February 2010 Archives

2007 recital 219, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

From a couple of years back. I'm resorting to a photograph today because, believe it or not, untangling the history of billiard ball manufacture in Albany is more complicated than you might have thought.

Hoxsie!, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

From the Schenectady City Directory for 1862-63, my favorite image ever. Ever.

No, I don't know what it means. I don't want to know what it means. It is simply perfect just as it is.

Albany Rural Cemetery pond, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

This is the city of the dead
As we lie side by side in bed
I'd do something else instead
But it is the city of the dead

-- The Clash

• Classrooms no longer have wooden seats from before the Great War in which you desperately try to find a comfortable position after an hour's recitation on the Finnish Resistance, only to find that an entire side of your body has gone to sleep and you are involuntarily groaning as you rearrange limbs.
• We've seen professors eating in the student center. As if they existed outside the classroom. (This may be a trick played on prospective students.)
• Pools and fitness centers at every campus are more beautiful than the Taj Mahal. (Ours was more like descending into the Grotto of Eternal Dank.)
• The curriculum is back! Some courses are actually required, Eurocentric or not! (So take that, dead-white-men-hating hippies!)
• At most schools, arts classes are no longer limited to arts majors. The technical schools even encourage that you use that other side of your brain now and then, and practice rooms are not reserved exclusively for music majors. (In fact, some dorms have rooms for schlep-free practicing).
• There is coffee everywhere. This is a major and welcome change. In my day, there were two places on the Quad to get coffee, and it wasn't possible to get through either of them in the 10 minutes between classes.
• There is also food everywhere. Not sure if that's good or not, but it's certainly of a wider variety than we were offered. A bagel was considered exotic back then.
• Bicycles are everywhere. It warms my heart. (Helmets, not so much, but who needs a helmet in the city, right?)
• Colleges today actually care if you succeed. They even do things to make it happen. (So take that, student strike hippies!)
• They not only care if you succeed, they seem to want you to get out and get jobs.
• At the good schools,  job fairs attract real companies, the kind you hear mentioned on the stock report. At journalism school, our job fair attracted The Weekly Reader and Ranger Rick. And those were the good jobs.
• Those stores are only selling bongs because of the student interest in materials science that makes heat-resistant glass. I'm so sure. And the hemp advocates are only looking out for the working farmer.
• Unlike in my day, students are no longer limited to 10 hours of computer time per semester. I think that's probably a good thing.

Albany Newsies, 1910, by Lewis Wickes Hine, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

This photo by celebrated photographer Lewis Wickes Hine shows a group of newsies selling evenings in saloons and stores. It was taken in an alley in back of the City Jail at 10 P.M. Left to right: Dominick Mardilo, 28 1/2 Fulton Street; Roderick Towle, 44 Sheridan Ave.; William Towle, brother, 44 Sheridan Ave.; Louis Strasburg, 40 Mulberry Street; Max Erlich, 101 Dallius Street.

Lewis Wickes Hine was a sociology professor who used photography as a tool for reform; this picture and many others that preserve bits of Capital District and national history were taken for the National Child Labor Committee; Hine's work was some of the earliest documentary photography. His work helped bring about child labor laws but, more importantly to me, he preserved images of people and places that would otherwise never have been documented.

Four daily newspapers are captured here - the Evening Journal, the Times-Union, the Evening Sun, and the Evening Telegram. Although Albany probably had at least seven daily newspapers then, I think the Sun and the Telegram may have come upriver from New York City. If there's an afternoon newspaper alive today, I'm unaware of it; Albany's last, the Knickerbocker News-Union Star, died in 1988. Officially, it merged into the Times-Union, which had long since switched to morning production.  Lincoln's image is prominent because it was his birthday, then celebrated on his actual birthday, February 12, because the mattress sales interests hadn't yet gotten hold of Congress and merged Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays into a single day of weak remembrance.

There's more . . . .

Image by carljohnson via Flickr

• James A. Garfield never wore a tie. His assassination, often ascribed to a crazed anarchist, was in fact a calculated commission by the cravat cabal.
• William Howard Taft was the only William Howard Taft ever to become president.
• Franklin Pierce, although he came from New Hampshire, was the first future U.S. president to be born in the nineteenth century.
• Chester Alan Arthur, buried right here in Menands, despised Martin Van Buren for being buried right here in Kinderhook. He also never hugged his mother.
• Benjamin Franklin was the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States.
• Millard Fillmore ran a small tailoring shop in the East Wing of the White House to supplement his income and, as he put it, "to keep my hand in."
• James Buchanan, who allowed the Confederate secession and the loss of Federal arsenals, forts and troops, often referred to himself as "the worst president in history."
• Calvin Coolidge enjoyed riding with the top down.
• William Henry Harrison had no idea who "Tippecanoe" was, and John Tyler flatly refused to tell him.
• Although historians and academics rarely acknowledge it, both Washington and Lincoln traditionally bought new bedding on their birthdays. Combining their birhdays into a single Federal holiday was meant to put an end to the Mattress Wars and ease the consciences of loyal Americans who fretted over which president to honor with a new mattress purchase.
• There was no 24th president.

The oldest city in the United States, excepting St. Augustine, is Albany. As such, it claims the reverence, not only of every true-hearted Dutch-man, but of every member of the universal Yankee nation, which has no geographical limit this side of Saturn's rings. Until within a few years, Albany was, in every sense of the word, an old-fashioned town. The Present is still linked with the Past more inseparably here than in any other city in the State. To write of Albany, and disregard that conservative element which once admitted outsiders to a position in "good society," under this protest -

"Take, take the Yankees in,
   And end this fuss,
Or be assured, my Lords,
   They'll take in us!"

would be to present but a dry narrative of dates and directory of Public Buildings.

Ghost sign to be, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

This not-very-faded but definitely peeling image of a cyclist has been around at least since the 1980s; I'm pretty sure it was there when I moved to Albany at the end of the decade. I always thought it was a cool mural, even before my revived interest (read: absolute addiction) to cycling. it's on the wall of a building at Henry Johnson Boulevard and Washington Avenue that currently houses the Tru Images barber shop; perhaps there was a bike shop there once before, but memory fails me. I was pleased and surprised to happen across the mural recently and find that it was still there. The style actually suggests the '70s to me, and I'd love to know if anyone remembers when or why it was painted. The bike is oddly specific — it's a Colnago, easily identifiable by the cloverleaf logo.

Hudson River Ice Jan 2010, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

This is less about this fairly pedestrian picture than it is about my finally being able to blog my photos fairly easily from Flickr. Blogger didn't like to do it because I was using a custom template, and the code that was generated made a mess. Movable Type, not so picky. And man does it republish quickly. Kicking myself for not having done this before.