Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

I can remember being 15, 16 years old, and my mother being distinctly unimpressed with my taste in music - her reaction to my first Frank Zappa records ("We're Only In It for the Money", "Hot Rats", "Weasels Ripped My Flesh", etc.) standing out in memory.

I have MLK Day off, so I'm here at home this morning at my leisure, having a cuppa coffee and listening to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (a recent library-sale find, the London Sinfonietta on London)...

...and my 15-year-old wakes up and comes down stairs.

And as the circle turns, now it's my daughter's turn to be distinctly unimpressed with my choice of music.

"The Garden Spot of the Universe"

My father would make that observation that every time he drove past the decaying factory town of Amsterdam (NY) - and not entirely ironically.

Because my mother was born-and-raised in Amsterdam. She had to drop out of high school to go to work in the carpet mill - and I seem to recall that she started at four dollars a week - as it was the depths of the Hoover Depression, and her father didn't make enough to keep them fed. (Now that I think of it, it's more likely that the mill wouldn't take him back on - not at seven dollars a week - not when they could hire teenaged girls at four dollars a week.)

When the war broke out, she went to work down the valley at GE's Schenectady Works, where she met my father. (And by then, she was then making more than her father, a laborer in the carpet mill.)

When my parents married in '45, they lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years; my eldest sister was born there. My mother's brother - who was, after her father died, her only living relative - raised his family in Amsterdam, and lived there until the day he died. (He's buried right behind Ft. Johnson.)

We visited my uncle probably about monthly for most of the '60s; I've been to several weddings up in Amsterdam, of my cousin and of my mother's friends' kids.

So I have a connection there; heck, it's not far to the alternate universe in which I grew up in Amsterdam. (My uncle was in school with Kirk Douglas, who wrote books about growing up poor in Amsterdam.)

Anyway, on Saturday, Alice and I were headed up the valley, and were stopped at the traffic light in the center of town (at the light at the intersection of Routes 5 and 30)... and the shift linkage let go.
Nice strangers jumped out to push the Miata into the fire station's parking lot; a half-hour later, it was towed to Dudka's Garage over on the west side of town.

It was a sunny and hot Saturday afternoon - not the worst conditions to be stranded. And I noted that I am not the first of my lineage to be walking around Amsterdam.

Eventually, my daughter and I walked over to the Amtrak station and took the last train of the day down to Schenectady, where Maggie and Mary rescued us.

The conductor thought this was hilarious - "It'll take me that long to write up the ticket!" - as it's all of a 15-minute train ride. (However, let's note that Amtrak was fully thirty minutes late for a 15-minute ride....)

Back at the lodge, we toasted our adventure...

(I got home to learn that the Miata doesn't have "linkages" - if the shifter is busted, it's inside the transmission case. This is going to hurt....)

It looks like my work here is done

We had our end-of-summer cookout yesterday. (We have Other Plans for Labor Day Weekend (celebrating the proletarian contribution, no doubt...).) Anyway, I was grilling burgers on the Weber, and tried to pantomine my need for assistance.

The fifteen-year-old rolled her eyes, sighed, and said:

"I wish I were like other kids and had normal parents!

Forward, into the past

Here I am, surfing the internet, conducting conversations with people I've never met in real life...
...and over on the couch, the Lady Margaret is using her Stereopticon to view various Uplifting and Ennobling Views of the Great War.

(She was thinking about buying some more stereo views on eBay, and thought she should review the ones she owned.)

"That, I believe, is some sort of record"

I went to four library sales within 48 hours. ("I've had 18 straight whiskies; I think this is a record.")

Thursday noon: Albany Public Library's weekly sale.

Thursday evening: the "Friends of the Berkshire Atheneum"s preview sale.
(Pittsfield is about 34 miles from my office, but I think that there are fewer traffic lights between points A and B than I encounter on my normal commute home. And - on a glorious May afternooon - there are worse things to be doing than cruising over the Berkshires in the Miata. I came home with a boxful of books on the passenger seat.)

Friday noon: East Greenbush Public Library.
(My lovely wife even joined me there for this one.)

Saturday morning: my traditional volunteer gig, helping with set-up at the Schenectady County sale.

(For about twenty years, I've helped with set-up at the Schenectady sale. Fred Thompson has now drafted me to help him staff the 'Better Records' table, too. But - as a reward - he comp'd me the few items I had picked up off his table. )

I'd say that "I Have No Life", except that I did squeeze in some non-book-related activities during this burst: on Friday night, the whole family went to my daughter's 'Game Fest' night for her softball league (and saw the fireworks); AND I made it to her Saturday afternoon game, too.

The four sales must have cost me nearly 80 bucks out-of-pocket, including my 'Friends of the BA' membership. Even at 'library sale' prices, books add up. ($1 APL, $36.50 BA, $14 EGPL, ~$25 SCPL). But: see my LT list of recent acquisitions... that's a LOT of books.)

However, all of this silly running-about-advancing-behavior scarcely leaves any time for important stuff, like surfing the internet. (Or blogging.)

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Thank you, Lester Bangs

When I was but a beardless youth, I came across a copy of Creem. And in that distant land, it was hard to get your hands on information - this was a quarter-century before the internet, in a town without a bookstore. I treasured that copy, read it to death, damn near memorized the thing. It had a big influence on me.

And the heart of the issue was a long, rambling piece called James Taylor Marked for Death. (Twenty years later, I would learn that the piece was written by Lester F. Bangs.)

Now, whatever the virtues of the talented Mr. Taylor, the case against him was memorably made. He's done a few songs that will last - I can't drive the Mass Pike without thinking of him - but I remain to this very day somewhat averse to the charms of Sweet Baby James.

Back in November, the Dems swept state-wide elections here in New York. New Governor Spitzer is extremely smart (1590 SATs!) and, (depressingly), a couple of years younger than I am. But his politics are - despite his money - quite admirable.

And he threw a public inaugural, one that stood in stark contrast to the republican version. The day began with a run in the park, on to an open-air inauguration, on to throwing a public party in the ESP, then an open house at the residence - and culminating in a free concert in the Knick Arena.

Jimmy Fallon MC'd. Ben Vereen sang. Willie Colon played. Natalie Merchant performed.

And, the evening's headliner: James Taylor.

I sat through three numbers before I realized that it would be a betrayal of all I stand for me to sit through a performance by James Taylor. I could no more endure JT than I could voluntarily endure watching the Lawrence Welk Show.

So we got up and left.

Can't Stop the Tide From Flowin'

I’ve been fighting an increasingly lonely rear-guard action against digital photography for about a decade now. Until the last few years, there has not been much wrong with a strategy of Waiting Until the Bugs Are Out Of It: each successive year has seen better resolutions, shorter lag times, AND lower prices. By now, even I can’t argue that digital photography hasn’t Arrived. Still -- having never even bothered to make the jump to autofocus -- I’ve had little motivation to jump in at the deep end of digital photography. (Quite the reverse, in fact: as everybody dumps their film cameras on eBay, film gear has never been cheaper.)

This weekend, The Teenager discovered the little Olympus digicam that I picked up on a clearance table last summer. And I think I’ve lost her to The Dark Side.

Last summer, I had given her a little Nikon EM to get her started with Serious Photography. (This is just about how I started, thirty years ago: when somebody gives you an SLR, you’ve been placed under a geas to at least learn how to use it.) I can’t exactly say that she has caught fire with the hobby. But this weekend she decided to help her mom start selling stuff on eBay - which pretty much necessitates putting up digital photos.

So, all on her own, she got the little Oly out, installed it on the kids’ iBook, and started snapping away with it. Pouring photos into iPhoto followed immediately.

Now what am I going to do with all this film?