Albany Archives - Page 8 of 16 - Ramblin' with Roger

Blackout: sometimes in winter

Sitting in the dark made me really tired.

Over the years, I’ve experienced many a blackout, usually in the summer, when too many air conditioners are overloading the electrical grid. The one I experienced on January 6 was a real epiphany.

It was a strange day in that it was quite mild in the morning, but got considerably colder in the afternoon, thanks to bitter winds from Canada. So even though the air temperature was above freezing, it felt 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit colder.

We were surprised, though, when the power went out about 4:13 p.m. It didn’t much faze us, and it came back on less than five minutes later. They were on long enough that I had started to reset the clocks in the kitchen when the power cut out again c 4:23.

Our daughter was doing her homework in her room, but that was no longer an option. She tried completing it on the front porch, but it was by then far too cold. She ended up working at the dining room table by candlelight. Oh, and an emergency flashlight that I’d purchased for Christmas 2017, plugged into the wall and forgotten about until I saw its illumination in the corner.

I inventoried what we had to eat that did not involve either using the stove or opening the refrigerator. There were saltine crackers, apple sauce… and COFFEE CAKE that my wife had baked that morning.

The elementary school across the street had power, and the traffic light a couple blocks away in the other direction was working, so I figured the outage was limited to a narrow band; not so. The local news reported that around 1,500 customers were in the dark in the city of Albany and nearly 3,000 in the adjacent town of Bethlehem for at least three hours.

we walked to the pizzeria a block away since we could see from our house that it was operational. After sandwiches were eaten and homework was completed, we played a game of SORRY. Near its completion, the blackout ended at about 7:20 p.m.

Sitting in the dark made me really tired. Yet I stayed up and watched the last nine minutes of the Eagles-Bears NFL playoff game; Philadelphia partially blocked the Chicago field goal at the end of the game and won 16-15.

For ABC Wednesday

The longest “short week” EVER

There were nearly a dozen people at the bus stop.

Someone wrote on Wednesday, “Is it Friday yet?” I wrote, “Nowhere near!” Why is it that a four-day work week, theoretically a “short week”, can feel so long?

TUESDAY: It wasn’t a short week for everyone. The techies have brought in brand-new computers the day before. They’re nice! I can now read the difference between the E and the R or the N and the M on the new keyboard.

And the computer itself is smaller than the router I have at home. Oh, it has no CD drive, which means I can’t play CDs on the compu… wait a minute, I left a CD in my old computer. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve it.

Naturally, I spend the day looking up passwords, having to recover more than a few, while listening to music I had downloaded.

WEDNESDAY: A bit of snow in Albany, but it didn’t look too bad out. Then my wife called me from work before I left to tell me that it was treacherously slippery out there.

I went to the bus stop and, uncharacteristically, there were nearly a dozen people there. The 7:50 #10 Western Avenue bus never came, I’m told. We all sardined into the 8:10. It is standing room only.

So why does this woman near the front have her purse on a seat? More than one person tried to get her attention to cede the space, but she was obliviously playing a video game on her phone.

Finally, someone tried to move the purse over, and this woman, who was relatively tiny, said in this loud, untiny voice, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” The woman nearby asked about sitting, but the woman seated ranted for about 30 seconds about that her bag was heavy.

1. There was plenty of room under the seat, and 2. Other people weren’t taking up two seats, though they were carrying far larger items. Several people on the bus said very unkind things about this woman, even as we wished each other a good day.

Lest you think the problem was only on the bus, read Chuck Miller’s account about driving on the same day. By the time I finally got to work, there were troves of stories on the local news and Facebook of black ice and accidents everywhere in the region.

THURSDAY: Actually a decent day. I even rode my bike to work. But a storm was coming, so choir rehearsal was canceled.

It was only later that I realized that the DVR recorded NONE of the programming I had scheduled. Some I can see on-demand eventually but I hate missing JEOPARDY!

FRIDAY: Winter snow. My daughter’s school had a two-hour delay. My wife’s school was closed. This actually gave me the opportunity to pass on the #10, take the circuitous #138 bus, which, because there were no school kids on it, actually got me to work nearly on time.

Our intern, who was born in a warmer clime, was scheduled to arrive at 11 but didn’t arrive until 2; ah well.

TW3. It wasn’t THAT bad.

Community benefit dinner: September 30 fires

Benefit dinner: Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 5:30-8:30pm
First Lutheran Church of Albany, 646 State St, Albany, NY 12203

house fire On my way to church Sunday, September 30, I noted that Quail Street was blocked between Western and Washington Avenue. I could see buildings in the middle of the range still smoldering.

On my return trip, I saw a guy from the Capital District Transportation Authority and I asked why there was a bus parked at the corner of western and Quail. He said that CDTA often dispatches a vehicle to this type of disaster so that people displaced in the middle of the night have a place to stay warm.

It wasn’t until I got home that I heard there was ANOTHER multi-building fire, this one on Sheridan Avenue, about ten blocks away, but apparently unrelated. A total of a dozen buildings were heavily damaged or destroyed.

When I was a kid, there was a multiple-structure fire on Grandma Williams’ one-block street, Maple Street in Binghamton, NY. The four or five wooden structures were utterly destroyed. I don’t believe anyone was hurt, but naturally, many lives were disrupted. So that type of fire always makes me especially sad.

Among the actions being taken to help the September 30 fire survivors is a Community Benefit Dinner.

Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 5:30-8:30pm
First Lutheran Church of Albany
646 State St, Albany, NY 12203

Pay What You Can – Suggested Donation for Entry:
$5 for Students & Seniors
$10 for Adults
$15 for Families
There will be raffles and a silent auction and the opportunity to create cards for survivors.

Dinner will be an Italian Feast of Chicken Parm, Baked Ziti, Carmelized Green Beans, Tossed Salad, Desserts, Assorted Beverages

This dinner is sponsored by UAlbany Student Affairs, Pine Hills Neighborhood Association, and First Lutheran Church with support from Hon. Alfredo Balarin, Hon. Doug Bullock

If you can’t make it and want to donate:

* The United Way of the Greater Capital Region, Albany City Fires Fund. The mailing address is Albany City Fires Fund, PO Box 13865, Albany, NY 12212. All funds will go directly to the fire survivors.

* Any of CAP COM Federal Credit Union’s 11 branches in the Capital Region.

* The Catholic Charities Disaster Recovery – indicate Fire Survivors in the Comments Section. The mailing address is Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany, 40 North Main Avenue, Albany, New York 12203. Use the Donate Form to direct funds to fire survivors.

Contact Pine Hills Improvement Group at PHIGPineHills@gmail.com or 518-852-7878 with any questions.

More details are available on the Community Benefit Dinner event page on the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association Facebook Page.

Erastus Corning, Polly Noonan: Gillibrand connection

I remember Burt Reynolds first as the “half-breed” Quint on about four dozen episodes of the TV series Gunsmoke.

Falco as Noonan — Edie Falco as Polly Noonan in The True

These are a couple things that are Albany connected, the latter, very tangentially.

The new play “The True”, written by Sharr White, “examines — and hypothesizes about — the affections shared” between long-time Albany, NY mayor Erastus Corning 2nd (d. 1983) and his confidant Dorothea (Polly) Noonan (d. 2003).

There was an article in the local paper, the Times Union, with some relatives and/or friends of the pair complaining that no one had approached them about whether all the facts were correct. As with most movies about famous people and events, I’ve never felt it necessary for the story to be I-dotted, T-crossed factual.

BTW, I didn’t move to Albany in 1979, and Corning who was first elected in 1941, was STILL mayor. The Democratic machine, which still exists in a modified form to this day. Trivia fact: the tallest building between Montreal and New York City is the Corning Tower, the 43-story building on the Empire State Plaza.

“Edie Falco and Michael McKean star in The New Group production of “the True”, which opens September. 20 at the Pershing Square Signature Center in New York City. Falco, for one, didn’t know there really WAS a Polly Noonan.

Noonan’s granddaughter — Kirsten E. Gillibrand, “once a little-known congresswoman from the Capital District — was selected to fill the United States Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton, who had been named Secretary of State.”
***
I watched a LOT of Burt Reynolds. I remember him first as the “half-breed” Quint on about four dozen episodes of the TV series Gunsmoke (1962-1965), the detective show Dan August (1970-1972), then a whole bunch of movies when he was box-office champ, usually prompted by Susan, my first significant girlfriend after I first moved to the area in 1978.

We saw Smokey and the Bandit I and II, Rough Cut, Starting Over, Hooper, and the underrated The End. Later, I watched the series Evening Shade (1990-1994) and the movie Boogie Nights (1997), plus a variety of guest appearances. Sally Field, who was in at least four of those films, said that Burt “never leaves my mind.”

Here’s Jerry Reed performing “Eastbound and Down”, from Smokey and the Bandit.

How do you pronounce Albany? Depends

Someone from the country of Albania is an Albanian. Someone from Albany, NY is also an Albanian.

As anyone who has lived in the state capital of New York or its environs for any period of time knows, you pronounce Albany as ALL-bun-ee, with first syllable rhyming with “fall.” One can always tell when an out-of-town advertising firm has created a television spot and the announcer says AL-ban-ee.

But how do you pronounce it in other parts of the world? In New Zealand, North Aucklanders can’t quite agree about its suburb of Albany.

“A 1980 North Shore Times story found ‘Al-bany’ to be the more common pronunciation. However, an English-born councillor at the time David Thornton confessed he said ‘All-bany’, due to a block of London flats called ‘The Albany’.

“Massey University linguistics lecturer Victoria Kerry said there is no ‘should’ when it comes to pronunciation. ‘I would say that there’s no one correct or incorrect way of pronouncing it. In linguistics, we would look at the variety of ways that you can say it that might associate you with a particular area.’

However, “the New York pronunciation is actually closer to the original pronunciation from Britain and Scotland, where past Dukes of Albany came from, she said. Albany originally derives from ‘Alba’, which is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland.”

So put New Zealand in the AL category, but with a strong ALL contingent.

Oregon Live says that state’s Albany mimics New York’s.

This guide puts New Albany, Indiana in the NYS camp. Yet a fellow on Englishforums.com claims: “Most Hoosiers say ‘New All-ban-ee.’ Some, that have more southern roots, say ‘Nallbanee.'”

I have found inconclusive polls about California’s choice for its city.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Albany, GA is pronounced “AIL-binny.”

It’s pretty definitive that Albany, Western Australia is pronounced “Al-bany”, the first syllable rhyming with “pal.”

One more thing: someone from the country of Albania is an Albanian. Someone from Albany, NY is also an Albanian, but pronounced differently, al-BANE-ee-in vs. all-BANE-ee-in.

Thanks to Arthur@AmeriNZ for the inspiration.