Big Daddy

Meanwhile Back in the States... is the second album from Big Daddy released in 1985. I hadn't listened to in many years but gave it a spin today. They were a weird comedy group that played current 80's hits in the rock and roll style of the 50's. I played some of their songs during my years in the 80's spinning records as a dive bar DJ. It was kind of fun with a strange fictional backstory but they could also be stupid sounding. A few of the songs were spot on parodies. I included a couple of pics from the album back cover.

Pandemic Office

Most of the time I've sat at our kitchen table with my laptop but for the past year or so I've been spending a lot of my pandemic time enjoying our backyard through the screened in sunroom of our cabana in what has turned out to be my second office or what I've also called my pandemic office. 

I spend a lot of time in that space reading, writing, exploring my music collection, and listening to tunes on the stereo. Sometimes I have the music playing loud and sometimes I'm wearing headphones. Sometimes I read there in the quiet listening to the birds. This goes on during all the seasons. 

Right now I have a fan in the room for those really hot days and over the past winter I had a heater in there for those really cold days. The majority of the time I need neither. There is often a breeze coming through the screened windows in the summer and sun coming through the sealed windows in the winter that really make the space a sunroom.

Last night I spent a wonderful evening back there. It was a little chilly but very comfortable in the cabana. I sat in my office chair at the table with my laptop and wrote for several hours while sipping a couple of beers with some classical music on the stereo. It was an amazing sunset and everything about the evening was nice. I stayed out there until almost 10 PM. It was very dark. I sat in that room with the party lights lit and by the end of the night I couldn't see anything in the backyard.  The screens also protected me from any bugs throughout the evening. It really was very pleasant and I like having that option to sit out there any evening. I should add that I also sit out there many afternoons too but it is nice to have several options like sitting further out in the yard in one of our chairs or sitting on the front porch although there I mostly just read... and greet neighbors walking by.

We are fortunate to have these spaces especially during this time of pandemic.

I've written several times about using this space. Backyard Refuge, Winter Refuge, and Sunny Backyard.

Afternoon Traffic

I went out around 1 pm to run some errands today. I ran into a lot of crazy afternoon traffic. Now I've been retired now for just about five years and throughout most of that time I usually go out and do errands on weekday mornings usually around 10 am. I don't often go out on Friday afternoons.

So I was weed whacking and ran out of the little containers of cord. I had a couple of other things in mind that I need to get from the housewares store and we also needed gas in the car so off I went. 

First I ran into some serious traffic right down the street at the zoo. Was something going on there? I don't know but the traffic around the zoo was crazy. I went over Amherst St to Elmwood and up to the Valu Home store. That was a bust. They didn't have what I wanted and left. I went out the parking lot and immediately got caught in a traffic jam. Apparently there was an accident at Elmwood and Hertel and I waited through a couple of lights for it to clear but then a large semi truck decided to back up into a loading dock a little further down Elmwood which stopped everything again. The truck actually parked itself in the right lane as it went up against the dock as far as it could. Another couple of lights wait.

Finally I got into Home Depot which was very crowded. I found my weed whacker stuff and got some Drano but they didn't have the weeder tool that Becky wanted or the wheel barrel tire replacement I needed. On the way home I got gas.

Over the past few years I've really learned to adjust to retirement and going out to stores, etc. It's now hard to believe that we so often went out to do our shopping after work or on weekends. Whenever we had the time. Last week I also went out driving around the suburbs for some medical appointments that had to be made in the afternoon rather than my usual morning slots. The driving out there was crazy. I've forgotten how intense afternoon and rush hour traffic can be. It has also been the pandemic in addition to my retirement that has affected my driving experiences. Because of my respiratory problems several years ago Becky insisted on doing the shopping. It also made sense because she was going out every day to her studio and on her way home she could drive by Dash's or the Co-Op and pick one to shop for the day. We also used the online shopping and pickup at Wegman's and also sometimes had Whole Foods delivered. We even shopped online at Walgreen's and had stuff delivered. It was almost a whole year before I even ventured out to the suburbs to do some shopping of any kind.

Oh well, it could be worse.

And then I think about all the running around we did raising a family and working crazy schedules that went on for decades. All of our shopping was done frantically after work or squeezed into the weekends. I remember how happy we were when we finally got a second car which of course became critical as the kids got older. We drove them to school in the mornings and then to work. I did like when I worked at the downtown pubic library for a few years and had the option to ride the subway downtown every day. That was nice.

It's been two years now since we downsized to one car and it has worked out OK for us but probably because a significant amount of that time has been in the pandemic world where we were not going out very much anyway.

If Then

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore, 2020

Started reading this in April and finished it in June.

It really took me a long time to read this book. I checked the e-book out of the public library and had it for 14 day periods. I was reading other books at the same time and there were some admittedly slow parts in the early chapters so it took me several check-outs to finish the book. Then after the somewhat slow start, although still very interesting, the book really took off for me as the story moved into the mid 1960's and from that point on I couldn't put the book down.

I have read a couple of other Jill Lepore books and have loved them. By the end of this book I was loving it too.

The book is basically about an obscure short lived data computation company called Simulmatics Corporation that started in 1959 by some of the country's leading social scientist and was bankrupt by 1970. As the story of the company unfolded I got more into the book. There were so many interesting concepts explored that had a significant impact on America and provided an underlying foundation for much of the history and political landscape of our country in the 1960's. It is also the birth of public relations and the social media data mining world we live in today.

I talked with Todd about this book given his data background and he had heard about but hadn't read it yet. I highly recommended it to him.

Beg Scream & Shout

Beg Scream & Shout: The Big Ol' Box of '60's Soul - Various Artists, 1997.

For the past several day Becky and I have been listening to this 6 CD box set of 144 classic '60's soul songs every evening at dinner time. It's a great collection and we have been enjoying it very much all week. I have it on iTunes so it just keeps playing. 

This set plays like a mixed tape of soul music and I have certainly used many of the songs here on my mixes. One of the interesting things about this collection is that the people putting this together did not usually pick the best known or most popular song from a particular artist. There are plenty of well known artists here but often the song in the set are more obscure or deeper cuts from their catalog. There are also lots of obscure artist and many rarities which makes for a very satisfying listen with some familiar songs but often not.

I certainly already had many songs in this collection and dozens of them I had as singles I got as a teenager. I've collected many soul compilations over the years but the depth and breath of this collection made it impossible to pass it by.

I also liked having the original versions here of songs that would be made popular by rock musicians of another era such as

• Cry Baby - Garnet Mimms
• You're No Good - Betty Everette
• Piece of My Heart - Emma Franklin
• Tainted Love - Gloria Jones
• I Can't Stand It - The Soul Sisters

Overall a great collection. It's been a while since I listened to the collection all the way through and I'm looking forward to hearing the last hour or so tomorrow.

LP Stack #1

I posted a pic of this stack of LPs sitting next to my turntable on a vinyl collectors Facebook group. I said I was exploring my collection and asked the group what would they play. Got lots of interesting answers. 

Someone else posted a question that got me thinking about my collection and indeed what was I doing in a vinyl collectors group. Almost all of the folks in this group are currently collecting vinyl. They are obsessed with it whereas I haven't bought any vinyl since 1987 but have been an avid collector almost all of my life.

So the question asked was  this... “Just curious. Who intends to  eventually stop collecting. I'm 65.  years old now. Although I tend to buy more CD s but I really  love records and have lots ,  of them and course still want more.. I'd like to slow down, but it's almost like an addiction. One does have to start thinking of their own mortality. although I hope I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.  .Thoughts?”

My initial response was the following... I stopped collecting when I retired and turned 65 five years ago. I'd accumulated nearly 15,000 albums in all formats since my mid teens and the past few years I've been exploring and enjoying my collection. Lots of singles too and I also spent many years in the late 70's and through the 80's spinning records at parties, weddings and in bars which was part of my obsession. Especially the bars.

I read a lot of the comments from the many people who responded to the question and started thinking about my collection and how I have gone about putting it together. First of all I was always about the music and not the format. When CDs came along and initially replaced vinyl I was all for it. I didn't run around buying up all the vinyl I could find. I moved to CDs and even replaced some of my vinyl albums with the CD version. This went on for years and it has only been in the last ten years or so that people suddenly started getting obsessed with vinyl especially since the downloading and streaming phenomenon began killing off CDs.

As I said, I was all about the music. I was collecting music and not vinyl records or CDs or rare items. I was into making mixes and I needed source material. I collected music. Later I also downloaded music and added that to my collection. Most of those nearly 15,000 albums I mentioned that were in my collection were downloaded. I also digitized almost all of my vinyl and CDs or downloaded versions of those albums. I put those albums into iTunes and used that program to create playlist that I converted into CD mixes. Long before that I was making individual mixes one at a time recording albums directly from the turntable to the cassette recorder. Now I copy mixes from iTunes into a new directory, balance the sound volume of the songs, maybe do a little editing of the file and then copy them to a flash drive to play in the car or Bluetooth speaker. I also copy them from iTunes to my iPod. I have 1.54 TB of music on my hard drive and I have made several copies of my collection on portable drives.

So the guy was asking a question about what to do with his collection as he got older and wanted to know what others in the group were doing. I made the decision to stop adding to my collection. To stop buying. To stop downloading. The last few albums in my collection were from early 2017.

I still love to hear new music and I never stopped doing that but now I have a subscription to the Spotify streaming service. Each week I check my music websites such as AllMusic for new releases and then I pick out the ones I want to hear and put them in My Albums in Spotify to listen to later. I've accumulated a large group of albums that are very handy for me to hear whenever I want on my stereo, my laptop, my tablet or my phone. I also put a lot of my mixes on Spotify but that is a whole different post.

So I'm not like most of the people in the vinyl group and I really have never cared about records the way these other folks do. They collect for the sake of collecting. They have an idea of what is rare, what is "necessary" to include,  etc. If I don't like the music or the group then it I don't get it regardless of how "important" it is to some people. There are many groups that others would feel is essential to a rock music collection that I would never have and that is because I wouldn't listen to it, I wouldn't put it on a mix, and it would only be taking up space.

Well, enough of this rant for now.

Here are the albums in the stack and the year it was released. All of these records I acquired very close to the year they came out.

• Little Feat - Waiting For Columbus, 1978
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced, 1967
• The Jam - Snap, 1983
• Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson & Clover, 1968
• The Beatles - Revolver, 1966
• Bob Dylan & The Band - The Basement Tapes, 1975
• The Beach Boys - Friends / Smiley Smile, 1967/1968
• Buzzcocks - Different Kind of Tension, 1979
• The Clash - London Calling, 1979
• Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle, 1973
• U-Roy - Dread In A Babylon, 1975
• The Long Ryders - Two Fisted Tales, 1987
• Wilson Pickett - Greatest Hits, 1985
• Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, 1970
• R.E.M. - Murmur, 1983
• Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers, 1969
• The Beatles - Abbey Road, 1969
• The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street, 1972
• Ornette Coleman - Body Meta, 1978
• Burning Spear - Garvey's Ghost, 1976
• Chocolate Watchband - The Inner Mystique, 1968
• David Bowie - Station To Station, 1976
• James White & The Blacks - Off White, 1979
• Various Artists - No New York, 1978
• Patti Smith - Horses, 1975
• Talking Heads - Remain In Light, 1980
• Pere Ubu - Dub Housing, 1978
• XTC - Drums and Wires, 1979
• The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!, 1966
• The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967

Goose Island Flight Pack

Becky picked me up a Goose Island Brewery Flight Pack which is a seasonal 15 can variety selection that includes:

• 312 Urban Wheat Ale
• Lost Palette Hazy IPA
• Goose Island IPA
• Next Coast IPA
• 312 Lemonade Shandy

I very much like the Goose Island specialty beers but their regular beers they sell in stores across the country since they were bought out by Anheuser-Busch inBev. I find their beers to be mostly OK but mediocre compared to their original beers. Over the years they have made some classic brews.

Misinformation Again

Misinformation is nothing new in America. This is a cartoon published in newspapers in the 1930's about smallpox vaccinations.

The same people are walking off the cliff today.

Sears

The other day I was thinking about Sears. The store and American institution that no longer exist. Well, technically there are a few Sears stores around the country but nothing like they were before their long downward spiral into bankruptcy. I was thinking about Sears because I realized my batteries for some Craftsman power tools were dead and my battery charger no longer worked. I then realized I couldn't get a replacement battery and charger without paying some crazy price. It was cheaper just to go out and get new tools.

While recently at the Adirondack Museum we were looking at an outhouse display with a Sears catalog on a chain for paper. I remember the Sears catalog but never used one in the bathroom LOL.

Then I started thinking more about Sears and how it was a big part of my life throughout my life. I look around our kitchen and we have had Sears Kenmore appliances for decades. We still have a Sears refrigerator. I was down in the basement the other day and while looking at my toolbox remembered that me and my dad had gone to the local Sears store to buy me that toolbox when I was 16 back in the summer of 1968.

I also remembered buying records back then at the Sears on Chelten Ave including the Beatles White Album on a Saturday in November 1968. I went home and put the poster up in my room at our new house in Harleysville.

Another strong memory of Sears was the large building complex on Roosevelt Blvd in Philly that was a sprawling office building complex and warehouse that included a 14 story tower. It was an iconic building that could be seen for miles. It was built in 1920 and demolished in 1994. It was locally known as the Sears Tower although nationally the Sears Tower was their headquarters in Chicago.

Yesterday Becky and I talked about our Sears experiences which were not always good once you got beyond tools and appliances. The clothes and household items were never really the best and the got worse as the years went on. Nobody was really surprised when they went out of business.

It was interesting that they started off with an alternative business model based on the mail order catalog but couldn't compete when shopping went online.

The demolition of the Sears Tower in Philadelphia took 7 seconds.

Another Sears story for me was moving to Buffalo and driving by an old Sears store and parking ramp on Main Street that closed shortly after we came to town. It was abandoned for many years until finally Canisius College bought the building with the intention of converting it into a science center. Then came the recession of 08 which had a very negative impact on Canisius and it's ability to raise funds. The building has still never been completely renovated. 

I saw in the Buffalo News this week that Canisius College has requested permission from the city to demolish the old parking ramp and put up a surface parking lot. The ramp has been falling apart for many years and has been a dangerous eyesore in the community. The planned landscaped would be much better. 

During my last few months working at Canisius I was suffering from the effects of the library building renovation and my doctor had recommended me moving to a different building because of the effects on my lungs of the construction debris and dust in the air. So my last office of my working career was in the basement of an old Sears building that had been renovated by a college for teaching science.

Smithsonian Music Collections

We subscribed to Smithsonian Magazine for many years beginning in the early 80's and at some point along the way I became aware of their collections of album box sets of jazz that were available through mail order. In the mid to late 1970's Becky and I were collecting a lot of music other than rock and in particular we were focusing on jazz and classical. We realized there was some amazing collections of carefully selected jazz with a historical perspective available through the Smithsonian.

During those years we were listening to a lot of hard bop and modern jazz on the Temple University radio station WRTI which was an intense learning experience and then we went downtown to 3rd Street Jazz to buy records. However, we were missing a lot of the popular jazz and big band music of our parent's generation and a more general experience of the history of jazz. 

The first collection we bought through the Smithsonian was a 6 LP Big Band Jazz. This would be the first of many box sets we would get from them over the years. The next one was the 6 LP Singers and Soloist of the Swing Era set and then the 7 LP set American Popular Song. 

Later we were ordering CD box sets. The first one was a 4 CD set Jazz Piano which I wrote about here. Another wonderful 4 CD set was Classic Country Music.

All of these were great collections that I still love listening to today.

Olympics - Climate and Plague

We've been watching the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020 the past few days and we're starting to wonder how long they will continue with the games as the infections and heat keep rising. Everything seems to be off.

It was a major blow to Japan and Tokyo last year when the Olympic games were postponed a year because of the pandemic. As the year progressed many people in Japan thought the games should have been cancelled but of course big business won out and planning for the games continued. 

The other factor has been the recent summer heat waves in Japan due to climate change. Long before the pandemic Japan was creating an infrastructure to deal with the expected wave of heat strokes and related problems that would impact on the large numbers of people expected to descend on Tokyo including spectators, press and athletes. However, as the games have moved forward this year and the pandemic seems to have had a recent resurgence in Japan the games are all being played without anyone attending the events as spectators. It is weird to watch the games on TV without anyone attending. The empty stands has been somewhat disconcerting for the Olympics but we've really become used to seeing that over the past year for all kinds of sporting events.

The officials in Japan consider it a silver lining that despite all the problems with the pandemic this year they do not need to worry about thousands of spectators getting heat stroke while watching Olympic games.

Becky and I have always loved watching the Olympics on TV and this year is no exception. We do enjoy the games, the spectacle and the stories about the athletes but this year is certainly different in so many ways. This was also the first time in many years that we did not watch any part of the opening ceremony. Watching the games has been a challenge since we dropped cable almost five years ago when we retired. For some reason we have never been able to get NBC channel 2 on our digital antennae. It just doesn't work for that channel and we really haven't wanted it for anything in particular except now for the Olympics which of course is an NBC event. We see much of the games on USA channel and NBCSN through the Sling TV service we subscribe to but we are not paying anything anywhere just to watch the NBC regular network channel that is available on their new Peacock streaming service.

Now the pandemic seems to be rising again with the delta variant and infections are on the rise around the world and especially in Japan where few people have been vaccinated. Many athletes have tested positive for the virus and some whole teams have been prohibited from participating. Things don't look so good and it's only the third day of competition. The games are scheduled over the next couple of weeks with the closing ceremony on August 8 but I wouldn't be surprised in the games are cancelled sometime before then.

Kiss - The Abomination

I got triggered today. Someone on one of my FB music groups started a conversation thread on the band Kiss which apparently is one of his favorite all time bands. However, he asked for opinions even if in his words you think Kiss is a total abomination which of course I do.  This person is a self described huge fan of the band in the late 70's/early 80's and states that their first album was their best and the quality of their albums went down over the years even as they sold more records over the next ten to fifteen years.

So, my take on this. I totally agree that Kiss is the Abomination and an obnoxious cliché that embodies everything bad about rock and roll. IMHO, they were a joke. And a bad one at that. Just a comic book fantasy for prepubescent adolescent boys to bounce around together in a circle jerk before they moved on to more obnoxious devil voice metal. 

I should first add that at the time the first Kiss album hit the airwaves and record stores I was in college after having finished a four year hitch in the US Navy where I traveled all over the world and was now living in a house with other student vets and serious music collectors like myself. Kiss actually released two records in 1974, another in 1975, two more in 1976, another in 1977, those four solo albums in 1978, and then one a year for the next decade or so through the 80's. So I was obviously not in the targeted audience for this obnoxious marketing scam to separate money from little boys and their parents.

Back in 1974 we really thought Kiss was a bad joke but they struck a chord with the comic book crowd of middle schoolers. After I had gotten out of the service I spent a lot of time and money building up my record collection that I had neglected somewhat because of my time overseas living on a Navy warship for the past several years. Fortunately I did not need to spend any money on my education because I went to a state university where veterans did not pay tuition or fees and in addition had the federal GI Bill monthly checks to live on. I was also fortunate to have a job at the local Veterans Administration office that was close enough to walk where I earned the money to regularly see live music and buys lots of records.

Now back to Kiss. I really hated everything about them. Their costumes, their face paint, their stage act. I had seen Blue Cheer, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Alice Cooper, Slade, Transformer era Lou Reed and Kiss was a very cheap imitation of some high quality rock and roll. By the late 70's their shows were mostly children and their parents.

I was also a DJ for parties, weddings and bars from the late 70's through to 1986 where I never ever played a Kiss song in any of my sets.

Kiss had a profound influence on touring because they radically upped the cost of putting on a show because of all their stage effects which was a way of coving up their lack of skills, talent, and musicianship with makeup, pyrotechnics, stage gimmicks, spitting blood, cliched destroying guitars, etc. Kiss was directly responsible for the rise in concert tickets and in general the high cost of touring.

It was in the mid 70's that I gave up on attending large concerts in arenas and stadiums. Not only were they a rip off money wise but it became more about the spectacle than the music thanks to acts like Kiss. I figured I would much rather see up and coming acts in small venues where one could really appreciate the music which was what I was looking for.

Back to that guys thread on Facebook... I think I'll comment with some of the stuff here but also about a group that had a good first album and then went downhill for the rest of their career despite continued ongoing success. I'll have to come up with a band that had what I think was their best album first and then had more successful albums later.

Brain Scan Follow Up

I recently had my 22nd brain scan. The first one was in 1988. A CATscan. It's hard to believe that it came out negative and didn't show any aneurysms. It had taken a while to convince my primary doctor to get tested and then to get it covered by our health insurance. It was only the family history of my father and uncle dying of ruptured brain aneurysms that got me covered.

We were so happy at the time with that negative result and I joyfully tried to get my brothers to also get tested. Back then we were under the false impression that only males in our family had aneurysms. Dan went ahead and arranged to be tested. Fortunately his wife was working at Jefferson Hospital as a nutritionist in the neuroscience department and asked for advice. It was recommended to her that Dan get an angiogram which was a lot more detailed than a CATscan. He did and an aneurysm was found. He had brain surgery to get that clipped but that's another story. Liz asked if his aneurysm would have been revealed by a CATscan and the answer was probably not.

A few months later I went in and had an angiogram and two aneurysms were found. That was in November 1988 and Becky was seven months pregnant at the time. We waited until June 1989 to have my brain surgery.

There again that is another story. I've been having brain scans approximately every two years since then. This year I had my CTA scan at Roswell on May 3rd. Everything went well as usual and I guess nothing was obviously wrong because no one was in a hurry for a follow up consultation visit. I had one scheduled the following week by my neurosurgeon apparently had a conference rescheduled for that time that we was finally able to travel and attend since the pandemic. My follow up appointment was rescheduled over a month later on July 22nd.

My scans were of no concern and I didn't even meet with the neurosurgeon but rather will one of the PAs. That was good news. The pic above is one of the many scans I received on a disks and spent some time looking at but I couldn't tell anything. The PA actually said he had to review the scans side by side with the previous ones. Well, things are good and my doctor says I don't need to get another brain scan for five years. That's the longest time ever between scans for me. 

A Two Event Evening

Back home after an interesting two event evening. Becky and I went out first to an art opening reception over at the Buffalo Arts Studio Gallery in the Tri-Main Building. This was our first art opening we've attended since early March 2020 before the pandemic had taken hold. This was also the first opening reception at the BAS since the start of the pandemic and the gallery staff was very excited. We were excited to see our friend Kathy Sherin's show and also the work of Oreen Cohen who was one of Becky's students at UB and her work study student many years ago.

There was a good crowd and we knew many people there. In fact, it was too good a crowd and most of the people did not wear masks including us although we had our masks and had worn them initially. There was lots of hand shaking and hugs all around.  However, when the staff began their self congratulatory speeches about reopening and then the two artists did their talks the crowd got much tighter. It started to feel uncomfortable for us. There was very little ventilation in the gallery space where the crowds had gathered and we decided to cut our time there short than originally planned. I quickly finished my beer and we were out of there.

The show was very good and it was great seeing all the people we knew. Most of them we hadn't seen in well over a year and our only communications with them had on social media. Of course everyone wanted to hear about our grandchildren.

This art opening was our first event out together that was indoors and not family related since the start of the pandemic. I had gone to an Meet and Greet event at the downtown public library several weeks ago which was my first time being somewhere with lots of people I knew well and hadn't seen for a long time. It was a little more spread out than tonight and I felt more comfortable being there. We went to a WOW that same evening... another two event evening for me.

Our second event this evening was a Christmas in July party put together by a young couple who live on our street down on the next block. I've worked with both of them on the Parkside Community Association board in years past and the woman is a daughter of a friend. The party was outside although there was a spectacular spread of food on their dining room table. It was a pool party with lots of kids and there were several tents with tables and chairs. People were sitting close together but it was outside and it was a perfectly beautiful weather throughout the evening. There were also Christmas decorations throughout the backyard including decorated trees and lights.

We had expected to stay at the art opening longer and were not planning to get over to the party until around 8:30 but because of our decision to leave that art reception early we ended up going over there around 7:30. We had lots of friends at the party and they were expecting us a little later but we all happy to see us. We told them about feeling uncomfortable over at Tri-Main.

However, once again there were lots of handshakes and hugs. Becky had made some cookies to add to the desert pile and we brought our cooler bag with a couple of beers for me and an NA beer and soda for Becky. We were glad to have had our own drinks because there was a very poor beverage selection. Lots of kid drinks, White Claw, Molson Canadian, Miller Lite and bottled water. 

We did have a very nice time and stayed until 9:30. The party was scheduled for 6pm to 10pm and we left just as the silent disco dancing was getting ready to start for the adults. There had already been lots of kids dancing with the flashing headphones on their heads.

By 9:30 we were ready to go. It had been a long social evening and we were not really feeling it anymore after all the social interactions throughout the night. The uncomfortableness of socializing was affecting us. I wonder how long that will continue to happen? Are we changed now for the foreseeable future? There is a big spike in the covid infections everywhere but especially where the vaccinations rates are low. Fortunately the people we've been interacting with have been vaccinated but you never know in a crowd.

Manhattan Noir

Manhattan Noir by Lawrence Block, Editor, 2006

I read most of this book in July 2021 while on vacation in Long Lake NY.

This is the second collection of city themed noir anthologies from Akashic Publishing that I've read. The first one was Belfast Noir. There are a lot more.

Each of these stories from different authors takes place in a neighborhood of Manhattan. It was all very entertaining and well written. Each story takes place in a different Manhattan neighborhood and although these are crime stories sometimes the crime is not part of the main plot but lurking nearby. They are always dark and mysterious.

I enjoyed these stories and look forward to reading more collections in this series. I'm thinking Havana Noir next.

Judgmental Uninformed Bigot

Of course it started over getting a Covid-19 vaccination. Fox had all their staff vaccinated but continue to rile up their base against it and anything the Biden administration is doing to combat the pandemic. The trump admin did practically nothing and especially botched early testing to determine the extent of the plague. Fox likes to brag about how great trump did with vaccines with operation warp speed but how do they then turn around and tell their sheep not to get vaccinated. They are really saying that trump's warp speed was a dangerous product that should be avoided for health purposes but is really a political ploy. And the fox viewers suck it up and start calling other people judgmental uninformed bigots for calling out the fox lies.

It felt strange to be called a judgmental uninformed bigot. I spent 30 years in the professional library information field in both public and academic libraries. My career has been devoted to getting accurate information to people regardless of their political persuasion or academic pursuit. I've always been involved in the search for knowledge and not the pursuit of some political agenda or conspiracy theory involving known liars, grifters and scammers.

I've also noticed that in the fox news world they are claiming that anyone who doesn't agree with the conservative right wing trumpian view of reality is a judgmental uninformed bigot. They are especially using that expression in the context of an America that is turning against people who refuse to get vaccinated because of political reasons.

Yes we are making judgements about people who for selfish political reasons are refusing vaccinations claiming it is their right and a protection of their freedom to choose what they want for their bodies. Yep, like they suddenly support a woman's right to choose what she wants for her body. I doubt it. Are they ok now with anyone getting drunk and driving because why should someone tell them what to do. Or wearing a seatbelt. Or smoking in a theater. Or driving through a red light. On and on the list can be endless but we being judgmental uninformed bigots for wanting people to get vaccinated or wear a mask in public.

The right wing social media machine spews all kinds of hate and misinformation about non-white people, immigrants, poor people, gay people, science, pro-choice people, facts, educated people, etc, etc. They get upset when they are called out for it and call the people criticizing them judgmental uninformed bigots. LOL.

And then there is their thing about socialism. Every time there is a government program implemented to help people they go crazy about socialism. Let's remember how long all those red states that would have never had electricity without government programs back in the day. How loud would the anti-socialism scream if the government stopped their Social Security and Medicare programs they depend on. A bunch of puppets on a fox string being jerked around from some billionaire foreigner who paid Ronald Reagan to ditch the Fairness Doctrine.

I would suggest that Democrats in Congress start talking about trying to curb red state socialism by requiring all states to not receive more in federal government funding than they pay in federal taxes. You get what you pay for and states like New York should not pay for benefits going to red welfare states like Kentucky that have leaders ranting about liberal socialism.

It always cracks me up when I hear fox bragging about their ratings and how they are the most popular news network. In reality it is them against everyone else. The non-right wing is divided up among many other corporate networks and NPR which they have labelled the so called liberal or mainstream media. If there were just two networks... right wing fox and not right wing then the ratings would be much different since the vast majority of viewers are divided between the various networks in the mainstream media.

It's like that way in support for trump and his bogus election fraud claims. They brag about 70 some percent of Republicans support trump but fail to mention that republicans have now become a tiny minority of Americans that are in the low 20 percent of voters. What a joke.

 

Maggot Brain

Maggot Brain - Funkadelic, 1971

You gotta hear this! That is what a friend yelled to me aboard the USS Portland somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea during the summer of 1971. We had just been to a port and had mail call and my friend got a package from home that included some cassettes one of which was this release from Funkadelic. I was somewhat familiar with the band as I had a couple of records from the Parliaments which was George Clinton's original soul band from the 1960's and Funkadelic was the backup band for that group. They had a couple of earlier albums that I knew about but had not heard yet. But of course nothing prepared me for the opening title track on this crazy psychedelic funk album. The guys that called me over were electrician mates and they had one of the few workspaces on a ship that could accommodate a stereo. They had a small but effective space in the electrician's shack and that is where we went to listen to music on the ship where we weren't bothering other sailors most of whom only wanted to listen to country music. Both of these guys were city folk and one was black and both were into a lot of the same music as I was... rock and soul music.

There were not a lot of city guys on the ship and most of the sailors were from the South, Midwest and West with a few from the East. As a city person I was naturally friends with a lot of the black guys and we were especially drawn together by our love of soul music and funk. I heard more cutting edge black music in the early 70's than anything else. When I got out of the Navy in late 1973 I had a lot of catching up to do with music.

But I did get to hear Funkadelic and this fantastic album in particular. You could certainly tell that the lead guitarist Eddie Hazel was a big fan of Jimi Hendrix. This was a serious rock album with a grimy veneer of funk. I've used the title track Maggot Brain on several mixes over the years. I listened to the album all the way through tonight which I hadn't done in awhile and played my digital version on iTunes which has a few extra tracks including an alternate version of Maggot Brain. When George Clinton made the album he mixed down the rest of the band and just let Hazel play the guitar unaccompanied and added effects and layers of psychedelic guitar sound. The alternate version at the end of the later release is actually how the song was originally recorded and sounds amazing itself.

It's hard to believe this album is 50 years old this month.

I would later add all of the Funkadelic albums to my collection and started with this one followed by the other early ones. My favorite was probably One Nation Under a Groove, Of course I also have all the Parliament albums too.

The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep, 1978

The other night Becky and I watched this second version of The Big Sleep on the Criterion Channel and enjoyed it as the entertaining 1970s period piece that it certainly was. 

Now of course the 1948 Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall was the better film but the Robert Mitchem movie was a lot of fun in it's own 70's way. We had originally seen it when it was first released in 1978 and not since then. It was what was then called a neo-noir film and the setting was changed to 1970's London and of course was much more explicit than the 1948 film with the portrayal of homosexuality, pornography and nudity that was only hinted at in the earlier film. The film had an all star cast but that didn't keep it from getting panned by the critics at the time.

I read the original Raymond Chandler novel The Big Sleep back in August 1987. I also read his The Last Goodbye that summer.

The Stoop

I had a conversation with someone recently about the neighborhood we grew up in and we talked about the stoops which of course are the front steps in a rowhouse city neighborhood. Or at least that is what we called them in Philly. The house I lived in on Greene Street through the 50's and 60's and the house on Seymour Street I lived from 74 to 79 both had two sets of steps leading up to a porch so technically that wasn't a stoop. I did hang out on a lot of stoops throughout the neighborhood.

We hung out on our steps too. The lower ones near the sidewalk. The whole thing about the stoop was the social aspect of talking to everyone who walked down the street even if just to say hello or acknowledge their presence. We lived in a very walkable neighborhood. People walked to the many neighborhood corner stores, to the churches and schools, to the trolley stops, the parks and recreation centers, the boys club, the police athlete league building, the VFW post, the avenue, the shopping district, the Wissahickon, the library, the train station, the corner bar, your friends house and the list goes on and on.

Sometimes as teenagers we would hang out on someone's stoop for awhile and then move on around the corner or down the block and hang out on another stoop. I was also the one who always carried around a little transistor radio that provided music for our hanging out.

Today I sit on my porch a lot. It is also a social thing and I live in a neighborhood that is very walkable. Lately during the pandemic sitting on the porch was a source of solace as I talked with people walking their dogs, getting some exercise, taking their babies out in the strollers. Many times people greeted me as they walked by our house and it reminded me of the stoops of Germantown where I grew up.

I found a story about Philadelphia stoop culture and the attempt to preserve stoops. Very interesting. Preserving Philly Stoops.

Ring the Bell

While on vacation at Long Lake with Katie, Todd and the kids we spent a morning at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake.  Henry and Clara loved it just like our kids did when they were there at their age. Henry particularly liked the buildings with the boats and trains.

We took them up on the train under the pavilion and I had Henry with me in the engineers cabin and we were pulling on the rope to ring the bell. Henry loved it.

He then told me that someday he would teach his grandchildren how to ring this bell. Then he laughed and said he would teach his children too.

We also spent time going through the Vanderbilt train car on display at the museum and he was fascinated by the furniture, beds, sinks and bathrooms as we moved through the car. 

We didn't go to the museum last year because of the pandemic and he probably doesn't remember being there when he was younger but now he'll want to go there every year just like his mother and uncle did when they were growing up. It was an annual ritual to go to that museum on a rainy day or when there would be a hint of rain.

We will definitely go there next year and Henry will ring that bell again.

Grandpop and the Crazy Man

I wish I had a picture of Grandpop somewhere. He was my mother's grandfather and he and Nana, her grandmother, lived in our house for about eight years when we were growing up. I was recently chatting online with my siblings and Grandpop came up. During the years he lived in our house I don't remember ever having a real conversation with him. He had been involved in a car accident many years before down at Wayne Junction and had suffered some brain damage. He was never the same after that accident and of course I never knew him from before that happened.

The story that came this week was the incident with Grandpop and the Crazy Man. I'm not really sure what was going on that evening. The man was probably just very drunk but he was walking down our street, making a lot of noise, and knocking on people's doors trying to come in. He was probably looking for his home or a friends but was definitely on the wrong street. Some of the neighbors were calling each other with warnings about this guy. The man was also not fully dressed and was running around in his underwear. Mom got a phone call from someone. I remember looking out the window as the guy came down the street and then he walked up to our house and started banging on the outside door. Now we had some doors. One to the enclosed glass porch and then there was a door to a small foyer and then a final third door that opened into our living room. Dad was still at work or on his way home.

So as we watched from the inner windows that looked onto the the enclosed glass porch Grandpop was sitting in the couch in his usual spot and then for some unknown reason he got up which he hardly ever did and then proceeded to walk through the foyer doors to the front door. Before anyone could stop him he opened the front door and the crazy man came into our house.

Mom started yelling and then she grabbed a large metal candle holder and started waving it around. Grandpop was shuffling back over to his seat on the couch. Later Nana told us he thought it was Dad at the door. LOL. Mom would not let the man out of the foyer and blocked his way into the house with the candle holder. The man must have realized his mistake when confronted by this woman defending her family and home and he turned around, left the house and went on down the street. I don't know what happened to him after that. Mom was upset for quite awhile. It also wasn't too much longer after that when Nana and Grandpop went to nursing homes because of their declining health and Mom's inability to care for them and six children.

For days after that incident Nana kept berating Grandpop for letting that man into our home. All he could say was he thought it was George meaning my father.

Tom and Ada Morris, our great-grandparets, had two children. They had a girl, whom I forget her name at the moment, who died as a child from a common childhood disease. They had a boy also named Tom who would marry my grandmother Elizabeth Keegan. Tragically he would die at the age of 24 from pneumonia when my mother was a baby. Tom and Ada doted on their only grandchild. They lived in the neighborhood over on Zeralda Street. I vaguely remember their house before they moved in with us.

When their health began to decline and they couldn't take care of their home anymore Mom took them in. They had the large front bedroom. Grandpop was a heavy smoker and there was always a cloud of smoke in the living room. He smoked Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes.  

When he was still somewhat mobile I would walk with him down the street to the corner store at Greene  and Logan that was tricky with him because it was busy. Then it closed and we had to go down the next block to Rockland Street to the corner store Sherb's where he would buy his Pall Malls. Eventually he couldn't make the walk anymore and my job was to go down the street and buy the Pall Malls for him. I was one of the only kids in the neighborhood allowed to buy cigarettes there because Mrs. Sherb knew they were for my great-grandfather.

I wish I knew more about him and his life. This is one of the reasons I've been writing my thoughts in this online blog journal. I want my grandchildren to know something about me from my own words. I wrote earlier about my grandfathers and not knowing much about them. Someday Henry may sit down with his grandchildren and read them something I wrote here.

Being a grandfather.

Adirondacks 2021

We had another wonderful week in Long Lake in the Adirondacks this year. We were sorry that Sean and Ashley couldn't be there with us this year but it was nice spending the week with Katie, Todd, Henry and Clara.

This year Becky and I were in a cottage by ourselves. When we arrived at Sunset Point Michelle the proprietor told us there were some cancellations and we had a choice of a wider selection of cottages. Katie and Todd were booked in cabin #4 where Becky and I stayed last year along with Sean and Ashely for a few days. It's a nice cabin near the beach. Becky and I were booked in a small cabin in their newly acquired section of the property. Close but not in the same area. We were told that cottages #1 and #2 were available. We had stayed in #1 before and last year Katie stayed there. We went and looked at both of the cottages and then when Katie and Todd arrived shortly afterward we decided which ones to take. Katie and Todd decided to keep #4 because of the proximity to the beach and Becky and I took #2 which was the most spacious of the group. We went from having a tiny cabin to having one that comfortably slept six and for the same price too.

So we had a very comfortable week. The weather was comfortable too. It rained a couple of times but mostly at night. It was much cooler than last year. Like last year we also were dealing with Covid but certainly not as bad and widespread. We went out to dinner with everyone at the Adirondack Hotel and sat on the outside patio. It was very nice and the food was wonderful. We also ran into Gail and Wendell there which was very cool. We watched the kids one night while Katie and Todd went out to dinner down at the Long View Lodge. A couple of days later Becky and I also went there for a nice dinner. Both times we were able to sit at the outside patio dining area.

We had lots of beach time and Todd was able to take Henry out a few times for some good father and son time including climbing Mt. Coney. We went over to Tupper Lake to the Wild Center one day and another day we went to the Adirondack Museum down at Blue Mountain Lake.

I had also forgotten the bag of medicine I prepared for the trip. How I did that was a mystery but there was really only one thing I needed. The other things were for just in case situations like my inhaler. Becky had plenty of statin so I was covered there but I really needed my meds for controlling afib.  I looked online and saw there was a Walgreens in North Creek about 20 miles away. I then went online to my primary doctor's site and requested a refill prescription of my meds with that Walgreens and included their phone number. My doctor called it in by 8 am the next morning. We drove over to North Creek which was a very nice trip and got the meds in the afternoon. Nice use of technology. North Creek was very cool too. We will definitely go back there some time, go to one of the pub restaurants and hang out.

We really liked having that large cottage. The kids like coming over to our place to hang out and read books. Clara especially liked to sit on the couch and cuddle. We had brought a pile of books for the kids and a few special toys. It was also still close to Henry's birthday so we had some gifts for him... and something for Clara too.

So the folks that cancelled their cottages this year had been booking the same cottages for the past 30 years or so and because of some illness in their family said they would not be reserving cottages for next year. Michelle told Becky about this right away and we decided to take those cottages next year too. Coincidently Karen had contacted Becky about her and the family coming from California next year to the Adirondacks with us. Sean and Ashley along with Andrew also decided to come next year too.

We are now booked for the same week next year. Katie and Todd in cottage #2 where we were this year because it will be spacious enough for them and three kids. Sean and Ashley will be in cottage #4 near the beach. Karen, Davo and the kids will be in #1 and Becky and I will be in #6 which is a smaller two person cottage next to the beach. Should be fun. Can't wait.

Another interesting aspect of our recent vacations to the Adirondacks has changed since we retired. Going up to Long Lake for a week every summer was an annual ritual that we all looked forward to every year. We always went in July because by August we were busy with getting ready for the start of a new academic year. In particular I always liked that we went from Saturday to Saturday which meant that I had a day off on Sunday before going back to work on Monday. That always meant a lot. It was one of my favorite days off.

Now that we're retired and almost five years of not working means that every day is a day off and the annual vacation to the Adirondacks doesn't mean the same thing anymore. Now it is more about spending quality time with our children and grandchildren. We still love going there.

Zero Fail

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig, 2021

Read this book in July 2021

I started this book in late June and it immediately had me thinking of things that happened in my life such as the day of the Kennedy assassination which I wrote about here. I had to speed my way through this book because I got one of the first e-book copies available from the public library and there were many people people waiting for it. I knew that if I didn't finish it in the allotted time then I would be waiting many weeks to finish the book.

So I quickly finished this book and it was amazing. I knew the basic stories about the presidential assassinations and threats but the detail here is stunning. I always knew that Clinton was a jerk but I didn't realize how much of a womanizer he really was and how much Hilary tolerated in their quest for power. But Bill still wasn't as bad as JFK. NIxon and Johnson were assholes and Jimmy Carter was a gentleman.

And of course the biggest jerk of them all was trump.

Long Lake Conservative TV

I should first say that we really have been enjoying staying at Sunset Point Cottages on Long Lake the past several years, we are fond of our hosts Michelle and Tom, and we have booked several cottages for the family for next year.

That being said... many of the local permanent residents of the Adirondacks are very conservative and trumpian. I've walked by the owner's house and have seen fox on the tv.

We do not watch very much television while on vacation but occasionally we will turn on the news at night to catch up with the world. I turned on our tv and it seemed to default to fox news or at least that was the last station viewed on this dish satellite network setup. I then spent several frustrating minutes trying to find another news station and after awhile I realized that the other news stations such as CNN and MSNBC were actually programmed out of the system by the user which was the message I was getting after repeated searches for other channels. Someone had actually made fox the only news station available to the cottages on their property and there was no access to anything else. For a while there I was really pissed off.

There is also very little internet access on the property. All they trying to keep information they don't agree with off their property?

A History of What Comes Next

A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel, 2021

Read this in a week in July 2021

A weirdly strange story of first contact, a group of women over many generations on a mission and the men who are trying to stop them. Apparently this is the first novel in a projected series titled Take Them to the Stars.

This was a good book but not particularly a great one. It's an interesting take on rocket science and actually the afterward and further reading sections where the author explains his sources was very interesting and compelling. There were some incidents he used in the novel that were based on real life situations during the early years of the space race that I would like to learn more about. 

The book seemed to be about the Soviet side of the space race with a group of powerful aliens helping them compete with the Americans. Or maybe vice-versa. Lots of real people as characters too. The mother daughter clone thing was fascinating and I'm looking forward to continue reading this series. I previously read his books Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods. I took a break from the series and have not read the final book Only Human.

This book would appeal to hard core space buffs along with science fiction fans.