First Presbyterian Church Archives

Pride Month @FPC 2025

Love is a choice

It’s Pride Month @FPC (First Presbyterian Church of Albany). Usually, I don’t get to attend Adult Ed because the choir rehearses at that hour; however, since the Albany Gay Men’s Chorus (AGMC) was performing the service music on June 1, I was able to attend.

The discussion was very meaningful. Some visitors were surprised that a conversation about LGBTQ+ issues, led by a member of Pride Center of the Capital Region, a/k/a the Capital Pride Center, “the longest continually operating Pride Center in the Country.”

What does coming mean? Who do you come out to? The answer to the latter question is, in part, to oneself. LGBTQ+ people in New York State tend to gravitate to places such as NYC, Buffalo, and Albany because they tend to be not just more welcoming but safer.

The Christian church has often been an unwelcoming institution, to the point that some folks cannot even walk through the doors. I understand this, and as a Christian, it frankly angers me. But it also pains me that folks have been subjected to such crap.

But it wasn’t all heavy. The speaker pointed out “we have been here,” and asked an audience member to pick a number and a continent, excluding Antarctica. I was introduced to Emperor Ai of Han (ruled 7 BCE- 1 BCE). “Traditional historians characterized the relationship between Emperor Ai and Dong Xian as one between homosexual lovers and referred to their relationship as “the passion of the cut sleeve” (斷袖之癖) after a story that one afternoon after falling asleep for a nap on the same bed, Emperor Ai cut off his sleeve rather than disturb the sleeping Dong Xian when he had to get out of bed.”

The service

The 10:45 service, which you can watch here, featured the aforementioned AGMC, as well as a great sermon by Pastor Miriam. Ater the scripture, 1 John 4:7-21, using “sibling” for “brother or sister,” she explained More Light Sunday.

“Our denomination in 1978 ruled that openly gay and lesbian people (the language of the time) could join and participate in the Presbyterian church, but not serve in official leadership of the church – not as deacons, elders or ministers. In reality many churches weren’t even welcoming openly gay people into their church, much less into membership.” She explained how First Pres and the PCUSA had changed.

FPC Albany’s More Light Statement of Inclusiveness notes that “we welcome all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, into the full life and service of the church. …

Last summer, when the PCUSA added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of categories found in our constitution that may not be the basis of discrimination in the church’s life, it was… “such a bold witness… given that there is so much anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation in the U.S. – especially because it is allegedly being done in the name of Christian faith or justified by the weaponization of scripture…”

Siding with love

“When Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are being removed from public policy, we are standing up and saying, not in our church. When the laws of the human government obstruct the laws of our loving God in denying trans and intersex people both social and medical gender affirmation, we are standing up and saying, not in our church. This is not going to happen to our siblings…”

She borrowed from a 2015 sermon, Siding With Love, by Lisa Friedman called , particularly the paragraph that begins “Love is a choice.”

Miriam ended: “Let us pray – Holy God, at this moment, help us to see who needs us to stand with them on the side of love. Help us to choose that side; help us to make a stand; help us to take action. Help us to love others as you have loved us. Amen.”

Upcoming

And then, on Sunday, June 8, the church will be decorating this year’s “float” for the Pride Parade. You can either join the parade in Washington Park or join as the “float” passes the church after the 10:30 service.

I’ve mentioned that there was a time when a Pride Parade seemed passe to some, that we had overcome. But the current political climate makes it, I would argue, more necessary.

Bach Magnificat

In addition to our weekly musical contribution between September and June, the choir of First Presbyterian Church of Albany usually endeavors to take on one or two more substantial pieces during the church year. For the First Friday in December 2024, we performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat, directed by our choir director, Michael Lister, in the church’s sanctuary.

The choir had been practicing since September, with three special Sunday afternoon rehearsals. Dr. Lister had also recruited additional vocalists, some from his tenure at the College of Saint Rose (RIP) and from UAlbany. A few of them also came at the end of our regular Thursday night rehearsals to hone their musical understanding of the pieces.

There were two parts to the December 6 program. The first part involved the octet of the choir: Rose, Maria, Fiona, Sarah, Joshua, Nate, Dan, and Tom. They performed:

Ave Regina Coelorum by Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704)

Ave Maria by Tomas Louis Victoria (1548-1611)

Ave Generosa by Ola Gjeilo (b. 1978) with text by Hildegard von Bingen

Blessed Be That Maid Marie, a 15th-century Carol arranged by Susan LaBarr

Magnificat by Arvo Pärt (b.1935)

Bògòroditse Dyevo by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 -1943)

Hacia Belen va un Botrrico, a traditional Spanish Carol arranged by Alice Parker

Estonian

My favorite piece was the Pärt, pronounced like pear with a T at the end. I’ve been a big fan of the Estonian composer for over two decades when my wife and I were at the house of one of her friends, and they were playing some of his music.

It was good that Bach Magnificat involved additional singers because at least five of our choir members were playing in the orchestra instead.

You may recall from the movie Amadeus when the Salieri character cried, “Too many notes!” This is what the Magnificat felt like for both the singers and the instrumentalists. In the case of the former, there was a lot of melisma, which is “a group of notes or tones sung on one syllable.” My favorite piece, which did not involve the full choir, involved the trio of Rose, Carla, and Fiona. They sang the solos and duets along with Joshua and guest vocalist Kristopher.

I’m using this photo that my friend Annika took because at least three people who attended the Magnificat asked if I had participated. Someone in front of me must have obscured me. But in this picture, I’m just left of the lectern. I was there! Really!

I’m always excited when we do a big piece and relieved when it’s over. Here’s the First Friday performance for December 6, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Albany.

Nancy Frank (1938-2024)

countless organ recitals

Though I joined the choir at First Presbyterian Church in 2000, I had forgotten that I had met the organist there, Nancy Frank, well before that year. First Pres is one of the FOCUS churches. Periodically, members of the then-five churches would sing at one of the other churches. When I was singing at Trinity UMC in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew, even from the brief time I spent with her every two years or so, she was an amazingly kind, gracious, patient, and extraordinarily talented musician.

One of the choir members, who joined the FPC choir a couple of decades before I did, noted that the organ had been recessed behind a wall. When a renovation was needed, Nancy successfully lobbied to make the instrument visible to the congregation. Indeed, while unnecessary, she became a longtime church member, serving on the Worship Committee and helping shape the evolving service.

She was really good at what she did. At her funeral on November 16, one of her sons noted that she could dissect recorded music, identifying the various instrumentation as though she were at the recording. He also noted she started taking . She started taking “Gentle Ballet” classes in her eighties!

There was a February 21, 2015, article about her in the Times Union, which you should be able to read (if I did it right). Faces of Faith: Organist sits in pew, after 42 years. She said, “I went back to school when our children were all in college. I graduated summa cum laude the same year that our older son, Ken, graduated. My organ composition, ‘Postlude on Lauda Anima,” received a UAlbany Presidential Award.”

As her obituary noted, Nancy began piano lessons at the age of seven and then added organ lessons at the age of 12. In the Capital Region since 1958, she has offered countless organ recitals, performing with various groups. Nancy was active in the American Guild of Organists, twice serving as Dean of the Eastern New York Chapter.

Personal touch

But this is not how I best remember her. It wasn’t her tremendous playing of the service musicianship, especially on the weekly postludes.

She was a sweetheart of a human being. “Nancy loved to laugh and entertain, and she was known for her annual summer picnics. “She often had the choir over for parties at the home she and her husband of 66 years, Wes, owned. Nancy kept track of the choir birthdays.

So when she died, I cried, even though she had been fighting leukemia for a couple of years. The very small consolation is that Wes made a series of CDs of the choir’s Advent and Good Friday performances that I can remember her by. Also, I stumbled upon a 2001 CD of hers on eBay that I just ordered.

From the TU piece: “The choir will be singing one of my favorite anthems, ‘Greater Love Hath No Man,’ by John Ireland, as well as an anthem that I wrote, ‘O Be Joyful in the Lord,’ based on Psalm 100. For the postlude, I will be playing one of my favorite pieces, “Toccata from Symphony V” by Charles-Marie Widor.”

She played a great Widor. The choir would still be in the loft as the sound surrounded us like a blanket. Here’s a recording by Frederick Hohman (2008) and another by Jonathan Scott. Nancy’s, I think, was better.

‘

Appropriately, Nancy Frank is in the middle of things. Hmm. More than half a dozen of the folks in this 2015 picture have passed away.

What would Joyce Bascom do?

feed the hungry

My wife and I attended the funeral of Joyce Bascom on Saturday, October 12. She had died two months earlier. Her life epitomized the Christian life in the best way possible. One might ask, “What would Joyce do?” in a given situation.

When we first attended our church, she was among the first people to welcome us, not just to say hi but to show genuine interest in who we were, where we came from, and how we started attending there. She was a very engaging person.

She was married to Paul, who she had known since grade school, for over 60 years until he died in 2015.

As noted in her obituary, she was actively involved in numerous causes, “including volunteering with the Red Cross, Traveler’s Aid, and Planned Parenthood. She worked tirelessly for the rights of all people, with a special focus on equality for the LGBTQ+ community.” Specifically, she was “chair of the More Light Committee, working to build inclusion in the Presbyterian church.”

What I learned at her funeral was that after her grandson Christopher was killed in an accident involving a drunk driver, she would meticulously clip articles about similar incidents and send them to an association dealing with driving while intoxicated. The organization created storyboards they could share with the media, creating a narrative that helped turn the tide.

In 2008, “Joyce was awarded the James and Pearl Campbell Peace and Justice Award by The Capital Area Council of Churches.”

Joyce “has always been a horse-girl since her father got her that first pony as a child… At the age of 84, many years after her last horse had passed away, Joyce got ‘back on the horse’ – taking riding lessons once a week.”

Action

After her funeral on Saturday, my wife and I were walking back to our car. A woman was walking up in the middle of State Street, holding the top of her head and limping. I could see even from a distance that the top of her head looked red.

She was walking by us and then decided to walk over to us. Apologetically, she shared how she had been mugged and hit on the head, with her wallet, her money, and her identification gone. She had been to hospitals, and spoke about the extraordinary wait for care at Albany Med (notoriously true, unfortunately).

Social services told her she couldn’t receive help in Albany because she was receiving aid in her hometown in western Massachusetts. So she reluctantly asked for some money, and we gave her a twenty, which was all we had before we went to the bank.

We offered her a ride, but she demurred. My wife remembered that she had had some sandwiches in the refrigerator at church from a meeting five days earlier. They were probably a little bit underwhelming in taste, but they were still okay to eat. So my wife put them in a plastic bag we had in the car, offered them to this woman with the caveat as mentioned earlier, and she happily took them.

Afterward, I realized this was what Joyce Bascom would do, if not more. That’s why I enjoyed knowing her.

Sunday Stealing: Catalyst quartet

99X

Here’s another Sunday Stealing. But before that, I want to plug the Catalyst Quartet, a barbershop quartet in my area. I got to see the relatively new group perform on Friday at my church. They were cool even though the room was rather warm. You can see the program on their Facebook page for June 21, 2024.

They recently qualified for this year’s international barbershop quartet competition in Cleveland, OH and they are thrilled. The competition is in the first week of July and between hotels, travel costs, and registration fees, the expenses are adding up. So they have a GoFundMe campaign.

I should note that two of these guys are regulars in my church choir and a third has sung there occasionally.

Here are a couple of their tunes I found on YouTube from the 2023 NextGen Varsity Finals:

Good Luck Charm

Surfer Girl

I’ll admit to be enough of a sucker for barbershop that I attended the Sweet Adelines competition in New York in April 1976.

Now back to our regular quiz.

1. Are you double-jointed?

No.

2. Are you ticklish?

Decreasingly so.

3. Cookies, cakes, or donuts?

Well, it depends on the item at hand. Oatmeal raisin cookies. Carrot cake. Donuts are okay, but I liked them more as a kid. Specifically, Spaulding Krullers. The linked post is one of this blog’s most popular ever.

But the choices do not include the OBVIOUS answer, which is PIE. It is well documented that PIE rules.

4. Did you go to prom?

I went to two proms, as noted here.

5. Do you bite your nails?

No, but I used to.

6. Do you enjoy dancing?

There are rare periods when I do. Most don’t even involve alcohol.

7. Do you forgive easily?

Yes. But I rarely forget. There are people I keep at arm’s length because they’ve so wounded me decades ago. I suppose forgetting involves apparent remorse on their part, and the people I’m thinking of unfortunately don’t appear to be capable of that.

8. Do you prefer to bathe or shower?

I haven’t taken a bath in this millennium.

9. Does your name have any special meaning?

Roger means spearbearer. I think it’s Germanic. Green is a color, which I’m sure I wrote about several times, including here. I found a guy named Owen for his interpretation of his name.

10. Have you ever gone camping?

Yes. Hated it.

I am a winner!

11. Have you ever won something?

Back in the days of calling into radio stations to win prizes, I had a pretty good track record. I’ve gotten several LPs; Hunky Dory by David Bowie, with Changes immediately comes to mind.

When I lived in NYC in 1977, I was the ninth caller with the phrase “99X is my radio station,” and I had to name the last song played which was She’s Gone by Hall and Oates; I received twice my age, so $48, and I’m pretty sure I took my sister Leslie to a New York Mets game.

In the early 1980s, I scored tickets to see Judy Collins in Glens Falls, NY.

The only trophy I ever won was for racquetball.

I ‘ve been on a trivia team that once was victorious. Oh, and there’s that JEOPARDY thing.

12. What did you last eat?

Red grapes.

13. What’s your longest relationship so far?

The person I’ve known the longest is my sister Leslie. If we’re talking romantic relationship, that’d be my wife. Interestingly, both are born in July and are left-handed.

14. Have you ever been on a diet?

I’m often on a diet. That’s why I’m eating grapes.

15. Do you enjoy DIY or crafts?

Let’s say no.