Archive » January 2021 » Columns

by John R. Williams

Well, this is one ticked-off scribe, because of his own stupid lack of action. For the second time today, Jan. 23, the power was off on my TV and the computers for less than a second.

This time, the scribe was at the computer typing the column and had one page done when — click — off went the power, but not the lights. The scribe deduced it had to be Spectrum. Maybe it was the wind and a limb from a tree, who knows.

Needless to say, because the article was not saved, it is gone, and this scribe is starting page one all over again.

This scribe does have a mental rule to himself that he mutters to save promptly. However, now with the OMOTM column lost, this rule is going to be changed to “as soon as the scribe enters the title, etc.” Let’s see, what did I have written down when the power went off?

The scribe was avoiding writing about COVID as much as he could, but that seems to be what all the OMOTM wanted to talk about. This was not so much about the virus but about the confusion surrounding the vaccinations.

The OG that is getting over the bout with the virus the scribe understands he got the shot, at least that is the way the scribe understood it. However, none of the others have gotten theirs yet.

The OFs who did not have their shots are all on a list of one kind or another; one has his name listed in two counties. The OF explained how this happened (but the scribe still does not understand it). Even so, like a lot of us, so far his name is only just on a list.

This “listing” is beginning to mean not much to the OMOTM, and whether they are well into their nineties or mid-eighties with underlying situations does not seem to mean much to those in charge.

After hours of waiting on the phone (and hours is literal), someone takes the OF’s information, and the info is minimal, and then they tell the OF that he and his wife are on the list, and that is it. So far, all the OFs spoken to are told the same thing

They are out of vaccine. They will be notified by phone as soon as they receive more.

The OFs are now in limbo, waiting for the phone call. One OF described in much detail of two days and long hours on the phone each day before he was finally put on a list.

This OF does not want to go through the same thing to follow up on the questionable phone call of where he is supposed to be once he is advised the vaccine is in. The virtue of patience is being well tested among the OMOTM and many, many others.

One thing the OGs realize is they are on the bottom of the B-list and rightfully so. Those that are on the front lines dealing with this virus should get their shots first.

 

Nasty visitor

A couple of the OFs mentioned how tough a year 2020 had been for them, with or without the COVID-19 virus. One OF mentioned, along with some other problems, that he picked up our nasty visitor and at first did not know what it was because he had no fever or headache.

This OF did have the loss of taste, smell, and energy, and, with the food not having any taste, the OG didn’t eat. The OF said he got down to nothing but skin and bones, so the OG went to the doctor and was immediately put in the hospital.

At that time in the hospital, he said, there was only one other guy there with COVID. The hospital gave the OG three little pills and some goop to eat and watched him for a day and he started feeling better so they sent him home.

The OG says he feels pretty good now and his appetite is back but he still tires easily; the tiredness seems to be going away slowly. The OF said he just went back to the hospital for a check-up and there were six people there with the same problem. The OF thought this virus must be gaining ground.

 

Distribution advice

A couple of the OFs had an idea that they thought would work on this “who gets vaccinated next” list. The OFs still have the problem of location and the county should handle the logistics of this like they do with senior meals, and other senior functions.

The OFs feel the county has all the information it needs for sending out information on where, how, and when. The county also has information on all the seniors, at least those who are part of senior centers.

One OG said, “At least we have filled out enough information for the country on many other things. The county probably knows when we go to the bathroom, how much toilet paper we use and what kind.”

The scribe thinks (along with these OFs) that the whole distribution of the vaccine, and the vaccinations should have been turned over to five or six major hospitals throughout the state.

Let’s keep the state out of it where all the politicians are trying to make brownie points and screwing everything up in the process. Let private industry do it and it would probably be all over in a month.

Another OF thought that the planning is done by young people who think everyone has a set of wheels, can walk five miles, has a smartphone and knows how to use it. Tain’t so, Magee!

The group of people that this virus goes after does not fall in that group. This group needs help, and understanding; many don’t have either a smartphone, or a computer. Ollie, what a mess you’ve got us into now!

 

Let us joke

Humor is an essential coping tool for surviving tough times. Ran out of toilet paper and started using lettuce leaves. Today was just the tip of the iceberg, tomorrow romaines to be seen.

Post date: 
January 29, 2021

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by Mary Ellen Johnson

— Photo from the Guilderland Historical Society

Meadowdale Station, once located next to the tracks on Meadowdale Road, was one of the Delaware & Hudson’s smaller depots. Notice the telegraph poles in the background. The National Telegraph Company had run lines between Albany and Binghamton along the railroad route.

Victory at Yorktown; ratification of the Constitution; George Washington’s death; the British invasion of Washington, D.C.; election of Andrew Jackson; outbreak of the Civil War; assassination of Lincoln — when and how did 18th- and 19th-century Guilderland residents learn of these events?

Even though Albany was just a few miles away, Guilderland’s 18th-Century residents were quite isolated. As anti-British agitation increased during the 1770s, there were discussions pro and con after church services and at local taverns.

A few Guilderland men were likely members of the secret Committees of Correspondence, headquartered in both Albany and Schenectady. Minutes of the Schenectady Committee mention “information having been given to the Board …” meant either in letter form or orally. Eventually some of this would have orally filtered down to the public.

An additional way of learning information was the broadsheet, a printed single sheet that could be posted or circulated, and this is known to have been used to spread the contents of the Declaration of Independence quickly in 1776. It is on record that the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to an Albany crowd from the steps of the old Stadt Huys on July 19 and within days news could have reached most people in the area.

Although the Albany Gazette, the city’s earliest newspaper, was briefly published from 1771 to 1776, after 1782 there was always one Albany newspaper or another, usually circulating beyond its original purchaser. Newspapers were frequently left on tavern tables by travelers or local subscribers well into the 19th Century and occasionally out-of-the-area papers would show up.

Discussion and debates over national issues, as between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over whether the proposed 1789 Constitution should be ratified, were very heated. As political parties emerged, newspapers were partisan sources of what was going on in government and also included bits of foreign news.

In an era when we can actually view an event as it happens, a look back at the Oct. 4, 1814 Albany Register is instructive as it shows early 19th-Century Guilderland residents learned of news well after the fact. With the War of 1812 still ongoing, reports of British threats and actions at Sackets Harbor and Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh were described in letters sent to Albany, taking only a week to appear in print.

In the Sept. 30 Albany Register, there was the reprint of song stanzas which began with “O, say can you see by the dawn’s early light ….,” composed by a “gentleman” as he watched the Sept. 13 to 14 British shelling of Fort McHenry.

Foreign news of that era revolved around Napoleon. The description of his “dethronement” and exile to Elba after his defeat in April eventually appeared in the June 14th Register.

Whether or not the Register reached any readers in Guilderland isn’t known, but it could have been left on a Western Turnpike tavern table by a traveler or purchased by a Guilderland resident who had journeyed into Albany.

Attendance at church was not only spiritual, but an opportunity for the exchange of both personal and local news or to discuss issues affecting the state or nation. Records of the Helderberg Reformed Church indicate that, in 1795, the sum of 5 pounds, 7 shillings was collected for prisoners of the Algerians “to Redeem and Ransom the unhappy sufferers from America in Bondage now in Algeria.”

They had obviously become aware of the problems caused by the Barbary pirates raiding American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, a foreign policy problem that plagued our early presidents.

Roads and the post office

Communications in the early republic improved with the road-building boom following the Revolutionary War years. Beginning in 1799, the construction of the Great Western Turnpike running through Guilderland to connect Albany and Cherry Valley brought a constant flow of travelers who shared all sorts of news and opinions in the many taverns lining the road.

Local men also frequented these taverns where politics was a popular and often contentious subject of conversation and debate. Numerous taverns were located along the Schoharie Road as well.

During Washington’s administration, the creation of the Post Office led to the establishment of post offices, located first in densely populated areas, then gradually out into the rural areas of the nation. 

Guilderland’s first post office, although established in Hamilton, was named Guilderland in 1815. It was followed by West Guilderland in 1829 at Severson’s Tavern, Guilderland Center in 1831, and Dunnsville in 1833.

In order for news and information to circulate in the fledgling democracy, Washington’s administration deliberately set low postal rates for publications with the result that newspapers flourished, providing the chief source of state, national, and foreign news for 19th-Century Americans.

In 1833, there were several local men who subscribed to the following titles: Lutheran Observer, Albany Weekly Journal, Albany Gazette, Reflector and Schenectady Democrat, Christian Advocate and Journal, Methodist Weekly, New York Baptist Register, Mothers’ Monthly Journal, Albany Argus, New York Weekly Messenger, and Philadelphia Courier — all delivered to the West Guilderland Severson’s Tavern Post Office.

Records of deliveries at Guilderland, Guilderland Center, and Dunnsville at this period no longer exist, but surely people in those areas received publications as well and much of this print passed from hand to hand or ended up on tavern tables instead of being discarded by the original recipients. Reports of events in the outside world circulated slowly, but eventually did reach into this rural area.

 

Rail and telegraph

Beginning in 1831, railroad building speeded up communication, both in carrying newspapers from cities and providing faster mail delivery. Not that these changes occurred quickly, especially for outlying rural areas.

It took until 1863 for the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, later Delaware & Hudson, to connect Knowersville (no longer West Guilderland) to Albany. Two years later, passing through Guilderland Center and Fullers, was the Saratoga and Hudson, later becoming part of the New York Central’s West Shore Railroad.

Along with rail lines came telegraph lines. Originally demonstrated successfully in 1844, within two years a telegraph line connected Albany and New York City.

Usually running alongside railroad roadbeds and tracks, the wire was connected to depots. Each one of Guilderland’s four depots eventually had its own telegrapher, allowing important national news to spread quickly.

The word of Abraham Lincoln’s death would have been known within a day or two by anyone living near Knowersville depot if the telegraph line there had been already established by 1865.

Foreign news arrived by ship weeks after the event until 1867 when a permanent trans-Atlantic cable was laid and cut the time to telegraph news between the United States and Europe to hours. In 1901, over half of the Albany Argus’ front page was given over to detailed news of Queen Victoria’s death one day after her passing.

 

Newspapers

After the mid-19th-Century, most Guilderland newspaper readers either subscribed to the Albany Evening Journal or the Albany Argus. The two major Albany dailies were unashamedly partisan, the Journal being definitely in the Whig/Republican camp while The Argus was firmly Democratic.

Newspapers offered subscriptions for  biweekly or weekly editions, probably more convenient and reasonably priced than the daily paper. Nine dollars brought an annual weekly subscription to the Albany Evening Journal, while The Argus was six dollars.

With the passage of the Rural Free Delivery Act by Congress in 1896, mail began to be delivered directly to rural farms, although it took until 1902 for all of Guilderland to have rural mail delivery. With this, it made subscribing to an Albany weekly or biweekly or possibly daily newspaper practical.

Locally, in 1877, Rev. N. Klock founded a short-lived four-page newspaper called the Golden Era, which he published until he left the area in 1882. An 1880 copy included area news that kept readers of the paper in touch with the doings of their neighbors. Whether from bankruptcy or just the desire to move on, Mr. Klock left town and the newspaper died.

Within two years, David Crowe established a new four-page weekly newspaper to be called The Knowersville Enterprise. The editor ran a column in the second issue entitled “A Spicy Little Paper,” where he claimed to want to make The Enterprise “a readable journal” that would cover “the doings and happenings in all the surrounding towns and world.”

Coverage was to include “who has left town and who has arrived, who preaches, who teaches, who raises the best crops, who keeps the finest stock, who has bought a farm and who has sold it, who has begun life and who has left it ….” His plan was to have this information supplied by local people in the area to be covered.

His publishing venture occurred at the right place at the right time! News immediately began to be submitted from as far away as Gallupville and, to the editor’s delight, the subscription list so far had “exceeded our most sanguine expectations.”

True to its mission, news in the first few issues included such items as, “The little daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Pangburn is seriously ill with diphtheria.” Sadly, the following week the announcement appeared that 11-year-old Maggie Pangburn had died.

“Charles Shoudy raised 623 bushels of oats from 33 bushels sown without using any fertilizer, who can beat it?” “Foss Coon’s dog was killed by being run over by the Saratoga Limited express … his loss is to be regretted.”

For the next several decades, these personal tidbits were the major selling point of The Enterprise not only for Guilderland, but also the Hilltowns and New Scotland and even points beyond. It was the Facebook of that day!

 

Phones, movies, and radio

Just as the invention of the telegraph speeded news, the technology breakthrough of the telephone improved communications. Its first appearance in Knowersville was in 1886 with the building of the resort hotel the Kushaqua.

Wealthy Albanians demanding access to a telephone resulted in a line being strung out from Albany to the Kushaqua and to the two hotels. Newspaper reporting became more up-to-the-minute once journalists had access to phones.

A second technology breakthrough appeared in Guilderland when the Ladies Aid Society of St. John’s Church sponsored an October 1897 showing of the first movie seen in town. There was no plot, only a series of brief scenes, but for the first time average citizens could see an actual event or important person.

One of the scenes viewed that day was of President William McKinley taking the oath of office. For a brief moment, the onlookers were made to feel as if they were there, even though this was six months after the actual event.

The development of newsreels later, in the 1920s, would allow citizens to have a more personal impression of events and people in the news.

Once radio became part of daily life in the 20th Century, Americans really could begin to hear news of national and foreign events within a very short time.

While it took weeks for the news of George Washington’s death to circulate, a very few days for everyone to hear of Lincoln’s assassination, FDR’s sudden death in 1945 was broadcast nationwide within minutes of the information being released.

Breaking news had become part of American life.

 

Post date: 
January 22, 2021

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by Frank L. Palmeri

On days when I telecommute from my home due to the coronavirus, I sit in my first-floor office, with the computer on the right and a window facing the street on the left. This setup presents an interesting dichotomy: the real world on the left and the world of work on the right. I’d really much rather be back in my real office, but at least I don’t have to wear a mask at home.

My day starts early in the morning, when I simultaneously open the window and boot up the computer. I usually have the radio on as well, either news or classical music (the early morning waltzes are really great, they make you feel like dancing).

Since I work in information technology, a lot of my job entails what is euphemistically called “putting out fires,” i.e., fixing stuff that is broken. Fortunately, things run pretty smoothly for the most part so that’s good.

There are still meetings and all the other tasks that make for a work week but, if you just stare at the screen, for all practical purposes, it’s like being at work, minus the small talk, doughnuts, water cooler, and the myriad other sounds and smells of office life. I never wanted to mix home and work like this, but it is what it is, at least for the time being or until I retire.

Then there is the window, my portal to the outside world. Surprisingly, things in the neighborhood happen in a very predictable pattern. In fact, it’s so regimented and repeatable my neighbors should be happy I’m not a thief, haha.

First, there are the dog walkers. In some cases, the dogs are so big it looks like they’re pulling along their person, who is acting as a brake. In other cases, the dogs are so small — some the size of cats — that they have to run to keep up with the person who is just walking.

There is even one lady who carries a small brown dog in a kind of harness, like a purse with dangling legs, a wet nose, and a tail. I don’t know what that’s all about.

Sometimes one of the dogs will pee right on my front lawn. When that happens, for the rest of that morning, every other dog that passes by will stop right at that spot and often add a little pee of their own.

Imagine what that’s like: “Hey, Mary was here, and she had asparagus last night! Let me congratulate her.”

What a different world dogs live in. I would love to have a dog, I really would, but trailing behind an animal with a plastic bag filled with its poop is just a leap I’m not willing to make at this time. What I’d really like to know is why it’s taking so long to invent Pampers for dogs.

There are a lot of couples that walk past my house on a regular basis. Many of them are neighbors I know. Interestingly, when they walk they just walk. It doesn’t appear they are talking at all.

When I walk with my wife, she is constantly telling me to lower my voice, because it’s naturally loud and she doesn’t want me to broadcast our family business. Maybe I should try not talking. Seems to work well for everybody else.

Of course there are bicycle riders. Some of them, all leaned over with their forearms on the handlebars and decked out in brightly colored clingy spandex, look like they made a wrong turn at the Tour de France. When I find time to ride my bicycle I’m sitting up straight and wearing sweatpants.

I like the idea of riding to get in shape, but I’m not sure I can handle “the look.” I know, if you ride 50 miles those duds wick away sweat and prevent chafing and all that. But you don’t need a helmet when you go running, so there.

One day a week, the guys in the big truck come by to take the garbage and the recyclables. One guy drives the rig, the other hangs off the back like a cowboy riding a horse side-saddle.

Then they both hook the pails to the big arm on the truck as it flips them to ingest the contents. You would think this was automatic, but the guys are there as this happens, moving stuff around, making sure the pails empty, and sorting stuff as it falls (lets face it, we all put stuff in the recycling bin that we hope is recyclable but is probably not).

I was so impressed watching these guys work — something I never saw when I was commuting to work — that I got them each a gift card to Dunkin. They do good, honest work; they work hard; and they deserve it. Any time someone does a good job for you, at a minimum, let them know how satisfied you are.

I live on the side of the street where the mail comes early, so that’s good. Yes, it’s mostly bills but I get magazines and packages and the occasional letter or postcard, so it’s always something to look forward to.

UPS is different — they are always in a hurry, hyper even. I like them, but I think their policy of not allowing facial hair is not right. Nicely trimmed beards and mustaches make a guy look handsome. And why are there no UPS ladies?

Sometimes we get FedEx. They’re more laid back than UPS but more intense than USPS. How interesting that they all have their little quirks.

There are a lot of kids out with their parents since the schools closed. Sometimes it’s like a mother duck or bear, with the kids trailing along in single file.

When they’re on bicycles, however, the parents usually ride sweep, so they can keep an eye on things from the rear. Whatever, it’s just good to see the kids getting outside. There is always time for TV and video games in the house (and reading if they know what’s good for them).

My wife doesn’t have a lot of free time, but she has been getting out for walks with several friends lately. That’s good. Wish I could join them. I have to wait until my work day is over, when I can use the saved time from not commuting to do something fun or something around the house.

Not a lot of traffic where I live, but there is some. Fortunately, in my neighborhood, the cars that go by generally adhere to the speed limit. This is good because there are no sidewalks and a lot of folks are out on the street as I’ve described.

You can often tell by the sound when a car is going too fast. Big trucks are easily noticed by the roar and the rumble in the ground. And when the riding mowers, leaf blowers, and weed whackers all start up, switch to the rock station and turn up the music!

There’s one guy who runs by every day in gym clothes. I call him “Rocky” because he looks like he’s training for a boxing match.

Then there are three ladies who always walk together in a row and talk nonstop. They’re the coffee klatch. And there are a lot of pretty young runners who fly on by. Some of them even pass me when I’m out jogging, the nerve of them.

It’s all good though. Nice to know there is life in the community.

The neighbors’ houses I can see from my window are all quiet during the day, except when the kids visit. Then it’s a flurry of activity as the flock returns to the nest, often with their own flock in tow. Busy, busy, busy! The cycle of life continues.

I didn’t ask to be a telecommuter; it was forced on me due to circumstances beyond my control. I’m slowly adjusting to it. Life goes on.

Post date: 
January 22, 2021

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by John R. Williams

The scribe has mentioned this many times because it is true: This is the Old Men of the Mountain because most of the group is old — that is, if you call those in their eighties and nineties old. The OFs in this group don’t want to be called that, but let’s face it, those are old numbers.

The OF’s minds may think they can still do things they did in their sixties but their bodies say, “Not today, fellas; you are old.”

The points that point this up are not the quantity of grandkids the OF has, but the great-grandkids. In the discussions on the phone calls this week, the grandkids kept coming up, and your own kids are now retired, and have been for sometime.

The OFs remember when they retired they considered it a major milestone, like when they were married. Now they can talk to their kids on their retirement, and they do. Talk about equals, yet most of the OFs still call them their kids.

Last week (or maybe the week before) the age was 90; this week the age is 93 of one spoken to. Having minds and desires sharp as tacks and bodies that won’t let the OF fulfill those thoughts is oftentimes frustrating.

Getting dressed, which at one time was not even thought about, the OF would be carrying on a conversation with a brother or buddy and all of sudden, and in short order, the OF was tying his shoes without even knowing he had just showered, shaved, and gotten dressed with only a few minutes gone by on the clock. Well, that has sure changed.

The first part has to be thought out; the bathroom has to be 80-degrees plus, the water hot with everything in order. Then there is putting on the clothes; a lot of that procedure has to be sitting down because the OFs can’t stand on one leg anymore to get the other foot through their shorts.

Those of us who wear compression socks (and these socks work) need help getting them on, but at least no help is required to get them off. The OFs discussed an ad on TV for compression socks that go on easy. It doesn’t look that easy to us OFs.

 

A love-hate relationship

Some of the OFs have homes in Florida, North and South Carolina, Arizona, and Texas. Several of these OFs report how much lower their taxes are in these states than their home in New York, and not by just a few bucks.

These OFs pay taxes in both places and, though they complain about New York, these OF like the change of weather, have family in New York, and like it here for many other reasons. The scribe thinks the older we get the more family means to us. New York does have a lot to offer even though it is expensive to live here.

Quite often, the OMOTM discussed the trials and tribulations of New York but for some reason do hang on. The attraction has many OFs somewhat confused. They have the means to leave but don’t.

The OFs will just grumble along with most everyone else. One OF said, as he gets older it becomes cheaper for him to live and, like the OF on the phone who has family taking care of him, that is a big help.

Most of the time it comes down to family, and a little side note: The Helderbergs are noted for how long people live here up on this mountain.

 

Saving money

The older we get, and when we have our health, it becomes cheaper to live. That is not true if the OF winds up in a nursing home.

It takes a lot of planning to get into your late eighties and nineties but the car sits in the garage, so there is less money on gas. The older we get the less we eat, and eating out at fancy restaurants is not required because the old gut can’t hold that much, or all the fancy creams and spices don’t seem to agree with us, so that is a waste of money.

Shoes last for years, and we seem to be in the same type of clothes day after day if the OF even bothers to get dressed. All this saves money.

As was said in the beginning, the mind says to the OF, we are going to do this or that, and we don’t do this or that. It might be we just run out of time because after the OF gets dressed there isn’t any time left in the day, and the OF just is worn out and not ready for any challenges.

 

Worries

The few phone calls made confirm the OFs are worried about two things.

Number one is how and when they are going to get their vaccination shots. To an OF they knew this confusion was how it was going to wind up anyway. No matter who was in charge, the numbers are too big for things to run smoothly.

The second item the OFs are worried about is the inauguration, which will be over when this Enterprise is on the streets, but the OFs are still concerned.

This scribe visited his old friend Maxine (who lives on the internet) for some words of wisdom concerning the aging process.

Maxine said, “Getting older is like visiting an all-you-can-eat buffet. What should be hot, is cold; what should be firm is limp; and the buns are bigger than anything else on the menu.”

Post date: 
January 22, 2021

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by Dennis Sullivan

— Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Library of Congress Music Division

“In her presence on those tranquil nights it was possible to experience the depths of her disbelief, to feel sometimes the mean, horrible freedom of a thorough suspicion of destiny,” Elizabeth Hardwick wrote of Billie Holiday.

During Mel Brooks’s revelatory interview with Conan O’Brien on Conan’s spectacular TBS series “Serious Jibber-Jabber,” the two comics start talking about the comedic greats of 20th-Century America and quickly agree that comedy and Jew(ish) were one. (Any soul into comedy knows it’s true.)

But then Mel turns wistful, sounding like someone who lost something or hadn’t measured up to expectations.

He tells Conan that, when it comes to putting words down on paper, nobody beats the Irish. “Between Juno and the Peacock or Sean O’Casey, just between Beckett and maybe Yeats,” he goes, “I mean when I discovered that these were all Irish writers, James Joyce, the best fucking writers in the world ….”

But then he adds that, when he saw that none of those great writers “was a Jew, I just had a nervous breakdown ... I cried for about a month.”

It’s a most interesting cultural statement but this is no time to psychoanalyze Mel Brooks. Suffice it to say he said the Irish have a way with words and put them down on paper well. He called them “the best fucking writers in the world …. ”

Conan — whose face is the map of Ireland — shows reverence for Mel throughout the interview, despite disparities, working with the advantage of a cultural overview. (Parenthetically, neither mentions that, when the Irish start with that sweet Gaelic lilt of theirs, they’re spinning a web, often of Brigadoon. The truth must be ferreted out.)

Because of his penchant for the Irish tongue, I hope Mel (he’ll be 95 in June) has seen the new book of the Dublin-born writer, Brian Dillon, out last September. It’s called “Suppose a Sentence,” a line Dillon took from Gertrude Stein’s poem “Christian Bérard.”

Stein’s line struck Dillon because he had “supposed” sentences for years, that is, had collected every great sentence he came upon in his reading — those that knocked him out. He jotted them down in the back of his writer-notebooks, which came to 45.

For Dillon, the sentences were objets trouvés, found things, which he wanted to share with the world the way Marcel Duchamp shared the things he found through art: an ordinary snow shovel becoming “Prelude to a Broken Arm.”

Dillon went through all the notebooks and picked 27 sentences he wanted in his Hall of Fame, then created a plaque for each in the form of an essay explaining why the player deserved to be there. The essays reflect a deep anarchic discipline.

As we might expect, Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Susan Sontag — the murderers row of 20th-Century American literature — all have a plaque in Dillon’s Hall. Ironically, there are only three Irish — two women and Beckett. Nine are Brits and 10 are from the States.

To show what Dillon got enthralled with, here’s his sentence from Elizabeth Hardwick:

“In her presence on those tranquil nights it was possible to experience the depths of her disbelief, to feel sometimes the mean, horrible freedom of a thorough suspicion of destiny.”

It sounds like a script from film noir posing questions for Hardwick not only about what she means but also about the oxymoron “mean, horrible freedom.”

The “her” in the sentence refers to the grande dame of the American blues-soul-jazz scene, Billie Holiday, who hip-music-folk know had a fondness for (government-banned) intoxicants.

As the soulful songbird lay dying in a hospital from pulmonary edema and heart failure, at 44, a gaggle of narcs barged into her room, searched her and her bed, handcuffed her to the bed, then stationed two mugs at the door: for what? To snag a dime bag from a nickel-and-dime connection from 125th Street? They found a stamp of smack in her room which they planted there — as she lay dying.

You can understand her disbelief and “the mean, horrible freedom of a thorough suspicion of destiny.”

Hardwick’s sentence is so beguiling the reader wants to lay Holiday down on a Freudian couch and ply her with questions of destiny — but Dillon doesn’t go there, he stays with Hardwick’s writing.

He says of her sentences, “There is a sense always that Hardwick’s sentences stand alone, pay little or no attention to one another, that each is self-involved and sufficient whole.”

Hardwick would’ve loved that, knowing how hard an art it is. It’s like listening to someone say one thing, a minute later the opposite, and then something new, while managing to convey meaning through a cohesive narrative the listener wants more of.

Dillon then turns to Hardwick’s view of her calling: “To wake up in the morning under a command to animate the stones of an idea, the clods of research, the uncertainty of memory, is the punishment of the vocation.”

I fully understand what this means but it’s Emily Dickinson’s loaded gun. “Command?” Who’s commanding? Was not the author in charge?

And to use “punishment” to whine about the price for doing the work one loves — maybe she was tired of her craft or feared she had no more to say.

As a writer for a small-town paper I suppose sentences all the time. Indeed, I juxtapose, interpose, even repose them, while I impose upon myself the rigor of exactitude.

Many years ago one of my teachers used to quote Francis Bacon: “Reading maketh a full man; speaking a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

I took it to mean that the serious reader develops confidence enough to speak to others without resorting to violence; the ready-man’s ideas are well-thought-out. And when he puts them down on paper he’s exact, refusing to speak in abstractions. The full man is gentil.

Violent language is the language of abstraction; it plagues those who refuse to examine their beliefs and thus never get to develop the words, vocabulary, idiom, to speak in sense-tences. The worst among them mouth a fascist babble.

In one of her essays, Annie Dillard tells a story about “a student [who] grabbed hold of a writer and asked: ‘Do you think I could be a writer?’”

The writer, not knowing anything about the person, says, “I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?” 

And with that the writer “could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences?”

Dillard says, “If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ‘I liked the smell of the paint.’”

How sad that today so many despise the smell of the paint of exactitude. For Irish writers — despite all the talk of Brigadoon — exactitude is second nature. That’s what Mel loves about them and why he and they share the same Hall of Fame.

 

Post date: 
January 14, 2021

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by Frank Palmeri

As the holidays approached this year, I wanted to do something special with the guitar, even though I’m only a new player. Due to all the sadness over the covid, I was hoping to spread some cheer for my family and friends by finding something to play and post on social media.

Then one day, in one of my lesson books, I found it: a slimmed-down version of “Ode to Joy” by Beethoven, played only with single notes on the first two strings, with no difficult chord changes to mess up. Even I could handle that.

I practiced the piece over and over. I never got to the point where I just had it “in my fingers” though; I still had to have the sheet music in front of me. But I figured the sight of me playing from reading sheet music would add to the whole “hell must have frozen over” effect of me playing any music in any way, shape, or form.

I’m over 60 and I’ve only just started playing. Making music is still very new and strange to me. When I even attempt it, I often imagine it’s kind of like how those iguanas that fall out of the trees in Florida when the temperature gets close to freezing must feel.

So I practiced, practiced, and practiced, until it was finally Christmas Eve. At that point, I arranged a chair and a music stand besides our brightly decorated Christmas tree. Then I roped my daughter in to assist.

I set my phone to record video, and instructed her to click record after counting down by saying “3 - 2 - 1,” at which point I would begin the piece. And then quickly bomb. This sequence of her counting down and me bombing happened over and over again. Sigh.

What happened was I got so nervous the minute she hit “record” that I could feel butterflies in my stomach, as the saying goes. At that point, I realized that practicing alone by yourself in your jammies at your leisure is not the same as playing “live.” I had been practicing the music, but I had not been practicing the performance.

Watching and hearing this, my professional musician wife chimed in: “Now you know how I felt when we’d have a party and you’d ask me to just go play something on the piano or the organ out of the blue.” Point taken.

She is of course right, but what did I know. It took me playing music myself to finally realize it. Good thing I do a good job taking care of her car and motorcycle, haha.

I’ve been a member of Toastmasters for years. This is the worldwide club for people who want to improve their public speaking and communications skills. I’ve won trophies in public speaking, I’ve won speech contests, and I’ve mentored other public speakers.

All this training and experience has helped me immensely in getting up in front of a crowd at work, at church, or any place where I need to communicate to a group. I still get a little anxious at first, so I tend to speak too fast until my breathing calms down, but I have no problem speaking in front of people.

Yet all this wonderful practice and training didn’t help me get the notes of the guitar straight once the filming started.

They say, as long as you keep learning you’ll never grow old. At this pace, I’m going to be immortal.

At any rate, I did post the video of me playing “Ode to Joy.” In it, you can see me grimace when I make a mistake. After about 20 retakes, I finally just posted one and washed my hands of it.

My friends and family gave me a lot of likes, so that was great, but knowing I’d done it so much better in practice leaves me truly humbled. Next year, I hope to find another piece, practice the hell out of it, and do better. Something to strive for.

I have many musician friends who play in bands and make it look so easy. In fact, one of my guitar books had a chapter on performing for others. It said, when playing live, just ignore any mistakes and move on, because most listeners won’t even notice them. Apparently this is one reason professional musicians find studio recording, where you strive for perfection, much more stressful than playing live.

All I know is I’m in awe of anyone who can play anything well in front of other people. My hat is off to all of you, from the neophyte fifth-grade musicians in the school band, to the top-notch orchestra at The Met that supports world-class tenors and sopranos, to each and every hardworking and dedicated choir member and church musician. You are all, each and every one of you, my heroes.

If you are a musician or have a musician friend or relative, I very highly recommend the book “Practicing: a Musician’s Return to Music,” by Glenn Kurtz, from 2007, www.vintagebooks.com. This heartfelt little book is about a very promising classical guitarist who returns to his instrument after many years of not playing.

The prose flows like honey, a visceral dive into the pain and passion a true music lover goes though in the dogged pursuit of his or her craft. This is a short book, so buy several copies and give them as gifts to your musician friends and relatives. You’ll be a big hit for sure, trust me.

Playing music in my twilight years after being a devoted listener my whole life is proving to be an exciting and immersive journey, a true “ode to joy.” Amazing.

P.S. If you promise not to make fun of my orange Crocs, or the fact that my shirt is on backwards, you can see my halting performance at https://tinyurl.com/y7dgwwpr.

Post date: 
January 7, 2021

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by Michael Seinberg

I’m sitting here at my computer and out the window the world is covered in a fresh six-inch coating of snow. The COVID numbers are up but we do have a vaccine that will likely help in the long run.

The Georgia Senate run-off races are tomorrow, and it at least appears that the Democrats have a shot at winning, though I’m certainly not holding my breath considering how utterly corrupt their governor is.

We have a new administration gearing up to enter the White House in just 16 days while the current crop is burning the place down as fast as they can light matches, file lawsuits, threaten election officials, and just generally wreck our democracy.

So, will 2021 be an improvement over 2020, a year most folks (except billionaires) would suggest was the worst year in history?

I think that 2021 probably will be better. Once the spring and summer hit, and the vaccine gets widely administered, we’ll probably start to see some actual improvement in the pandemic. We also have a competent administration to look forward to, which will bring in actual professionals, listen to experts, and let folks like Dr. Fauci do their jobs without meddling for political purposes.

I foresee a government made up of people who actually want to do a good job and help people, not just wreck things, steal money, and play golf while thousands die and millions suffer.

If, Goddess willing, the Dems win in Georgia and Mitch McConnell loses his iron grip on power, then I feel real progress can be made in our country. Moscow Mitch has been holding progress back since 2008 and he shows no signs of changing his stripes (or shell).

However, I’m also realistic. He and his party will do everything in their power to cheat in Georgia and the only defense we have is the fact that there is so much scrutiny, they’ll be hard-pressed to pull anything really nasty off.

Even if he does keep his claws sunk into the throat of progress, he won’t be quite as effective with a Democrat in the White House. Also, people are getting sick and tired of Mitch, so being that he’s not stupid and already quite rich, he may start to see things differently. Who knows?

I think what truly gives me hope, politics aside, is that life goes on despite all the craziness. Most people want to have decent lives. They want a job, a place to live, and to take care of their families. Most people don’t want to go around in a constant state of fear or rage, it’s just not healthy.

Most people are decent and more than willing to try and help one another out. We see that here in Altamont all the time. And most people, despite health issues, financial issues, worries, fears and just life, keep on going; it’s how we’re built. And of course, we are, as the phrase goes, NY Tough, even if we don’t live down in The City.

In my not terribly long life, I’ve lived through at least four wars I can think of, endless financial uncertainty, technological upheaval, climate change, health issues, and a ton of lousy TV. And yet, I’m still here and not ready to throw in the towel. I still find joy each day in all sorts of ways that make it quite plain that life, for all its trials, beats the alternative.

We now have a total of seven grandchildren (two new ones came in November and December). When I’m holding Winston, age six weeks, and he looks up at me with his tiny face and just sort of blinks and yawns and smiles, well, I do think we’ll be OK. We have to be, for his sake.

When I walk through the winter landscape and take in the sounds, smells and feel of winter, seeing birds still doing their thing while squirrels look for food and play chicken with trucks, I feel like it’s going to be OK eventually. Riding my bike when the weather permits still feels pretty good as long as I manage not to crash too often and sometimes yields some really cool sights and experiences.

Hanging out with my wife of almost 30 years is an endless positive and a fun adventure. Staying in touch with family, even at a distance, is still a good thing too. And of course, friends are still friends and it’s always a pleasure to just say hi and catch up, even from six feet away.

Nothing, even COVID, lasts forever. Neither do evil politicians, greedy billionaires, and corrupt people. We all are born, live, and eventually move on to the next plane of existence, whatever that might be.

Sometimes I think we forget that simple fact when we’re being endlessly reminded of all the dire news, health threats, bad weather reports, the next Beiber album, and so on. But spring is coming, the days are getting longer already (we’re picking up about seven to 10 minutes of fresh daylight each week) and the vaccine is rolling out, albeit much too slowly due to federal incompetence. So, there is light at the end of what feels like a really long tunnel.

We need to hang on just a little longer and we need to do it for ourselves and for Winston and the rest of the tiny humans among us. Someday we’ll tell them scary stories about 2020 and marvel at how far we’ve come.

For now, we just need to know that they need us to keep going and working to make it all better for them. That’s our job now. Not to worry about what party is in power or what stupid lawn sign is out front. No, it’s time to think about real things and the futures of our kids and grandbabies are as real as it gets.

Do it for your Winston.
 

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg describes himself as a veteran grandfather, cyclist, writer, husband, troublemaker, parent, and survivor. He says he has every intention of continuing that endeavor.

 

Post date: 
January 7, 2021

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by John R. Williams

It is obvious this is the first column of 2021 so, as always, time marches on. With the march of time come many changes and new experiences; none of us really know what they will be, and neither do the Old Men of the Mountain.

Every OMOTM spoken to misses the Tuesday morning gatherings and can’t wait for this virus thing to be over. Sometime (hopefully sooner rather than later) it will be over, and that way we can get ready for the next disaster and that one might be so the group will be able to get together again sans the worries of catching something that may eventually cause the OF’s demise, maybe just warts.

Time marching on brought up two conversations. One was that, during a phone call, the chime of a clock signaling the time sounded and the OF on the other end of the phone heard it. The clock played a little tune and then sounded the time with chimes.

The OF must have been paying little attention to the words of the conversation because he questioned the correctness of the clock’s chimes. After all, it was definitely 10 a.m. but the OF on the other end of the phone distinctly heard 11 ding-dongs.

The OF commented to this scribe that the clock had the wrong time because he heard 11 ding-dongs and the OF knew it was 10 a.m. This scribe said the OF was correct on both counts. It was 10 a.m. and the OF did hear 11 ding-dongs.

While the OF was resetting the clock after changing the batteries, he held the button down too long and went past the correct time by one ding-dong and it was a real pain in the butt to go back and change the time. Now everybody in the house when hearing these chimes subtracts the number by one and the clock is right on the money for telling the time with the ding-dongs.

This brought up another story for the OF about a cuckoo clock. The cuckoo clock was given to his in-laws by this OF way back when. The in-laws hung the clock on the wall in the living room where, when properly wound, it performed its cuckcooing duties right on time.

One time, when the OF’s brother-in-law was quite little, he became quite ill. This illness caused the little one to become very fussy and the only time he really stopped was when he was able to get to sleep, but for some reason the sleep never lasted very long.

The reason for this happening, the father-in-law deduced, was because of that infernal cuckoo clock. Every time it cuckooed the little brother-in-law would wake up and start hollering. The father-in-law at times had a short fuse, and at other times was as calm as could be with all cane breaking around him. 

This was not one of those times. The clock came off the wall and was hurled against the other wall, and smashed. That ended the little cuckoo’s role of announcing time to the world. It cuckooed no more, and the young brother-in-law found longer times of restful sleep. 

This scribe found out what happened when he went to gather up the pieces of the broken cuckoo clock, put them in a brown paper bag (no plastic in those days) and brought it home.

With some string, rubber bands, and carpenter’s glue, the decorative case was back together, but the little bird came out very limp, and when he finished announcing the time his little head was looking at the floor, then it would spring back and retreat behind his crooked little door until the next time.

This scribe thinks that clock is still around some place waiting to cuckoo once more.

 

Life saver

Another thing about time and the phone calls. When speaking to one of the OFs the OF let the scribe know that 2021 put him one year closer to 100 years old.

Except for driving, the OF is as alert as ever and a good conversationalist. Just to remember that fact is interesting in itself. This OF saved the life of this scribe way back when we were a lot younger. This was in the middle forties and the scribe was about 12 years old or so.

We were working filling a silo with the corn being pulled automatically from the wagon. It was getting close to the end of this load and this scribe had a pitchfork and was raking the tailings onto the table that carried the corn to the chopper.

Unexpectedly his sweatshirt became caught in the chain and was pulling him onto the table to the chopper. This scribe could not pull back hard enough nor could this scribe reach anything to shut it down. Just then, the OF that is close to 100 came around from the side of the wagon and saw the situation.

This OF grabbed the scribe, pulled him back, and shut down the equipment seconds before the scribe was on his way to the chopper. Ah, the fun of farming.

 

Good kisser

Soon after the original three OFs that started this group, the OF approaching 100 and this scribe joined the three of them for breakfast and the OMOTM was underway.

As this phone conversation was ending, the OF told the scribe, “Give your wife a kiss from me.”

Locating the wife in her most un-favorite spot near the laundry room this scribe complied with that request. When the startled wife asked why she was the recipient of the kiss, the scribe related the phone call, to which she replied, “Wow, Mike is sure a good kisser.”

Post date: 
January 7, 2021

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by Jesse S. Sommer

The Enterprise – Dylan Longton

It’s been a year since the Altamont Enterprise published an op-ed wherein I called for the demolition of Albany’s rotting Central Warehouse. Chronicling the past 40 years of developer misadventures, I argued then that since none of the half-dozen successive owners among whom the so-called “Eyesore” has changed hands had ever lived up to their pledges to renovate, remediate, or rehabilitate the dilapidated structure, it was time for municipal officials to consider a new approach.  

The response to my proposal was overwhelmingly positive — except in the opinion pages of the Times Union, which twice opined in response to suggest a different course. The Feb. 17, 2020 edition recommended using the giant 11-story walls as massive canvases to celebrate upstate New York imagery, thereby exuding “progress and creativity instead of stagnation and decay”, while the March 9, 2020 edition again proposed such murals, this time ignoring that even just preparing the building’s exterior to serve as a canvas — scraping and priming and such — would cost $1 million.  

But after yet another year of trafficking in these and other such unattainable fantasies, the only noteworthy activity at the Big Ugly Eyesore is the fact that — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — IT CAUGHT ON FIRE AGAIN!

Are. You. Kidding. Me? As in 2010, when the Eyesore’s interior was first engulfed in a conflagration for half a week, firefighters responded two days after Thanksgiving to extinguish yet another blaze in what Battalion Chief Geo Henderson told the Times Union was “a very high-risk building for us.”

So what’s the plan, folks? Are we going to ring in each new decade with an anniversary inferno down at the old Central Warehouse?

Is building owner Evan Blum going to financially reimburse the city of Albany for the fire department’s latest response to his failure to secure the property?

And how many times does smoke have to billow from this concrete monstrosity’s windows before it finally falls out of fashion to perennially propose that somebody pick up a paintbrush?

That idea was first advanced back in 2015. Nothing came of it then, nothing came of it last year, nothing will come of it two decades hence when the tired whimsey of murals is recycled yet again.  

But there’s more. When last I endeavored to document the building’s history by chronicling its past owners, I missed several acts in this tragic comedy of errors.   

Fortunately, I came upon intrepid reporting by Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff, a former independent journalist who — via phone — helped me fill in the gaps, to include the fact that I’d omitted Brooklyn developer Joshua Guttman from the owners roster. To save column space, just google the name “Joshua Guttman” and peruse the very first search result, to wit, a Wikipedia entry that understates his role as a “controversial property owner.”  

We need delve no further into Mr. Guttman’s background; our current concern is the latest “controversial property owner” — Mr. Blum — who has littered the past four years with worthless promises to do something, anything with the building he purchased for pennies per square foot in 2017. Like his predecessors, he’s done nothing but breathe life into fanciful pipedreams while evidently endangering the lives of firefighters.  

You know who else is disgusted by the putrefaction of “Blum’s Blight?” As it turns out: Evan Blum. 

“It looks like Albany is decaying with that thing sitting there. If I get the permission, I will immediately eradicate that feeling,” Mr. Blum told the Albany Business Review in December 2017, in what can most charitably be described as a blatant lie. 

Though Mr. Blum has proven unreachable, I tracked down one of his former employees who, while declining to go on the record, nonetheless revealed Mr. Blum’s patternistic signature.

 She pointed me to New London, Connecticut, where — according to The Day newspaper — it was in 2005 that Mr. Blum bought an abandoned building while similarly peddling lofty promises of restoration and commercial activity. Sure enough, it was 12 years later that the city filed suit against him for a decade’s worth of flagrant zoning violations and inactivity. Here’s an illustrative quote from that 2017 article:

“Richard Caruso, owner of the nearby Caruso Piano Gallery, said he has no expectations Blum will ever do what he claims. ‘When he first opened, I was tremendously optimistic. But the guy has never done any of the things he’s said he was going to do. At this point in time, I’ve abandoned all hope in him.’ Caruso said the city is as much to blame for not being more diligent in its efforts to press the issue. ‘That’s what your local government is supposed to do, especially if you’re trying to enhance the downtown.’”

How applicably familiar. What would history do without the cut-and-paste function?  

The most promising thing about Mr. Blum is the fact that, according to The New York Times, he faced criminal charges in 2000 for the partial collapse of a building he owned in Manhattan. (Promising, in that maybe such a fate will befall the Central Warehouse.)

Curious about the nature of those reported criminal charges? Put down your drink: reckless endangerment through improper/dangerous renovations, and filing false renovation plans.

This is the guy to whom we’ve entrusted our community interest in rejuvenating the Eyesore? Was even a modicum of due diligence performed by Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s staff before they permitted her to meet with him in 2017 and declare that “the city welcomes his plans”?

Two years later — right on schedule — Mayor Sheehan called Mr. Blum’s persistent lack of progress “incredibly frustrating.” Meanwhile, just across the river in Connecticut, local media were reporting that creditors had foreclosed on two of Mr. Blum’s properties for failure to make mortgage payments.

Taxpayers are functionally subsidizing Mr. Blum’s unconscionable neglect of this menacing public nuisance. It’s time — past time — that we dispense with delusion and knock down the old Central Warehouse.  

 How do we do it? Well, first, we need to correct the record. It’s been said that “[t]o raze the warehouse at this moment, Albany likely would have to seize it by eminent domain in a costly legal battle.” Wrong. That’s a fundamental misstatement of law.  

Pursuant to Article 11, Title 3 of New York’s Real Property Tax Law, when a property owner is delinquent in his taxes, a municipal government may foreclose on the tax lien, obtain title to the property, and then either sell that property at private auction, transfer it to the authorized land bank, or — and I’m extrapolating here — blow it to smithereens. 

Last month, I called several local officials (whose names I’m withholding as they were not previously cleared to speak on behalf of their respective agencies) to find out the total unpaid tax obligation for 143 Montgomery Street. One of them literally just laughed into the phone.  

Because out of 1,241 properties listed on the “Delinquent Tax List” (November 2020 report), the Central Warehouse is the sixth most tax-encumbered property in all of Albany County. And it isn’t even just that Mr. Blum failed to pay the back taxes when he bought the building — it’s that he’s refused to pay any taxes ever since.  

Readers accessing this column online can review the four years’ worth of unpaid school and property taxes that Mr. Blum has amassed since purchasing the building. See for yourselves by consulting Albany’s online property tax and school tax databases (Tax Map Number:  65.20-2-29).

This wouldn’t be a matter of government coercively confiscating private property; it’d be a matter of telling the dude who owns title to 515,512 square feet of crumbling concrete that he’ll not be permitted to disfigure Albany’s horizon while running up half-a-million dollars in debt to our local government.  

What makes Mr. Blum — who, to be precise, owes $472,863.41 in back taxes on the Central Warehouse — so uniquely special as to avoid such consequence? He’s clearly not going to do anything with the building. Albany must. 

“For nearly 20 years, the Central Warehouse has sat in a weird kind of real estate limbo,” a reporter wrote — ten years ago — in an article quoting a local developer as saying that “[j]ust about every real estate guy has looked at that building at one time or another, but we just couldn’t make it work. The costs were just too great.”  

Notwithstanding, and like so many before them, each of the officials with whom I spoke insistently enumerated the many logistical, financial, and environmental challenges posed by detonating the Eyesore. One of them instead depicted an attractive alternative, in which the building’s exterior could be wrapped with solar panels to power a warehouse poised to meet the ever-increasing demand of online shopping.  

Already possessing train tracks that run directly into its bowels, situated on the banks of a river, and high enough to accommodate a launch pad for an army of aerial delivery drones, the warehouse of this particular fantasy was as inviting as any of the fevered dreams that reality routinely dashes against the rocks. 

And that’s the rub, Albanites: The question is not whether anything can be done with the Central Warehouse, but whether it ever will be. And who wants to take that bet? We agonize over an eyesore that stifles area development and which thereby makes renovating it unappealing, but we fail to appreciate that, when confronted with a chicken-or-the-egg problem, sometimes your best bet is to just give up poultry.  

No one is coming to the rescue. It’s on us to protect our firefighters, cease the public subsidization, and liberate our daily commutes from this humiliating testament to Albany’s apathy. A seizure by tax foreclosure is a legal solution to the issue; it’s one the Albany Common Council should at least evaluate given its recent appetite for the ambitious (to include approving a feasibility study to reconnect Albany to the waterfront by dropping I-787 — a vastly more expensive undertaking).  

With due resolve, our elected leaders could then explore innovative ways of financing demolition and removal, such as issuing municipal bonds or applying for state and federal grants. Albany would likely realize a return on investment when it subsequently sold the newly unencumbered real estate to more practical developers.  

Or it could just leave the debris smoldering in place for all I care — unlike the inescapable Eyesore as it now stands, we wouldn’t be able to see a pile of rubble from the highway. (Though for more on how the debris could be removed and the site then remediated, check out the local media report of my exchange with a reader who expressed such concerns following publication of my column last year.)  

If it were structurally unsound, we would find the money and means to knock it down. Yet because the Eyesore is structurally sound, we’re cool with forever permitting it to be the next fire away from lethal?

 Shhh! If you listen closely, you can almost hear those insufferable law school gunners protesting my proposal whilst stumbling through 1L year: “Albany will never take possession of the Central Warehouse, because then it would be criminally and civilly liable if someone were injured at the site.”

What an unconscionably cynical perspective to attribute to Albany’s city and county officials. There are already people jungle-gyming their way throughout that structure — to include graffiti artists tagging the walls, trespassing adventurers posting their exploits on YouTube, homeless citizens lighting fires inside the building — and our municipal officials are thus already responsible for their welfare, even if legal liability might not technically attach.

Don’t get it twisted: The blood from any death or injury sustained in that building will be on Evan Blum’s hands, as well as those of the county executive, county legislators, Common Council members, and Albany mayor — who’s notably on record saying that the Central Warehouse is “not a safe place be.” 

 On December 21, 2020, Mayor Sheehan announced her intention to serve a previously unanticipated but now inevitable third term. As justification for reneging on a prior pledge to adhere to a two-term limit, she cited projects that “still need her leadership” — to include “the downtown revitalization initiative” and a program to tackle blight in the city. 

Bet.  

I genuinely don’t want the satisfaction of saying “I told you so” another 10 years from now, long after Mr. Blum has surrendered the deed and there’s yet been no progress beyond further deterioration. Albany residents deserve a serious discussion about the Central Warehouse’s fate, not one that gives our imaginations free reign to conjure images of industrial-grade frescoes that, at best, would only invite the same graffiti vandalism that now and forever adorns its walls.  

No more pretending that cosmetically decorating the Eyesore is analogous to Albany’s laudable “Capital Walls” initiative, which beautifies local edifices the interiors of which aren’t prone to cyclic combustion. Refrigerator [building] art will not eliminate the lethal hazards of the Big Ugly Eyesore, nor raise the esteem of our Capital District, nor spur a would-be downtown commercial renaissance. Just stop. Take it down, before it takes down someone else.

A July 6, 2007 Times Union report quotes former Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings as saying of the Central Warehouse: “It’s an eyesore, period …. I’m sick of looking at that building.”  

 That was 13 years ago, in an article which posed what might’ve once been a reasonable question: “Could one of Albany’s ugliest ducklings become a swan?”  

I direct readers’ attention to Exhibit “The Last 30 Years.” The answer, of course, is “no”. 

Captain Jesse Sommer is an active duty paratrooper and lifelong resident of Albany County. He welcomes your thoughts at .

Post date: 
January 6, 2021

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by Mary Ellen Johnson
The Fullers Band

— Photo from the Guilderland Historical Society

  The Fullers Band seemed to have performed frequently during the few years of its existence, playing at Sunday school picnics, church suppers, parades, Memorial Day observances, and at its own fundraising events.

For eons, an integral part of human existence has been making music. Until relatively recent times, it was necessary to be physically present to perform or listen to music. Early references to music-making in Guilderland are few.

An 1835 poster announcing a Fourth of July celebration listed a procession to St. James Lutheran Church (located where Fairview Cemetery is today) concluding in a ceremony where the hymn “Ode on Science” was sung. 

A collection of letters written by the Chesebro brothers in the 1840s included mention of Methodist camp meetings in Frenchs Hollow, events that very likely included hymn singing as part of the worship services. It is also likely that congregational singing was part of both Reformed and Lutheran services, and at some point formal choirs began to be established.

When George Chesebro was invited to a New Year’s Party in 1846, he hauled a sleigh load of friends to Frenchs Hollow. In describing his letter, the late Guilderland historian Arthur Gregg imagined that, as they glided over the snow, Chesebro and his friends were singing the early 19th-Century song, “Cousin Jedidiah” chorusing, “Oh, won’t we have a jolly time. Oh, won’t we have a jolly time. Jerusha, put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea.”

 

Singing schools

George Chesebro was a member of a singing school. An institution dating back to New England colonial days, a singing school was not an actual school, but rather an informal singing group for anyone who wanted to join, begun by a person who had some musical ability.

Not only were there new songs to be learned and the pleasure that comes from community singing, but a big incentive for younger people was the opportunity to mingle with the opposite sex. Stephen Lainhart, a single young man from Settles Hill in the 1860s, was also a singing-school enthusiast, noting in his diary at one point that he attended singing school twice weekly and once noted dropping by the Glasshouse (Guilderland hamlet) singing school.

With The Enterprise beginning publication in 1884, notices of the formation of a singing school occasionally appeared. “Mr. Osborn will reopen his singing school at (Knowersville) Witherwax hall,” proposing to meet each Thursday evening.

Two years later, Prof. Geo. J. Hallenbeck led a singing school in the Guilderland hamlet and in 1890 announced they were preparing for a concert. Rev. G.I. Sweet organized a singing school at State Road Methodist Church at Parkers Corners every Friday evening, which perhaps answered the prayers of “the young people of this place (who) are in want of a good singing school teacher for the coming winter.”

The notices for singing schools faded by the mid1890s.

 

Church choirs

Providing an outlet for those who loved to sing were church choirs. Serious preparation was taken for concerts and services particularly at Easter, their performances often mentioned in the next week’s Enterprise.

Easter 1898 found the singing of the Altamont Reformed Church’s choir “deserves commendation of the manner in which they performed their part, showing their ability to execute ably different music.” At the same time, Guilderland Center’s St. Mark’s Lutheran choir’s singing on Easter morning 1899 “was of a high order” with “solos rendered in a most pleasing manner.”

Those who attended the Easter service at the Guilderland Methodist Church were pleased by the “excellent” singing.

The public was sometimes invited to a special concert of religious music offered by a local church choir such as the sacred cantata of song “King Triumphant” offered by the McKownville Methodist Church choir in 1898.

Church choirs were included in a variety of secular events. Fourth of July celebrations often found a choir involved.

Teachers’ Institutes, week-long meetings requiring area teachers’ attendance at sessions to improve their instructional techniques, were held in various churches where one feature would be entertainment by that church’s choir.

Guilderland’s Memorial Day was the occasion for a major ceremony at Prospect Hill Cemetery, a secular event with strong religious overtones. The growing prohibition movement brought frequent visits to local churches by ministers or other speakers seeking to promote temperance and included participation by the church’s choir.

 

Community music

Beginning in the 1880s, community musical activities were becoming an important part of American life. In Guilderland, this was especially evident with an outburst of musical activity in Altamont.

Villagers lived within easy walking distance of churches and meeting rooms, allowing them to form musical groups, rehearse, or attend performances — all with little effort.

Having talent, organizational skills, and the ability to stir up enthusiasm and participation, Mrs. Jesse Crounse and Montford Sand were each very involved in initiating village musical activities. This does not mean that music wasn’t going on in other parts of town but efforts there to form musical groups weren’t as successful.

Extremely popular during the last quarter of the 19th and early 20th centuries were community bands. They played at a variety of public events, usually for a modest fee to cover their expenses, to be paid by the sponsoring organization.

Knowersville’s band organized about 1885, followed within a year or two by the Fullers Cornet Band. Unfortunately, Guilderland Center’s attempt to organize its own band failed for lack of participation.

Within a year of its formation, Knowersville band members offered “grand entertainments,” first in one, then the other of the village’s hotels.

At the time, band members were described by the editor of the Enterprise as “some of our most promising young men,” who had been “organized scarcely a year, a credit to the village” and “in every way entitled to our support.”

Attendees at their fall concert would enjoy an oyster supper followed by full band choruses, and cornet and clarinet solos. Admission to this special evening was 40 cents.

The band announced that it was prepared “to furnish music for picnics, excursions, festivals, etc.”

For the next several years, the Knowersville band was in demand for both Republican and Democratic rallies, annual Lutheran reunions, excursions, church and temperance fundraising events, the Altamont Fair, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July observances, and the town’s big annual Sunday school picnics.

Historian Gregg described one of these Sunday school picnics when excited Altamont children sat perched on hay wagons with the band in the lead. The children sat and played on three-seated lumber wagons as they headed toward the picnic grove where they met children from other Sunday schools.

Young men from Fullers and the surrounding area also organized a band in the late 1880s that also played at a variety of town events for a few years. One of the band’s evening events was held at Wormer’s Hall in Guilderland Center. The admission of 25 cents brought entertainment from the band as well as farces, clogs, song and dance, male quartets, and comic sketches.

After 1891, the Fullers band seemed to have disbanded.

Around this time, drum corps were organized in Guilderland Center, Dunnsville, the hamlet of Guilderland, and Altamont. For a few years, one or another participated with either the Knowersville Band or Fullers Band at Sunday school picnics or Memorial Day ceremonies.

After 1898, there was a lapse of several years when the Knowersville/Altamont Band’s name disappeared from the Enterprise’s pages until 1908 brought about a revival of the village’s band, remaining active until 1918 when it was no longer mentioned.

The band’s performances must have been a rousing success, both in Guilderland and nearby communities where they performed at events as varied as the Altamont baseball team’s season opener, political rallies for either party, marching in parades, the cornerstone laying of Noah Lodge’s new Masonic Temple, at benefit events for churches and temperance organizations, Sunday school picnics, a Hose Company entertainment and for their field day and picnic.

 

Village orchestra

The year 1885 saw the formation of an orchestra in Altamont, which began with 10 members. A Fourth of July concert brought 600 people to the Reformed Church to listen to the choir, a vocal quartet, and the Knowersville orchestra.

That same month, when the temperance group Triumph Lodge took a cruise on the Steamer “Lotta,” the orchestra supplied the music. During the next few years, performances were few until in 1889 an announcement appeared that the orchestra, which had been reorganized with an additional violinist, was holding frequent rehearsals.

In 1890 and 1891, the Library Association’s dramatic performances of “Placer Gold” and “Laura the Pauper” included the orchestra providing the music. The last mention of the original orchestra appeared in 1897.

Revived in 1911, the new orchestra’s first public performance was at the Voorheesville Odd Fellows Fair where “the numbers were played with spirit.” Most of their performances between 1911 and 1917 were playing for dances, often outside of Guilderland.

 

Musical Association

An ambitious undertaking was the formation of Altamont’s Musical Association in 1895. Within a year, the association combined with the Altamont Orchestra for a concert at the Reformed church, although shortly after they faced disbanding because of “indifference.”

After a period of inactivity, 1898 brought new projects beginning with a rehearsal of the “Peasant Wedding March.” During the winter months, the Musical Association brought in outside, more professional talent to perform, among them the Capital City Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar Club.

The association was complemented by The Enterprise “for the amount of variety and general excellence of the entertainment we are enjoying this winter which are furnished at an exceedingly low price.” A year later, the group put on an elaborate comic opera, though it was made clear that half of “Princess Bonnie” was in dialogue.

The year 1900 brought “Merry Milkmaids” followed by “Pauline” in 1901. By 1902, the group no longer seemed to be mentioned.

In 1900, Altamont’s newly formed Mandolin and Guitar Club made its debut at the musical association’s costume production “The Merry Milkmaids.” After the performance, it was judged “they did exceptionally well.” The group played at church bazaars and gave occasional concerts for the next few years.

 

Music at home

While formal musical groups were not as much a feature of life in other Guilderland communities during these years, music had become a popular pastime at home with the popularity of affordable upright pianos and small pump organs. Schenectady and Albany music stores advertised instruments for sale in The Enterprise while local columns often reported the names of proud new owners of pianos and organs in various parts of town.

However, a music revolution had begun with the invention of the phonograph. Already in 1890, Wm. Keenholts was working as an agent for Edison’s phonograph.

Back in the village for a visit, he gave demonstrations of “the marvel of the age” in Altamont, Guilderland Center, and the hamlet of Guilderland. This was probably the first time most local folks had ever heard the sound of a full orchestra or an opera singer.

This represented the beginning of American’s opportunity to hear professionally rendered music of their own choosing at their own convenience. Soon local columns listed the names of lucky new owners of phonographs.

While the coming of radio also brought a choice of endless professional musical performances, amateurs  continued to perform in churches and schools and local musical groups. Today’s listeners are no longer limited to listening to live music, but have an endless choice our ancestors couldn’t have imagined.

 

Post date: 
January 1, 2021

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