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October 4, 2026

WHAT?

Apparently WHAT? is the theme of this week’s Sunday Stealing! Let’s get at it:

1. What are you currently excited about?

Currently? Well, I’m making the first pot of Buffalo Chicken Soup for the season today, and we’re going to the Buffalo AKG Museum later on! (Pro tip: visiting our local museums and cultural institutions on Bills game days makes for a lovely experience.)

2. What do you wish you had more time for?

Photography and writing.

3. What would like to do less?

Things that aren’t photography and writing! Seriously, though…I gotta admit, I’m pretty much over the 5-day, 40-hour work week. Sadly I have reached this point probably a full ten years before I can feasibly abandon the 5-day, 40-hour work week.

4. What do you spend too much money on?

Food, camera stuff, books, poofy Renfest shirts, and overalls.

5. What childhood wish never came true?

Well, I was never a professional trumpet player or orchestra conductor. Those aren’t happening. Nor have I become a pro writer, though that one still has life to it! Photography was never a childhood wish, but that’s the closest to coming true, which is interesting…don’t sleep on the dreams you develop later in life, folks!

(Oh, and I still want, but honestly am unlikely to get, that Big Trak I wanted when I was 9. At this point I’m happy to let that dream be a pleasant “what if”. Yeah, I could still get one–I’ve just looked and there are a bunch on eBay–but I honestly don’t know what I’d do with it at this point other than say, “Look, I finally have it.” And Lord knows, I am perfectly willing to make “Look, I finally have it!” be my main motivation for buying things!)

6. What did you do to celebrate your last birthday?

This year, for what I think is the first time since we started going there, the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival actually aligned with my birthday! I might be wrong here, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually been in Ithaca on my birthday. And it was a fantastic day. I haven’t started editing those photos yet.

7. What drives you nuts?

Right now, just because it’s fresh on my mind, people who make an adversarial response to any mild opinion you might offer. Last night I posted my opinion that while I do love the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, from the standpoint of appreciating the Falls as a natural wonder, I prefer the American side for various reasons. This drew a number of pithy replies. Come on, people. “X is awesome, but I do like Y a little more!” is not a pistols-at-dawn kind of thing.

8. What keeps you sane?

Ignoring the world as much as possible.

9. What historic date is etched in your memory?

An incomplete list:
–7/4/1776
–11/11/1914
–12/7/1941
–11/22/1963
–5/25/1977
–1/28/1986
–9/11/2001
–10/7/2023

There are also a lot of events I know by year, but not by specific date: 476AD (final fall of the Roman Empire), 1066 (Battle of Hastings), 1453 (fall of the Byzantine empire), 1685 and 1750 (birth and death of JS Bach), 1756 and 1791 (birth and death of WA Mozart), 1775-1783 (American Revolution), 1789-1797 (George Washington’s term of office as President), 1770 and 1827 (birth and death of LW Beethoven), 1803 and 1869 (birth and death of Hector Berlioz), 1861-1865 (American Civil War), 1898 (Spanish-American War), 1901 (President McKinley assassinated in Buffalo), 1914-1918 (WWI), 1939-1945 (WWII).

Also, birth dates of loved ones: 7/17/1939, 8/3/1941, 5/30/1965, 2/25/1970, and 6/19/1999.

10. What one thing would make your life immeasurably better?

All else being equal? More money.

But other options include: robust public transportation in my area (we have OK public transportation), single-payer healthcare, a shorter work week, and the end of MAGA.

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October 3, 2026

A civil response?

I supported the death penalty when I was a teenager, but I stopped during my senior year. I remember my parents discussing it on occasion; my mother supported it while my father did not. My stance was pro-capital punishment, initially. But then two things happened that pushed me into the “anti” camp, and for the most part, that’s where I’ve remained.

The first thing was one day my physics teacher, Mr. Eaton, talked about it. Mr. Eaton was a fun guy and he knew his physics, but he also tended to go off-topic in his classes. Like, wildly off topic. He’d veer into stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with physics. (This made his wild dash to cover required material toward the end of the year when time was running out…interesting.) So one day he talks about the death penalty and how he doesn’t support it, and the main point of his that I remember is pretty obvious now, but I hadn’t considered it then: “Does anybody really think,” he mused, “that our criminal justice system actually gets the right person one hundred percent of the time?” The point was that there is no way we’re not incarcerating innocent people…and it follows that in a country with capital punishment, there is also no way we’re not executing innocent people.

That should be a deal-breaker, right there. But I have heard people shrug at even that point, saying that executing the occasional innocent person is a price they’re willing to pay. Often times they’ll couple that creepy point with an even creepier observation that the “innocent” person is probably not a good person, and they’re probably guilty of something. When you couple this creepy logic with the simple fact that capital punishment in America–and honestly, punishment in general, of any kind–is wildly tilted against people of a certain skin tone, well, the whole “I’m sure they’re guilty of something” logic crystalizes as something else.

(By the way, where I lived was a very conservative area–still is, actually, and there are many parts of New York State that are as red as any Alabama county you might name–and I remember that day listening to multiple 16-and-17-year-old classmates saying “I don’t want my tax dollars going to keep some murderer alive!” And I was thinking, “Dude, we’re teenagers, we’re not paying taxes yet.” Obviously they were getting this from their parents. Suffice it to say that rhetoric along the lines of “My tax dollars!” isn’t convincing, applied to positions on either side.)

The other thing that happened during my senior year was the execution of Ted Bundy. Now, if you made a list of the Top Ten Human Beings Of All Time Who Deserved The Death Penalty, there’s a pretty good chance Ted Bundy makes the cut. That’s how purely evil the man was.

But I remember watching news footage of his actual execution and noticing something disturbing. There were people at the prison gates and along the road to the prison, hundreds of them. Way more than could ever have been actually personally affected by Bundy’s crimes, as prolific as he was. And they were cheering and hooting and hollering and holding up homemade signs like at a football game: FRY BUNDY FRY!!! and BARBECUE TED!!! (The execution method was the electric chair.) There was dancing and fireworks, and the finale of the celebration came with cheering the departure of the hearse with Bundy’s body aboard.

They were having a tailgate party for the execution of a serial killer.

I couldn’t support capital punishment after that. Turning it into an occasion for vocalizing societal bloodlust did not sit well with me then, and it doesn’t sit well with me now. I cannot get there. And this has all been brought home over the last few days, following a botched execution of a Tennessee woman who also committed a jaw-droppingly horrible crime. I guess I still want to believe in the idea that we’re better than our worst criminals, and that our treatment of them needs to reflect who we are, and not who they are. Unfortunately, a lot of the time our treatment of our worst criminals actually does reflect who we are, and I think that’s something we should think about more.

Ultimately, my final reason for not supporting the death penalty is that time and time again I have seen that, as a response to the actions of the worst of us, executions do not bring out the best of us.

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October 2, 2026

Competitive…what, now?

How does the judging work in this sport?

Actually, on second thought, don’t tell me.

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October 1, 2026October 1, 2026

Test….

This is a test. Something weird happened with the publishing of today’s Something for Thursday post, and I’m making sure it was a weird one-off.

OK, it appears to have been a weird one-off. I wrote the Something for Thursday post yesterday and then went to publish it this morning, but for some reason WordPress noted that the date had changed but still published under yesterday’s month…so instead of appearing as a 10-1-26 post, it showed up as a 9-1-26 post. Which is better than what I thought had happened! I thought the post had just disappeared. Once I figured that out it was easy to change the date and fix it.

It’s strange to me how weirdly clunky blog mechanics are starting to get….

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October 1, 2026October 1, 2026

Something for Thursday

Many years ago, when I was but a “yoot” and I was taking piano lessons, my teacher–a lovely old lady named Margaret Hooker–invited me, along with several other students, to go see a piano duet that was making the rounds. I don’t remember their names, sadly; I’d like to look them up, but I have no idea where I’d ever start to try to look. They played on two gigantic Boesendorfer pianos that weren’t content to stand with 88 keys; no, these monsters had 92 keys. The new ones were way down at the left end, at the very bottom of the register, and they were all four colored black so as to help the pianists maintain their place. That was a fascinating concert: two pianists sitting across from each other and maintaining the ensemble nature of their music.

Not all piano music for four hands requires two pianos, though! Oftentimes the work puts both pianists behind the same keyboard, so the entire work is executed from a single instrument. This always looks like a fraught process to me: how do the two manage to never cross their hands or stray? Or, what if some composer perversely writes the work so they have to?

I suppose ultimately it’s just one of those things that the good ones just know how to do. Four-hand piano music always sounds…well, four-handed, I guess. What I mean is that it’s clearly only a piano, or maybe two pianos, that you’re hearing…but the work is still somehow larger, more sonorous, with that extra playing going on.

I heard this work yesterday while I was driving around on the last day of my autumn vacation. It’s a suite of six short piano duet pieces by Gabriel Faure, called the Dolly Suite. “Dolly” was the nickname Faure used for the daughter of one of his mistresses. The work is pleasantly urbane and even a bit innocent, with an exuberant dance in the finale.

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September 29, 2026

Tuesday Tones (autumn music)

Here we have a student piece written by a young composer, when he was only 19 years of age. But not just any composer: it’s 20th century Russian great Sergei Prokofiev.

Prokofiev is, I admit, something of a tough nut for me. I don’t always respond readily to his music, for one reason or another. But this piece grabbed me immediately, perhaps because it is to my ears a fascinating blend of lyric Romanticism and of atmospheric Impressionism. I hear a wild melding of Tchaikovsky and Ravel here, and that is absolutely amazing to me. This work is called a “sketch”, and it is just that: a piece written by a student composer to explore some aspect of composition. In this case, I imagine it was to explore orchestral color and mood, and the mood is definitely dark and autumnal, in my ears.

Here is “Autumnal Sketch” by Sergei Prokofiev.

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September 28, 2026

Sammy Hagar cannot drive my age!

Fifty-five is kind of a strange number, isn’t it? It feels significant, but I’m damned if I can figure out why. It’s not halfway to anything in particular. Maybe it’s lingering from 55 being the upper speed limit on American roads for many years…and really, how did they choose that number, anyway? Why 55? Why not 50, or 60? How did they land on 55? It gave Mr. Hagar a nice rhyme for his classic song, sure…but I don’t know why 55 other than that. (Maybe if I actually looked it up, there’s a good reason.)

Anyway, I’ve just turned fifty-five. Here’s what that looks like:

I’m grayer in the hair and beard now, and the hair is thinning a bit up top and in back. I’m of mixed mind if I should attempt doing anything about this, maybe I’ll ask my doctor next time I’m in for a visit, I know there are treatments and whatnot but I’m not sure if I care enough to the point of spending actual money on it. Weight-wise, I’ve continued my long trajectory of being down, but very slowly: I seem to be another pound or two lighter every time I see the doctor, which at this rate is about 3-4 pounds of weight loss a year. I can live with this.

And of course, there are the normal aches and weird stuff that goes along with this age…getting down on the floor remains as easy as ever, but getting back up off it requires a bit more muscular investment than I’m used to. A few weeks ago I also went in for a diagnostic medical procedure that I was actually overdue to have done, but I suppose the less said about that, the better. (All is well, nothing was found that was bad, I don’t have to do that again for a few years, and let’s just say that preparing for this particular procedure was another data point in my longing for Star Trek medical tech where Dr. McCoy or Crusher or Bashir can just wave a doo-dad over your body and diagnose everything you got goin’ on, right then and there.)

I do note increasingly this disconnect between how old I mentally feel with how old I physically look and how old I’m socially seen. I don’t wanna be the Old Dude quite yet! But alas, I can’t control time, can I?

Anyway, yeah, here I am, 55 and aging nicely for now. And with that, I’m off to try to tidy up my library and finish laundry and–HEY! Get off my lawn, ya buncha hooligans!!!

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September 27, 2026

Sunday Stealing!!!

OK, here we go! We just got back from our annual trip to Ithaca for Apple Fest, and I also just turned another year older, so I’ll get back in the swing with this, a Quiz.

1. If you were trapped in a TV universe for a month, what TV show would you choose?

If I had to actually live in a teevee universe for a month? Am I actually hobnobbing with the cast, or am I just some Joe Schmo living there? Normally I’d take an easy way here with Star Trek, but I think instead I’ll go with the setting of a very new show that I’ve been enjoying a great deal since it launched last season: Port Wenn, the fictional Maine coastal town of Best Medicine. If you haven’t seen it, in the show a city doctor who is very buttoned-up goes to live in this little New England town full of quirky residents. Think House MD meets Newhart.

2. What song instantly revs you up and gets you going?

Oooof, I don’t know about a song that fires me up…but “Dreams” by Van Halen can, and has, neutralized many a bad mood I’ve been in. Also, “Human” by The Killers is a nice song to play during the home-from-work drive; I like making the transition from being annoyed at work to being happy at home.

In college, my roommate and I would blast the last movement of Saint-Saens’s Third Symphony, the “Organ” Symphony, while we dressed for band or orchestra concerts. That was always fun.

3. Are you decorating your home for fall?

Not really. I always feel like I should do more seasonal decorating, but it never really happens.

4. How do you treat a cold?

Rest and lots of fluids. Green tea with honey, soup, and a lot of water. My goal is to drown that virus and flush it out of me.

5. What insignificant thing would you be genuinely annoyed if you lost it or it was taken from you?

Well, we recently broke one of the glass bottles we use for maple syrup, and that’s been on my mind for replacement now. I had bought a bottle of syrup years ago in the shape of a snowflake, and we have been rinsing and refilling it for years (along with a few others) from the big quart or, more recently, half-gallon jugs of maple syrup that we buy at farmers markets and the like. That bottle broke during washing a month or two ago. Bummer!

6. What place do you remember vividly, even though you haven’t been there in years?

Maybe next year I’ll drive the 60 miles or so to Allegany and Olean, NY to see how things have changed in the towns I grew up. I have visited neither since 2014, when I helped my parents move for the last time.

7. Do you have a favorite Dolly Parton song or story?

Song? “Hard Candy Christmas”, which I’m sure will be featured this coming Holiday season here during the Daily Dose. Story? I love that she knew that owning the rights to her own songs was important, so she declined to let Elvis Presley record “I Will Always Love You” because he required ownership of any song he did. I also love that someone asked her about the fact that a lot of people think she’s a “dumb blonde”, and she replied, “Whatever, I know I’m not dumb and I’m not blonde.” I don’t know how true this is, but I remember reading that Parton would go out with her husband and be totally unrecognizable because she would eschew makeup and any wig.

OK, that’s all, I got more unpacking to do. Moving on!

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September 24, 2026

Something for Thursday

It’s FALL, y’all! So here’s a fall song. No, the leaves aren’t turning yet, except for a single tree here and there where the color is starting to nibble around the edges…but Nat King Cole is never really out of season, is he?