One Life-Lesson you oughta know by now: change is inevitable.
I keep bumping into these interesting PBS shows - last night there was one that aired locally on Analog 17 - all about
"Teenarama" which was
one of a dozen or so local-TV teen dance programs (Think "Corny Collins" from the original wonderful
Hairspray movie starring
Ricki Lake, Divine and Debbie Harry) that were popular (think "Social Networking") during the 1960s. (Aside: as always, in behind-the-curve Albany, the only teen TV program produced locally was the ultra-lame
"Teen Age Barn" *yawn* which aired weekly - where the kids were the kind Mom & Dad wanted them to be - think "Lawrence Welk" crossed with "Hootenanny") The Teen dance programs usually aired Monday-thru-Friday after school and were tops in their time slots in Baltimore and Washington. Over in Philadelphia, American Bandstand was in its heyday: ABC network broke AB up into 15 minute segments that gave not only ABC but other network affiliates and independents the opportunity to run the show, even if just for a quarter of an hour! The defining line that ran thru AB, Teenarama, etc., (and this was brought out by one of the former Teenarama 'regulars') was that the boys and girls who danced on the tube wore their 'Sunday best' - suits, ties, beautiful dresses, showing viewers that while they can still dance and have fun, these young women and men were serious about and ready for the responsibilities that come with adulthood.
I've gotten several emails from readers wanting to know why I haven't written anything about NY State Senator Joe Bruno. I believe the political bloggers, especially Liz Benjamin (linked in my sidebar), handle these types of stories the best. But after watching that "Teenarama" show I realized Joe Bruno has always been one of those 'regular' guys who shows you that he can dance and have fun but he is serious and ready when it comes to dealing with the responsibilities that come with political office. He decided to move on and make a change, the same way time itself moved on past the kids who attended and watched the dance shows. Keep marching forward. The Teenarama teens have. Joe Bruno is. Come what may.
Earlier this year, in a
New York Magazine article entitled "The Un-Reformed," then-State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno quotes poetry. Bruno personifies character. NYmag has an excellent spread on Bruno, who represents a model that faces political extinction right now. It's a great article! Here's a snippet:
His first job was at a bakery. He carried trays of pastries to the factory workers for their morning shifts. His pay was what they didn’t eat. In school, he was a failure. “They sort of kicked me along, you know? I told Sister Rose Madeline I wanted to be an altar boy. She laughed at me. Nothing worse. She said, ‘He’s too dumb.’ ” On summer afternoons, he learned to box. A middleweight met him in the park. “He’d get down on his knees and I’d circle around him and he’d wear out his pants circling on his knees. He taught me to punch straight and lead with your left. These kids that used to bloody my nose, I kicked the shit out of them.”
That’s about the time he met Barbara—known as Bobbie. He was 14. She was 13. They met one night at the YMCA, playing Ping-Pong. This was 1947, and Bruno’s job was driving an ice truck. Her father was a surgeon and chief of staff at the hospital, and didn’t approve of him. “Her father said the only way he’d agree to our getting married was if I would live there while I was in college.” He enrolled in Siena College and drove the ice truck to class.
"I bleed. I rise. I fight again." There are words very like the ones Joe Bruno likes to quote in a very old, very long ballad called 'Sir Andrew Barton': ‘Fight on, my men!’ says Sir Andrew Barton, ‘I am hurt, but I am not slain; I’le lay me downe and bleed a-while, And then I’le rise and fight again. The quote is verse LXIV; the whole thing can be seen online in the Oxford Book of Ballads on Bartleby.
The two lines "I'll lay me downe and bleed awhile,
Then I'll rise and fight again" were also used as a refrain in the poem 'Alastair Buchan', written by the author John Buchan in memory of his brother killed in the First World war.
Text may be read
here and also in The Oxford Book of Ballads (OUP, 1969), The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World (Viking, 1956), and English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Houghton Mifflin, 1932).
By the way : I think NYmag's timeline is off... it is 2008, Bruno is more like 79, which would have made him 18 or 19 in 1947... comments, anyone?
Tags: Joe Bruno, Joe Bruno, Teenarama, Teenarama
RIP Michael Turner - Whitney Matheson remembers... The comic book artist passed after a long battle with cancer. Michael Turner was 37.
Some rather interesting art on the 
