Tag: FFAPL

I decided to write a blog post for thankful month. Lazily, I picked November 2025. I’m not including the Thursday night choir rehearsals or Sunday morning church services, both of which would qualify. Then the exercise appeared to run too long. So this is part one. I realize it’s rather diaryish, but that’s how it wrote itself. 

DATE: Monday, the 3rd. Back in April 2021, I had lunch with three of my oldest friends—I’m talking KINDERGARTEN at Daniel S. Dickinson in Binghamton, NY — Carol, Karen, and Bill, along with Karen’s old friend Michael, whom I’ve known for a good while. That first lunch in Latham, NY, after we had gotten our COVID shots, was replicated at a diner in Albany. It’s strange when you have friends for 67 years, I suppose. But some memories diverged, which is expected after so many years.

DATE: Tuesday, the 4th. I had already voted the previous week. Before early voting, I would get up extremely early and be the first or second person in line. I miss it a little, but not enough to return to the tradition.

At the FFAPL author talk, Peter Balint discussed his memoir, The Shoe in the Danube: The Immigrant Experience of a Holocaust Survivor. This was a fascinating book. His father, a Hungarian Jew, died in the Holocaust; he, his older sister, and his mother, a German Catholic, survived. There’s a lot about personal identity that I found relatable.

I got to see one of my housebound friends. After I dropped off some prescriptions, we had another lovely conversation.

The shopping cart

Then I went to my local Market 32 Price Chopper to buy some food and get a new shopping cart. My existing transport was beginning to wear out.  I did not realize that the cart required assembly. So at the end of the counter, I’m struggling to put this thing together. The cart was made in China, as were the instructions.

The young man who had rung me out was trying to help me, but he also had customers. He asked if he could turn off his aisle light, and he helped me assemble it. Or so we thought. As I was rolling it out of the store, filled with groceries, the doohickey holding the back tires together sprang off. The young man came and helped me tighten those whatchamacallits, with some advice from the security guard, who had been busy protecting the produce.

DATE: Wednesday, the 5th.  I participated in a community reading of a William Kennedy book for the third time. Two years ago, it was for the book Ironweed, and last year for Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game. This year, we are reading Legs, the fictional account about the very real gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, who lived in Albany and was murdered in the 1930s.

This year, the event made the New York Times. Participating in this event makes me feel more Albanian; that’s pronounced ALL-bah-nee-an, not AL-bah-nee an. Michael Huber, the communications guy for the New York State Writers Institute, and a truly swell guy, wrote: “In a time of desperate need, this marathon reading of Legs raised $1,605 for the food pantry at Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church, which was Kennedy’s childhood parish.”

Zooming to France

Then I went home and talked with my dear friend Deborah, whom I met in NYC in the summer of 1977, on Zoom. My wife and  I went to Deborah’s and Cyrille‘s wedding in western France in May 2023.

DATE: Friday, the  7th. I attended a lovely flute and piano concert by the Hardage Chirignan duo, featuring two women named Mel, for First Friday at First Presbyterian Church in Albany.

DATE: Sunday, the 9th: I attended a meeting to learn more about how to address ICE activities. Zoom call with sister Leslie. I was going to write about the Northeast blackout of 1965 on my blog, but I forgot; at least I touched on it in 2005.

DATE: Monday, the 10th. It was 50 years since the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Someone I know thought the event had taken place long before then. Kelly wrote about it.

My wife went out with her friends for dinner, so I went out and had a lovely conversation with a member of my church choir, which touched on some similarities and at least one revelation.

More on Thanksgiving.