Archive » June 2020 » Columns

Thirteen months ago, The Enterprise published a column I’d dedicated to my mum on the occasion of Mother’s Day. And when I didn’t follow it up in June with a Father’s Day column, a reader emailed to express disappointment. “I hoped you might share some of your dad’s influence as well,” she wrote. 

It hadn’t even occurred to me to do so. Father’s Day always struck me as the obligatory counterpart to its May-based companion, and that’s how lots of Americans viewed the holiday throughout the first half of the 20th Century’s efforts to formally establish it. The parental roles are just eminently different in the recognition they warrant; motherhood is something to celebrate, while fatherhood is something to expect. Right?

That attitude probably derives from the language itself. After all, the infinitive verb “to mother” means “to nurture” and “care for,” while “to father” means, well, something else entirely. It’s that borderline unprintable definition unsuitable for a family newspaper that for most of recorded history encapsulated a father’s primary role. No wonder that so many, for so long, conceived of fatherhood as a duty to be performed rather than a sacrifice worthy of admiration.

But in observing the influence of my brothers-in-law on the development of my nieces and nephews over the past year, I’ve had occasion to reconsider my own dad’s role in my life. And on this Father’s Day, I’d like to reinterpret what “to father” means to my sisters and me.    

Because it’s probably most accurate to say that “to father” is to make the world’s best sandwiches, and its best soups, from what you’ve grown in its best garden. It means building your kids a tree fort that operates as both a castle and a pirate ship, and then telling tall tales of the heroes who sword fight on its ramparts and rafters.

It’s to inexhaustibly demand that your children turn off the lights, turn down the thermostat, and turn the other cheek in the face of schoolyard bullies. But it also means telling your 10-year-old son to toughen up, to “mentally adjust yourself,” and to “put up your dukes” when there are no cheeks left to turn.

“To father” means racing home from work and changing into the team jersey so you can coach your son’s Kiwanis sports teams, even when he isn’t any good on baseball or soccer fields — just as it means taking it in stride when he knocks out your front tooth in a notorious wrestling match because his proper place is on the mats.

It means sitting with your 6-year-old son on the first day of summer camp when he’s shy to the point of terror, telling him it’s OK to cry, and waiting with him while he does. And it means intuiting when it’s time to leave after you drop him off at college 12 years later, as the confidence you’ve instilled in him over the intervening decade fuels him forth into a new social unknown without even a backwards glance.

Recently, I asked my sisters what “to father” meant to them. Ever the narcissist, I was surprised to learn about all the custom-tailored parenting of which I’d been oblivious. For example, it turns out that “to father” means holding your daughter’s hand and squeezing it three times to silently say “I love you” when she’s a sad little 5-year-old. And it means editing her work product 29 years later when, at 34, she still asks for feedback before a big presentation. 

“To father” means helping your daughter calm her debilitating childhood migraines with gentle visualization exercises, and coaxing her through panic attacks by massaging her back and asking her to describe which birds she hears singing until the calm returns. It means teaching your daughters the “Girl Power!” rallying cry, and supporting them in becoming archaeologists, lawyers, doctors, and eventually mothers. Then, when life doesn’t go according to plan, “to father” means reaching out to catch your daughter when her dreams fall apart and life crashes down all around her.  

“When I felt stupid in math, Dad told me it was OK to be smart about other things,” Caitlin told me. “He introduced me to an entire library of philosophy, history, and English, all of which shaped my understanding of the cosmos.”

“He supported my decision to go to law school and encouraged me to stick with it when I questioned why I went,” Robin said. “He’s my biggest champion and best friend. He loves my baby girls and protects them so fiercely.” 

“Mom made the idea of becoming a doctor attainable,” Brenna wrote me, “but Dad was my motivation for being the best at it. He’s proof that, if you dedicate yourself to making the world around you just a teeny bit better, you can find the space to be your weird little self.” Word. 

There are other definitions of “to father” that bespeak phenomena of which my sisters and I were once unaware amidst the illusion of safety and stability that Dad so fervently guarded. He might not even realize that my sisters and I know that “to father” means having always dreamt of opening a little bookstore in Vermont, only to wake up one day to realize that you’re sharing a home with four babies under the age of 6, and thus dutifully trudging through three decades of 60-hour workweeks driven by a frantic desperation to provide for your kids.

He may not be aware that my sisters and I know that “to father” is to lie awake in bed after you’ve lost your job and don’t know how you’ll ever support that family of six, only to take a monumental risk — and ultimately build a thriving business which now, in turn, supports the livelihoods of coworkers he regards as his second family.

But, at its core, “to father” probably most closely means “to teach” — to teach your children how to laugh at themselves and enjoy life’s inexorable nonsense. It’s to teach them how to fire a gun, to chop firewood, and to shake hands like you mean it. “To father” is to teach your son how to ride a bike, and then some years later how to drive a car — twice equipping him with the freedom to set out on his own even when Mom wants to keep her baby right at home.  

An aside: Soon after I learned to drive, I deemed it my duty as a big brother to pass that precious knowledge onto my 12-year-old sister. Taking advantage of our rural backcountry roads and a late afternoon when Mom and Dad were nowhere to be found, I adjusted the driver’s seat so Brenna’s tiny legs could reach the pedals. Her command of the clutch was impressively innate.  But as she piloted us back into the driveway, we realized we’d been caught. There was Dad, at the fence, watching his pre-adolescent daughter shift into neutral. From shotgun, I pulled the emergency brake and prepared to face the music. We took a deep breath and, exiting the car, confronted Dad’s raised eyebrow.

“I’m not sure your mom would approve of that,” he said, clearly unsure of what proper parenting protocol now dictated. Then he walked off, and my sister and I were silent. She turned to me.  “Ever get the sense that Dad’s just winging it?” she asked.

Yup. All the time. You know who else did? Dad. As we were growing up, he would so often proclaim, “I have no idea what I’m doing” that it practically became his battle cry, accompanied as it was by helpless flailing whenever Mom’s out-of-town trips stranded him with the kids. Yet it was in those moments that Dad bequeathed unto us the ancient arts of subversion and stealth, as together we would all seditiously devour illicit sugar cereals and the contraband Nintendo gaming system he rented from Blockbuster. 

Because Dad was skeptical of any authority, even his own. That’s an ethos he wears on his shoulders (literally, as his fiery red shoulder-length mane enters its fifth unabashed decade). And while “mothering” may entail imparting unparalleled literary skills through a robust regime of bedtime stories, “fathering” is to spin your children into a frenzy of giggles by taking extreme artistic license with the children’s books you deem in need of narrator intervention. Where else does a child develop the absurdist sense of humor necessary to endure life’s unrelenting tragedies? 

My father’s politics were the most unique and defining aspect of his parenthood. Seemingly divergent perspectives weren’t contradictory — they were just Dad. For example, he viewed paying taxes as the highest of patriotic privileges, but was leery of a strong central government.  He believed the posted speed limit was sacrosanct, but that the proper scheduling of certain controlled substances was up for debate.

He taught my sisters and me to honor the police, despite a worldview forged by the civil rights movement. He’s been an avowed conscientious objector since his Vietnam-era antiwar activism, but was never prouder of me than when I commissioned in the Army. He staunchly supported Obamacare, but largely out of a principled conservative ethos that everyone should have to pay their fair share (“why should I foot the ER bill for someone too irresponsible to carry health insurance?”). Vegetarianism was his core moral philosophy, and something he made cool before it was cool.  

While it’s true that whatever intellect I possess is likely an inheritance from my mother, it’s the charm, wit, and work ethic I get from Dad that ever gave it any agency. Yet despite his limitless charisma, he’s always been intensely private. Which is why the accompanying photo prominently featuring his nipple likely embarrasses him, as did my school suspensions and adolescent run-ins with law enforcement. Have I mentioned that “to father” is to forgive?

Of the many undeserved societal privileges that Providence afforded me, the most fundamental was that my dad was always around. I never had to question it. He might’ve worked long hours and on weekends, yet somehow, even now, Dad’s always just there.

Morbid though it may be, I often contemplate life when he’s gone. Like, even as a child, I knew that Dad just didn’t have a sufficiently refined taste for macaroni art; only Mom could properly appreciate the nuanced subtlety of finger-paintings worthy of the fridge. But nowadays, I can’t help but wonder: If Dad isn’t around to witness all that he’s set me up to accomplish, what’s the point? 

I guess the answer can be divined from yet another definition: “To father” is to instill in your kids a robust ethical framework that guides them long after you’re gone. And though Dad has never cared much about legacy, being a legacy of which he’d be proud is one way to ensure he remains forever present in my life.   

In the last half-decade, the phrase “to father” has taken on a new connotation — expanding to encompass what it means “to grandfather.” Yet notwithstanding that evolution, there’s one meaning that remains the same as it ever was: “To father” is to be my single biggest inspiration for who and what I am. 

Despite my dad’s nearly infinite supply of daily mistakes, perhaps one reason I’ve shied away from having kids myself is the fact that I couldn’t possibly be half the father my father was. No child deserves anything less. So Happy Father’s Day, Deano. Thanks for literally everything.

Captain Jesse Sommer is a lifelong resident of Albany County, currently deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He welcomes your thoughts at .

Whenever I get to Manhattan, I try to make time to visit the Strand Bookstore on Broadway and 12th Street. It’s a large, grand, multi-story (there’s a pun) stone building right on the corner with “Four Miles of Used Books” proudly proclaimed on a big sign. The Strand sells new and used books, but it specializes in buying out entire collections from estates. If you love books, there’s no better place to be.

You would think the Strand would have all kinds of books, and you’d be right. Name the genre and the Strand has it. There is even one whole floor dedicated to glossy picture books with archival-type photographs on every subject imaginable. The skilled use of a camera can of course be artistic. I’ve never seen so many of these truly beautiful “coffee table” kinds of books in one place before. The Strand really does have everything.

Here’s the thing, though: As many times as I’ve been to the Strand, I’ve never — not even once — found a book by Kurt Vonnegut there. Isn’t that curious? He had a long and noteworthy career, and he sold a ton of books. How could it be that his books are never available in one of the largest bookstores in the country?

Based on my own experience, it’s this: Those of us who are Kurt Vonnegut fans are so devoted to him we could never give up our copies. To true Vonnegut fans like me his books are sacred. I’ll bet when an estate comes in that contains Vonnegut books at the Strand, they are greedily snapped up by his many rabid fans. So that must be why I’ve never seen his books there.

Kurt Vonnegut has many local connections. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, he attended Cornell University, served in the Army, studied engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and worked at General Electric in Schenectady (a lot of “Player Piano,” his first novel, is based on his experience at GE), and lived for a long time in both Cape Cod and Manhattan.

The defining event of his life came when, as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during World War II, he survived the firebombing of the city by the allies. This seminal event, along with the negative effects of technology and the loss of jobs it creates, would affect his worldview and influence his writing for his entire career.

Many people classify Vonnegut’s writing style as “gallows humor.” I never had that opinion myself. However, the Guilderland Public Library has been closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced me to re-read many of my own books.

At one point, I read five Kurt Vonnegut books in a row — “Jailbird,” “Deadeye Dick,” “Galapagos,” “Bluebeard,” and “Hocus Pocus.” After doing that, I have to say, I had to stop reading his books and switch to something else.

Between these five books and the pandemic and the protests over the horrific George Floyd killing by the police in Minneapolis, it was just too much, let’s put it this way, pessimism. Even though Vonnegut is my favorite author, there’s only so much stark reality — even when it’s framed in brilliant social commentary — one can take.

You’ve never read Vonnegut? His writing can be described as a sardonically witty critique of the human condition. So much of the “phoniness,” (to borrow from Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s seminal “Catcher in the Rye”) of modern society: doublespeak in politics and advertising, materialistic behavior, the military-industrial complex, racism, wealth inequality, and more are all fair game for Vonnegut’s caustic wit.

To put it bluntly, he just nails all the hypocrisy of Western civilization over and over. That’s why he’s so great. His work still stands up so well because people never change.

It’s interesting to note that many have tried to bring Vonnegut to the big and small screens, but for some reason it never works. There were a few TV specials with some adaptations of his short stories that were so-so.

Apparently there was a movie made of his blockbuster “Slaughterhouse Five,” but I never saw it, and I’m not alone because it was a box-office flop. The movie of his that I did see was based on my favorite Vonnegut book, “Breakfast of Champions.” It was so bad, and so poorly written and acted, that one wonders if the producers even read the original book.

Sad, but it just reinforces the point that Vonnegut is best experienced the old-fashioned way: read alone by a single person. When you do it that way, the many fruits of the experience can be contemplated and enjoyed in perpetuity.

“Breakfast of Champions” is not considered to be one of Vonnegut's better books, and yet it’s my favorite by far. In it, recurring character Kilgore Trout, the failed science-fiction writer, takes a journey to an art convention.

Vonnegut uses the trip and the art convention to skewer just about everything and everyone in modern American society perfectly, which is why I still read this book at least twice a year and literally have to force myself to not read it more often (life is too short to keep reading the same book over and over again, no matter how good it is).

If you’ve ever wondered about why advertising is so bad, and why so much modern art is just, er, nothing, and why achieving material success often leaves you wanting, and how companies can dump toxic waste in our rivers, and how we have one face in public and one face in private, and, and, and — you get the idea. “Breakfast of Champions” has all this and Vonnegut’s own child-like drawings to boot. I just can’t get enough of it.

Though Vonnegut was a noted atheist and humanist, he cites the Bible in many of his stories, demonstrating a complex understanding and interpretation of the holy book. Clearly, like many of us, he struggled with how the simple messages of Jesus Christ — including love your neighbor, and let he without sin first cast a stone — could become so perverted by so many and used as justification for all kinds of atrocities.

It’s not an easy topic, and I admire him for making it a central theme in his writing. Thinking about something is the first step to trying to make it better.

In one of my college English courses, we had to pick out an author and write a 25-page research paper, analyzing his life and one of his books. Even at that time, the mid to late 1980s, I had already voraciously read all of Vonnegut’s books that were published up to then, so naturally that’s who I wanted to write about.

My professor, unfortunately, had other ideas: He claimed Vonnegut hadn’t been around long enough to have lots of literary criticism to draw on for my research. Huh? I didn’t agree then and don’t agree now, but he was the boss.

So I had to switch to Hermann Hesse. “Siddhartha” is a great book, with its symbolic river of life rolling by as you sit under the banyan tree contemplating your navel and all that. But I so, so, so, wanted to immerse myself in Vonnegut for that paper, and I still ache inside that I didn’t get to do so. Oh well, as Mick sings, “You can’t always get what you want.”

In writing this, I got to thinking about why I’m so attracted to “curmudgeonly” writers like Vonnegut, Andy Rooney, Mark Twain, and so many more. I think it relates to my own personal experience.

I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I know that, yet I am able to think coherently about what goes on in the country and the world. It seems obvious to me that we can do great things when we come together — space travel, efficient agriculture, new medicines, and so much more.

Yet we are constantly sidetracked by falling into factions: country vs. country, conservative vs. liberal, black vs. white, men vs. women, and on and on. How can one not get cranky when one thinks of what we could achieve and what we instead devolve into? So frustrating.

Yet I think, by throwing light on thorny social problems, these kinds of authors do us all a great service. Exposing dirt and mold to bright light is the first step in getting rid of it.

I could go on, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Go to your favorite bookstore (make it the Strand if you happen to be in Manhattan; I promise you’ll love it) or library and pick up some Kurt Vonnegut. Be prepared to be simultaneously elated and saddened, but most of all, amazed that such cogent analyses of the very core of our lifestyle is still so relevant — indeed, so explanatory — today.

And so it goes.

In the long-ago year of 2012, I wrote a column called The Altamont Wave. In it, I noted that, here in Altamont, we tend to wave to one another because we’re a real community and it’s good to acknowledge one another.

I further added that, if more people out in the world waved and recognized one another as people, it would make for a better world. Well, here we are in the year 2020 and things have changed quite a bit.

We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. The country is being led by a mentally ill criminal. Our allies are laughing at our government’s failing efforts and people are literally dying every day of the week.

So, what does this have to do with waving? More than you think.

When lockdowns and quarantines began in other parts of the world, people quickly realized how much they missed and needed their neighbors, friends, and families. In Italy, folks began to play instruments, sing, and talk every day from their balconies.

In New York City, folks gather every day at a certain hour to applaud and cheer for first responders and front-line folks still working to keep us safe and keep the country functioning. And here in Altamont, we still wave but now, it’s progressed to a check-in.

On certain streets, folks come out at 5 p.m. every day, beat drums, sound gongs, and connect with neighbors. They talk, laugh, share news, and just let each other know that life, despite the insanity of our situation, does go on, all from six feet away, of course.

One of the things I’ve noticed most is that we’re all getting to know one another better. We’re asking one another how it’s going and actually listening to the answer.

People are taking being neighbors to a new level and actually exchanging names, email, and phone numbers, just in case. People are helping each other through this and that’s what, ultimately, being part of a community is really about.

We’ve gone from waving and acknowledging one another to actually having conversations and checking to see how we’re all doing. I’ve seen folks giving things out, sharing recipes, making and giving away masks, and offering tips on where to find things.

We’re very lucky as we live in a quiet little corner of the state with a low population density and a relatively low incidence of cases. We’re not immune, by any means, but our chances are far better than those who live in cities.

We’re also, largely, a community of reasonably intelligent, educated people who take the news in and try and act in a responsible manner. One of the things our governor keeps trying to get across is that human life is the sacred thing, not profit and business.

We live in a blue state and, except for red patches, New York is a pretty forward-thinking place. We wear our masks and keep our distance to help one another, not due to a government conspiracy. We listen to Dr. Fauci and the CDC, not Trump and McConnell who are far more interested in killing people to stay in power.

Here in little old Altamont, there has always been a sense of community and a fair bit of involvement. The current situation has, for the most part, brought that out in a wonderful way.

I really like taking the grandbabies for a walk nowadays. People wave, smile at the little drool monsters, and ask how they’re doing. You know how seeing a cute puppy makes a lot of people kind of go gooey? Well, seeing the twins has the same effect on many folks and our other little ones, who are a bit older, are equally pleasant company.

This is what being part of a village is all about. You come here, have kids, raise them, and then they have kids and we all help raise them. It does, indeed, take a village.

Now, during a global pandemic, the life we create in our village means far more day-to-day, than what some nutjob in Washington says. I can rely on my neighbors to be there if something goes wrong. And they can count on me to help as best I can. You can’t say that about politicians, bureaucrats, and cronies who care only about holding onto power and lying to do it.

Altamont will survive as will, hopefully, most of us. I think it will always be a good place to live because people who live here want to be part of a community. And that spirit is what we are now seeing, perhaps more than we have in a long time. It’s what will keep us sane and healthy until things get better.

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg has lived in Altamont for about 28 years, his wife, for 60 years. They’re not moving.