the library budget.

Anyway, someone called me up a few months ago and asked me if I wanted to run for school board. Last year, someone I knew told me that “people” were discussing having me run, but I never got a call. This year, I got a call from a local official who I knew before he was elected to his office. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

It’s not that it’s an unpaid position that takes a lot of time. It’s more that school boards are handcuffed by No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top. Moreover, in the city Albany, the nine or ten charter schools, which are far less transparent financially than they ought to be, are paid for out of the school budget. In other words, I don’t know how to make the situation better, or even maintain the status quo.

A few years ago, I was also asked to run for the library board; THAT position I thought about for a while before declining for time reasons. Someday, I might run for that.

1. Have you ever thought of running for political office?
2. Have people requested that you run?
3. Have you run? For what office(s)?
4. Have you served in elected office?

I was in student government in high school, college, and grad school, but it’ll be a while before I try again.

There were more than a half dozen countywide positions for which there was no opposition candidate, only the Democrat. That is distressing, but I’m still not running.

R is for Recycling

It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade the system, but for alleviating my guilt at throwing away a yogurt cup, it was worth every penny.

When we were away this past summer, we had our mail held. And I swear that my favorite item that I saw once we retrieved it was a flier from the city of Albany about its new recycling policy. No longer did the city only take plastic items with the #1 or #2 in the triangle; it’s now taking #1-7!

This was hugely important for us, as we are very active recyclers. So those yogurt and cottage cheese containers, which tend to be #5 or #6, we just hated to throw out.

My wife would sometimes put leftovers in them, but unless they were well-labeled, I’d mistake them for their original packaging info until it was too late. Some were saved for school arts and crafts, but there are just so many craft projects one can do. It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade the system, according to the newspaper story at the time, but for alleviating my guilt at throwing away a yogurt cup, it was worth every penny.

I hate going to the returnable center at the local supermarket. A lot of recyclable, but not returnable, items that people bring end up in the trash. I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of people around here just don’t spend the few minutes to separate out the recyclables and it makes me…peevish.

One element of the new city regulations that I ignore is the “Single Stream Curbside Recycling Collection”. I still segregate my paper products from the bottles and cans because of the bottle entrepreneurs who rifle through the recycling bins. I figure when they open up the green bin and see that’s it’s all paper and cardboard, they’ll leave it alone, and only go through the blue bin that has the recyclable – but not returnable – bottles and cans.


ABC Wednesday – Round 9

P is for Pinksterfest

“The annual celebration began on the morning of the Monday following…Pentecost…While the majority of the Dutch population attended early mass, African-American slaves and Euro-American servants would congregate on the hill by the ‘thousands’ and await the arrival of the Pinkster King…”


This coming weekend, Albany, NY is having its 63rd Annual Albany Tulip Festival. It will be held in historic Washington Park. “The tradition stems from when Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd got a city ordinance passed declaring the tulip as Albany’s official flower on July 1, 1948. In addition, he sent a request to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to name a variety as Albany’s tulip…She picked the variety ‘Orange Wonder’…”

The event kicks off on Friday with a special musical program on City Hall’s historic 49-bell carillon at 11:30 a.m. Then at noon, there will be “the traditional Dutch practice of scrubbing the streets,” which frankly still fascinates me. Saturday features the coronation of the Tulip Queen, plus performers and vendors on both Saturday and Sunday. The whole schedule is here. The greatest challenge involves getting the majority of the bulbs to be in bloom that weekend, not too early or too late, despite unpredictable weather. The strategy in recent years has been to plant different types of tulips with varying blooming times.

At the same time, the term “pinksterfest” has ALSO used for the weekend, more or less synonymously, but not quite. So I needed to track this down.

From Wikipedia: “Pinkster is a spring festival, taking place in late May or early June. The name is a variation of the Dutch word Pinksteren, meaning ‘Pentecost'”

More useful, though, was THIS article by Matthew Shaughnessy from 2010: “…by the 19th century, it was the most important holiday of African-American slaves who lived in Dutch settlements from the Hudson Valley down to New York City…In Albany, during the week preceding Pinkster, slaves, and servants—both of African and European ancestries—gathered to set up camp, sing, and play music through the use of a large, skin-covered drum on Pinkster Hill. Individual encampments or ‘airy cottages’ were constructed by weaving branches and shrubs through a series of stakes that were vertically implanted into the ground covering the hill. Just upon celebration, the camps were stocked with beer and liquor as well as an assortment of food, including fruits and cakes.


“The annual celebration began on the morning of the Monday following…Pentecost…While the majority of the Dutch population attended early mass, African-American slaves and Euro-American servants would congregate on the hill by the ‘thousands’ and await the arrival of the Pinkster King, who was referred to as ‘King Charles.’ By all accounts, King Charles was an elderly member of the slave community, perhaps a patriarchal figure of some sort.”

The article goes into some detail about the goings-on.

Again from Wikipedia: “Sometime between 1811 and 1813 despite or perhaps because of its popularity, the city of Albany, New York passed a city ordinance banning the drinking and dancing associated with Pinkster. Whites were concerned that the congregation and socialization of large groups of African Americans could provide them with the opportunity to plot or plan a revolution. Some historians believe the council wanted to eliminate Pinkster because it didn’t appeal to the burgeoning middle class, pointing to the fact that the law was eventually overturned, which would contradict the motivation of preventing uprisings.”

Shaughnessy: “For one week a year, the strictures of everyday society were relaxed. Work was momentarily forgotten. Those at the bottom of the society, namely slaves and servants but also women and children, reversed the existent social hierarchy. For the remainder of the week, slaves and servants engaged in a variety of sports and increasingly commercialized forms of entertainment, which, according to a later account published in 1867, were exceedingly popular among white children. There were exhibitions of exotic animals, circus-riding, clowns, and the apparent highlight of the festival: the ‘Toto.’ While the Toto was a dance performed exclusively in the West African tradition of loud drumming and singing, its hybrid during Pinkster combined European and African steps. In addition, slaves sold herbs, roots, and shellfish in carts decorated with flowers, especially [Pentecost] azaleas…” At some point during the run of the Tulip Festival, the Pinksterfest name was absorbed.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

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