Day: December 25, 2025

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Those nights camping at the State Horse Camp on Christmas 🤶

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I was listening to Joni mitchell this evening as I wandered around Bender Mellon Farm Preserve as the sunset.

But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
I’m going to make a lot of money
Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly

Nice evening for Christmas

I was reminded of that Christmas Eve almost a year ago I spent alone at the State Horse Camp. I was on a pre-Christmas at Stoney Pond and then Charles Baker State Forest, riding road and camping, ended up staying through the day after Christmas due to my parents being sick and quarantining. I roasted chestnuts and cranberries on the fire and listened to Joni Mitchell’s River song among other Christmas music.

Christmas Eve at Camp

Spending Christmas alone at a State Horse Camp without presents to open, just cool cloudy and long evenings alone sounds kind of depressing. But I liked the serenity of it all, the time alone spent with nobody but myself as a few snow flurries flittered around, as I enjoyed Greek yogurt with chestnuts and other holiday nuts roasted on the fire along with cranberries. In the cold of the night, the darkest time of the year as we celebrate Christ’s birth.

Drizzly morning at camp ?

I am struck by the lyrics, “I’m going to make a lot of money, then I’m going to quit this crazy scene.” I love being out in a place like Madison County, the deep rural yet I am stuck here in Albany except when I can get away on a crazy cold evening like that weekend in the deep rural as I heard the cows moo and the coyotes call out in the distance. I keep almost craving homelessness, the simplicity of being a traveler. At the same time, I think about buying some land and making a tent my permanent home, assuming the government workers in some rural township within commuting distance to Albany would permit such an unconventional way of living. Or maybe just a hammock, traveling from place to place, living on the street. That said, I really want to get away from the city. It’s not the cannabis that has me thinking this way but the podcast I was listening to about preparing for homelessness. It’s a silly way to think when I’m a hard working director.

Roasting nuts

The vinyl siding, carpeting, drywall and central heating does nothing for me. I crave the mountains and the small towns like I was in as I camped at the State Horse Camp last Christmas. Away from the endless lines of code, data dumps and the garbage dumps and the pollution. Places that tap into my soul and give me a feeling I so lack in Albany while I try to keep my head afloat, survive and make the best of my life in the very problematic world that I currently live in.

Best selling Christmas Singles

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Further evidence that Christmas music is pretty awful based on what people are parting with their hard-earned cash to download legally from the interwebs. Plus a fun exercise in webscrapping with Wikipedia to make a graph.

library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)

music <- read_html('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Christmas_singles_in_the_United_States')

table <- music %>% html_table()

table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`=as.numeric(gsub("(\[.*|,)","", table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`))
table[[1]]$`Artist` = gsub("\(.*","", table[[1]]$`Artist`)

ggplot(table[[1]], aes(x=table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`, y=reorder(paste(table[[1]]$Title,table[[1]]$Artist,sep="n"), -table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`),
                       fill=table[[1]]$Rank) 
       ) + geom_col() + geom_label(aes(label=scales::comma(table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`)),hjust='right', size=6, fill='white', nudge_x = -20000) + 
  scale_x_continuous(labels = scales::comma_format(scale=1/1000000, suffix='m'), expand=c(0,0), breaks=seq(0,3,0.5)*1000000) + 
  scale_fill_gradient2(low='darkred', high='darkgreen', midpoint=mean(table[[1]]$Rank)) +
  labs(title = 'Best-selling Christmas singles',
       subtitle='',
       caption='Wikipedia/Nielsen SoundScan began trackingndigital download sales data at the end of June 2003. ',
       tag=paste('Andy Arthur,', format(Sys.Date(), format="%m/%-d/%y")),
       x='Digital Downloads',
       y='',
       fill = "", ) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(
    text= element_text(family='Overpass',size=14),
    plot.title=element_text(hjust=0.5, face='bold',size=28),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white", color="white"),
    plot.subtitle=element_text(hjust=0.5),
    plot.tag=element_text(size=10,hjust=0, color='#555555'),
    plot.caption=element_text(size=10, color='#555555'),
    plot.margin = unit(c(1,1,1,1), 'lines'),
    plot.tag.position = c(0.0,0.01),
    legend.position = 'None',
  ) 

ggsave(paste('/tmp/christmas.svg',sep=''), width=1920, height=1080, units='px', dpi=150, device = grDevices::svg)

Best selling Christmas Singles

Blizzard 1969-1970

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This morning in 1969 was negative 22 degrees in Albany and the start of the 1969 blizzard in Albany. All traffic would be banned on Albany city streets until New Year’s Day, state government closed down for five days.

An exasperated Erastus Corning would tell a reporter asking for a time line on Albany snow removal: “If God put it here, God will take it away”. It wouldn’t be until the third week of January 1970 that all Albany streets would be free of snow. The city would spend over $2 million in 1969 dollars on snow removal for this one storm, which was bonded and paid off by taxpayers through the early 1980s.