Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Just the other night, my wife and I went out to hear some live music. We went to the Sportsmen’s Tavern for Robot Holiday, which is a loosely-formed group of local musicians who put out Christmas songs every year and give them away for free on their website. Jonathan Hughes has been doing this for ten years and each year, the list of contributors gets bigger. For the first time this year, they got together for a live show. It was great.

As we left, someone at the door was passing out sample CDs from Scott Celani, The Corrections and The Filter Kings. It was an EP and a couple of the songs on it were Christmas songs. I remembered that those groups had a show at the Tralf recently and said so to my wife. She said, “Is the Tralf still around? I haven’t heard much about it lately.” Of course it is, but I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the shows there of late. Continue Reading…

One of the shows I have been DVR-ing and watching pretty regularly is CBS’s Undercover Boss.

The first show I saw had so much promise. It was the episode featuring a CEO of Hooters. When he found a manager who was mistreating his female employees, and exposed him for the misogynist he was, I thought the show had a future. Besides the fact that I would have dropped my cover and fired him on the spot, if I was the boss, it looked like the show would be interesting.

But ever since, it has gone downhill. I just don’t get much out of watching it anymore. Here’s why: Continue Reading…

Once again, NY State and the Seneca Nation seem to be headed towards a conflict over collecting taxes on sales made on the reservation. I don’t know who’s right here, I can see both sides and don’t see a mutually agreeable way out.

I have the utmost respect for the Native American culture and beliefs. Unfortunately, I don’t see where exploiting a situation where certain commodities prices have become high, in part due to taxes, should be exploited for the profit of a few Native Americans. That’s not what we should learn from their culture. Maybe it’s what they’ve learned from ours…

And just what is a “Native American” anymore, anyway? I was born here. My parents were too. So were my Grandparents. I don’t know how many generations I would have to go back to actually find an ancestor from Europe. Am I as much a “Native American” as some blonde-haired, blue-eyed person who has a Great-great-grandmother that was born on a reservation? Continue Reading…

Friday, was a georgeous day, cool – in the 70’s – and low humidity. It was sunny with nice, fluffy clouds in the sky, so I took off on my trike for a longer ride. I didn’t know where to go, so I just headed out the canal towpath to the East.

I ended up riding to Middleport and stopped for lunch at a diner there next to the canal. I’d been there before, on one of the bike club centuries I rode a few years ago. It’s always a convenient place to stop. Continue Reading…