Tag: weather

Mother’s Day: no mother, again

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone.

trudy_at_churchHere are a couple more pictures of my mom, before she was my mom. I don’t know exactly when they were taken, if I saw them before, I don’t recall them. Funny how she has that head tilt in both, albeit in different directions. My sister Marcia is doing a yeoperson’s job of finding photos, scanning them, and putting them on Facebook.

I’m fairly sure I know where the first one was taken.

It looks like the front of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, 35 Sherman Place in downtown Binghamton, NY, where I would later be baptized, in August (?) of 1953.

The Sherman Street church, indeed, all of that street was razed in the late 1950s to build a playground right across from the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street, where my father spent a lot of time working on social justice issues.

The church congregation moved to 203 Oak Street, at the corner of Lydia Street, only two short blocks from my home at 5 Gaines Street.

Trudy_carDon’t know much about this clearly earlier picture, except that the man in the car is almost certainly her Uncle Ed Yates, her mother Gert’s brother.

The freaky weather in Albany last month (80F on one day, 27F and snow 36 hours later) reminded both of my sisters of something that happened to my mom one Mother’s Day, or perhaps before: she slipped on ice on the front porch of our house and ended up in the hospital for at least a week. I think it was 1966; the week before May 8, the low temperature was 31 to 33F, and down to 26F the night before in Binghamton, NY. Though it COULD have been 1967, when it was 33F to 35F the evenings of the week before May 14.

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone. I’ve had more than my share of the latter thus far in 2014.

Movies, music, romance

I once got a standing ovation playing a comb, seriously.

play combMDS of Pantheon Songs wonders:

What are some movies that are generally considered to be classics that you found to be just terrible/boring/ridiculous?

I fell asleep watching Citizen Kane on video; in general, I prefer seeing a film first on the big screen. But that lapse was probably because I was tired. The only film during which I ever fell asleep at a movie theater, excluding drive-in double features, was Empire of the Sun (1987), and again, maybe I was just fatigued.

I didn’t love either The Royal Tennenbaums or Lost in Translation, but this may be a function of seeing them after hearing too much hype. Or I was in a bad mood. Or tired.

Nothing, I guess, fits the bill.
***
Tom the Mayor asks:

Are you worried about Lydia when she gets to the age of Dating?

I was watching a performance of The Lion King that Lydia was in on March 2. There’s a scene where Nala, played by the pastors’ daughter, was being sized up by the evil king Scar. And the male pastor, who was fairly near me, got rather physically tense until Nala slapped Scar and got away.

So sure, I suppose it’s an issue. Don’t know what she’ll face, and kids seem to have more ways to be mean.

Also don’t know what dating will mean to a mixed-race kid these days, though you assume the world is better than this being a problem.
***
This must mean it’s New York Erratic time again:

What skill has gotten you the most girls? (Thinking clean, like music and singing and whatnot).

My guess is that I can be a very good listener. I was often friends with women I ended up going out with. Someone long ago told me that steering the conversation to be about the other person tends to make them feel good, and not just in romantic settings.

Though I know I did wow someone with my air guitar of Smoke On The Water.

What musical instruments do you play? Which do you wish you played?

I don’t play any instruments. That’s technically not true; I’ve played the comb. In public, including several times as part of the Green Family Singers. I once got a standing ovation playing the blues on a comb in Manlius, NY c 1970, seriously.

I wish I could play piano; I took a year of it when I was about 12, but I just didn’t have the chops. Or guitar; my father played and taught my sister Leslie in about a month, but I couldn’t get it.

What subject in school did you find the most difficult?

College freshman calculus. No idea what I was doing. And I did so well in high school math, with a 97 in algebra, 86 in geometry, and 98 in trigonometry; I would have done better in geometry, except memorizing proofs I thought was dumb.

First calc test I get a 73, the second 56, the third 37. I needed a passing grade on the final. I crammed for two days, sleeping maybe a total of four hours. Got a C on the final, a C in the course. Two weeks later, I looked at my textbook and did not understand a thing.

Which places on Earth you do NOT want to go to?

There are so many. Places that are too hot and sticky, and/or have too many insects; e.g. the Amazon. Places that are too cold, I mean below freezing even in summer; e.g., Antarctica. Places that are too remote because I like people; e.g., some cabin in the remote Rockies. Places that are too crowded because I don’t like people THAT much; e.g. Calcutta.

There is still time to Ask Roger Anything.

Unexpected “vacation” day

The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife DOES go to work because her districts weren’t even delayed, *I* DON’T go to work.

windyGoing to bed the night before a major weather pattern, I figure on one of these three scenarios, given that The Wife is a teacher at BOCES, an educational consortium, working several suburban or rural districts, and The Daughter is a student in the Albany school district.

1. The Daughter goes to school, whether The Wife goes to work or not doesn’t matter, I go to work.

2. The Daughter’s school is delayed, the Wife’s schools are delayed, I go to work.

3. The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife doesn’t work, I go to work.
What I DON’T figure on:

4. The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife DOES go to work because her districts weren’t even delayed, I DON’T go to work.

Now, I HAVE said to The Wife that, as a matter of practicality, if the fourth setting ever came to pass, I’d stay home. But I didn’t think it would REALLY happen.

Although I should have gotten an inkling a few days ago, before a wind advisory, when I was on a bus with some young man from one of our charter schools, who seemed to believe there would be no school for him today.

This leads me to believe that the Albany school superintendent is in touch with the heads of the charter schools regarding the weather, but perhaps NOT with the other district fellow wizards. There have been another time or two when Albany closed and other schools didn’t, around the time one of the hurricanes last year was not a real weather event in the city.

It’s a peculiar way to burn a vacation day. Then again, I didn’t REALLY want to be out there waiting for two buses each way, when it was below zero Fahrenheit, did I?

Beard, or no beard: that is the question

This picture from the May 2010 does not look like me to ME.


Jendy, who I’ve only known since 1987, asked:

If you were to shave your beard, would Lydia recognize you? Would I? ([Paul [her husband] says his kids would do a double take every spring when he used to shave his off!)

I don’t get to see Jendy as often, now that she has a new job. When she worked in a public setting, I’d see her once or twice a month. So she didn’t know that, in fact, I DID have my beard shaved off, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It had become a scruffy mess, and I needed to get it trimmed. But once in the chair of a new barbershop, I let the whimsy of the moment carry me off, and had all the facial hair, save for the mustache, removed. Lydia seemed to recognize me, and I’m sure you would too.

Know who didn’t recognize me? I didn’t. Back in 2004, and before, I had a medium-dark complexion. (That’s me on the left in a picture taken in April 1997 for Bill and Orchid Anderson’s wedding.) Then I got the vitiligo, which, not only created lighter patches on my arms, hands, legs and elsewhere but generally lightened the skin on my face. And because I am afraid of sunburn, or skin cancer, even with sunscreen, I tended to avoid direct sunlight whenever I could. This made my face considerably lighter, to a point that I did not even recognize myself in photos. There’s one in my church newsletter from three or four years ago, in which the only way I knew it was me was seeing the outfit I was wearing. This picture from May 2010’s Free Comic Book Day does not look like me to ME.

It’s not just that I think I look better darker, it’s that it’s how I see myself in my mind’s eye. It’s not like realizing I’m grayer or heavier; it’s something much more fundamental that I cannot describe except that it was my SELF-IDENTITY.

Then, either I stopped worrying as much or something, because I guess I spent less time hiding under umbrellas in the summers, and some of the color has returned to my face, as you kinda can see in the picture below, taken in early February 2013. When I got the shave in November, I could see this odd streak of skin where my beard had been, lighter than my skin color in the 2010 pic. It looked WEIRD, freakish. I almost took a selfie, except that I actually had no idea where my cellphone was. So now the beard has returned, and while I’ll trim it, I doubt I will cut it off any time, certainly not in the near future.

This ties in nicely with a question by New York Erratic:

What’s your favorite weather?

Partly sunny, or partly cloudy, with high clouds filtering the sun. Never liked the direct sun, even as a kid. The heat index, that combo of temperature and humidity, starts bothering me at about 90F.

Not crazy about the cold at the post when the condensation on my mustache freezes. Don’t mind the rain, though I’d rather be indoors. Some snow is fine. I’d find San Diego weather boring.

Z is for Zone

Those of us in the northeast US felt pretty secure about avoiding the remnants of hurricanes until Irene and Lee in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 roared through.

I came across this article: Alaskan villages try “climigration” in the face of climate change. The subhead is “When a town turns to a perpetual disaster area, it might be time to move it.”

I was thinking about this in following the Oklahoma tornadoes in May; the picture is from the aftermath. How DOES one live in a tornado alley? There was an intense storm in Moore, Oklahoma in 1999, after all. There have been a few articles about why there are few underground shelters in the area; Dustbury linked to one.

This led me to muse on other disasters; repeated flooding on parts of the Mississippi River, e.g. A couple of towns, I’ve read, moved to a safety zone several miles away from the river, but others get sandbags together for a near-annual threat of the town being swallowed up.

I recall after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there was lots of chatter about someone who could be so crazy to build a city, New Orleans, that actually below sea level. It’s a major port, that’s why, and the government is building walls that – likely – will protect it from another storm.

Wildfires and earthquakes and the occasional avalanche in the western US, hurricanes in the southeast. What is the zone one can go to that is immune to the ravages of Mother Nature? Those of us in the northeast US felt pretty secure about avoiding the remnants of hurricanes until Irene and Lee in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 roared through. Sandy made a left turn; it’s not supposed to do that! The American meteorological models didn’t even predict that path, though the European models did.

So where in your country, or part of the country, are the danger zones, the safety zones? Of course, one cannot be 100% safe anywhere, but there are greater and lesser risks.

I’m still convinced that my locale in upstate New York is still a relatively safe zone to live in. That IS subject to change…

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Ramblin' with Roger
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