“Don’t you be fawning over me.” This baby fawn was almost in the middle of our path as we walked through the woods today. We came across a fawn a few years ago while walking with Jim Mott and he told us not to go near the fawn or the mother would be spooked. The doe feel the fawn are safer from predators if they are left alone. Even I can smell a deer if they’re nearby so this makes some sense.
Further along we found ourselves between a group of wild turkeys. They get confused when some of the pack are separated and humans make them nervous so they were making a racket while we were in the way. It’s pretty easy to feel like an intruder in the woods.
Cat on counter at Case’s Garden Store Norton Street in Rochester, New York
It has been so warm this year we could have had our plants in a month ago but we just got around to it today. No excuse or anything, I’m just saying. We usually go to Cases’ on Norton and it was good to see them so busy today. We bought some tomato plants and some Jalapénos (our staples) and basil bit they didn’t have the Italian basil so we bought Lebanese. It has smaller leaves and tastes a little spicier. We sampled some of their lemon basil but that was sort of intense. We bought a small box of eggplant plants and some zucchini and I looked at a oregano plant and don’t remember putting it in our cart but we came home with it. We seem to have red bell peppers at every dinner in one dish or another so we bought twelve of those plants. Now we’ll hope to keep the rabbits, ground hogs and chipmunks at bay.
Eric DuFaure and Dwight Glodell in PCI Studios in Rochester, New York mixing Personal Effects’ “So Hard”
I love this Polaroid because it perfectly captures the vibe between Eric DuFaure, who signed Personal Effects to Cachalot Records and Dwight Glodell who produced our first ep. We had dinner with Eric and his wife last night, the first time we had seen him them in thirty years. They have been living in Paris and we had a lot of catching up to do.
Eric had just visited Hal Willner in New York and he showed us some photos of Hal and his puppet collection. Howdy Doudy was in there. Eric told us he and Mitt Romney were in the same Harvard MBA class so he has been fielding a lot of inquiries lately from the press looking for salient Mitt stories.
When we first met Eric he was living in a loft on Mercer Street, we recorded tracks at nearby Sorcerer Sound and Cachalot’s office was at 611 Broadway at Houston, a building with lots of characters. Kieth Haring was downstairs, Ed Steinberg, Bob Singerman Management and Peter Leak. Neil Cooper, who founded the cassette only company called Reach Out Records (ROIR) was right next door to Eric.
We picked up right where we left off, so much so we wound up looking at old PE videos and Eric fell in love with “Bring Out The Jazz“, a song he never heard because we recorded it in our basement a few months after we parted ways. On the way out the door he suggested hiring some young kids to lip sync to the song and make a hit.
Not just “No Deliveries” but “NO Deliveries,” professionally painted on the loading dock door of this concrete block building in southern New York. You know how signs register as you cruise by them and sometimes the image just lingers? I had to ask the driver to pull the car over when I spotted this.
“Wes Peden and his partner juggling in Rochester, New York
Baptist Churches can be scary places like that video I saw on Huffington Post with the Baptist preacher talking about rounding up all the homosexuals. The auditorium at Northridge Baptist Church tonight, though was “More Fun Than Visiting A Zoo.” Our neighbor, Rick, tipped us off to this show which featured Rick’s juggling partner’s son Wes and his partner from Ohio with a sensational live percussionist from Sweden. Wes has been studying for three years at a circus school in Sweden and is now considered one of the top jugglers in the world! I missed a lot of their act because I was gawking at the drummer.
I have a great deal of anxiety over “lack of time” issues and now I know what my problem is. I’m an optimist.
An article in yesterday’s paper described an optimist in terms I had never associated with the condition.
“An optimist is “Someone, like me, who plans to get more done than time permits. Having failed to achieve the impossible, someone, like me, who is sure everything will somehow get done anyway.”
A more classical definition from the Mayo Clinic: “Optimism is the belief that good things will happen to you and that negative events are temporary setbacks to be overcome.”
Spanish and French cheese at the European Cheese Shop in the Public Market, Rochester, New York
Vincenzo Giordano runs the coolest spot in Rochester’s Public Market, the “European Cheese Shop.” You could spend your week’s paycheck in here and not be sorry. The yellow tags in this photo mark the Spanish cheese and the green identify the French cheese and the figs in the blue container are out of this world. There’s plenty of Italian cheese here too but we’re loyal to the to the Spanish. If the Spanish Civil War was to break out again we’d be over there fighting to save the Republic.
Bud Lite cans in branch of Cattaraugus Creek, Zoar Valley, New York
I am no chemist but isn’t it better for a can to rust than hang around forever in shiny aluminum glory? Cans used to rust away. I spotted a few of them on the way out yesterday as we hiked up the steep slopes that form Zoar Valley. About two hours from Rochester, a dreamy ride in Jeff Munson’s car, the steep gorges, up to 380 feet in some spots, was cut by the Cattaraugus River and has some of the finest old-growth stands in the eastern United States.
Bud Lite is clearly the official beer of Zoar Valley.
Scott McCarney “Bible For Terry Jones” at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York
Scott McCarney’s beautiful new show, “Reversing the Catastrophe of Fixed Meaning,” opened last night a Visual Studies Workshop. An ambitious title that for me actually succeeds in the incendiary piece, “Bible For Terry Jones.” There is something of a “Boy’s Life” nostalgia in Scott’s work but he manages to shatter the stereotypes. His “book art” rewrites the museum tags on this dying medium.
And then there is Robert Frank’s shoes, the ones he wore while shooting photos for “The Americans.” He donated them to Visual Studies after a workshop here in the seventies. I had heard they were here but I wasn’t prepared for their dandyness. It puts a whole new spin on these classic images.
Google Street View car on our street, Rochester, New York
My neighbor, Rick, and I were out playing horseshoes when the Google car drove by this afternoon so I wound up with this “making of” shot. I’m thinking we’ll both be in the updated street view when it is released. I had thought Google tried to take these shots early in the day so as not to get so many people, cars and potential lawsuits in the “street view” but that was based on our friends, Alice and Julio, who found themselves in the current street view of their neighborhood. They were up early, walking, and didn’t even see the Google car drive by. Months later they spotted themselves on the sidewalk halfway around the block from their house.
Rick beat me two games to none today. He keeps track of these things on his calendar. I’m up for the year but it’s a long season.
Paul Dodd charcoal drawing entitled “Still From Passion Of St Joan 01” 2012
I do most of my music listening in the basement, shuffling a shared library from a hard drive in another part of the house while I draw or paint. When something comes along that really draws me in I put five stars on it and then add it to my “Favorites” playlist in iTunes. Occasionally I will shuffle the “Favorites” playlist and you would think that would be the ultimate but it’s not nearly as much fun as throwing fate to the wind, shuffling the entire library and running across beautiful surprises.
I was working away the other night, frustrated at not being able to get a gesture down, when I thought, almost aloud, “I wish I could see what I’m trying to draw.” And then I laughed aloud. This is really the game, learning to see. The drawing part is a cinch.
Exotic Dancers signage on wall next to Tala Vera on State Street in downtown Rochester, New York
I miss “Jenks and Jones” and Shep’s Paradise” and the old school R&B lounges on Rochester’s west side. Those days are not coming back but the urban pioneers over at Tala Vera on State Street are doing their best to update the concept. They have an ideal back room for music with a piano, a built in sound system and a red curtain behind the stage. We heard a fantastic trio called “10 to the 32nd Kelvin” there last night while they recorded the night for a live album. Bass player, Kevin Ray, stood center stage as well he should, a equally fluid melodic and rythmic player, with Frank Lacy on Trombone and Andrew Drury on drums. My favorite passages were when the horn player accompanied the drummer on percussion. All the better to feature my favorite instrument, the upright bass.
This part of the city is on the upswing but progress slow. I know the strip club next door is gone and the ghosts remain but I couldn’t tell whether “Tajze Wine and R&B Lounge” (with a bullet hole through the glass right under the “a” in “and”) was coming or going. We drove home during their break and were able to catch the second set on a live video feed from Tala Vera’s site.
We stopped by my parent’s place to visit on Mother’s Day and went out for a walk in nearby Ellison Park. We ran into Dee Dee and her dog. She told us she had been here every day for three years now. She said she imagined my parents’ neighborhood as an ideal place to live, so close to the park. Little did she know my parents moved there to be close to the park and then were both chased out by dogs whose owners let them run off leash despite the signs that state “Dogs Must Be On Leash.” We must have seen fifty or so dogs running free. Apparently Parks Director, Larry Staub, does not work on Mothers Day.
A log cabin in the park called Fort Schuyler, a 1938 recreation of the 1721 trading post where Senecas and the French swapped for furs, has the smallest windows I have ever seen on a building, maybe just big enough to shoot an arrow through. That’s one of the windows on the far right of the photo above. I took a flash picture of the pitch black inside and came up with the shot you see when you click on the photo. I had an urge to post a nasty photo after Angel Corpus Christi gave me this shout-out and this blow-up fits the bill.
My brothers and sisters and their families came and went yesterday and eight of us wound up down at Vic & Irv’s for dinner. We tried squeezing in one booth but split up when an adjacent booth opened. My mom and I each had a vanilla shake and split an order of onion rings. Vic & Irv’s changed management over the winter and was closed for a bit but Lynn is still behind the grill and I’m happy to say the food is every bit as good as ever.
Shrubs shaped like animals near Mercy High School in Rochester, New York
My aunt and uncle live in Niagara Falls so I don’t see them that often but I did last week at another funeral. Their son worked for the tourism board there for a while and I wondered what my uncle thought about the upcoming Nik Wallenda tightrope walk over the Falls. I was thinking the circus like event would be good for the tourist trade on the struggling New York but my uncle said the morality of the whole thing really bothered him and he wasn’t even going to watch it. I was really struck by his answer and my own ever shifting moral line.
Sam Patch, the “The Yankee Leaper,” achieved nationwide fame when he jumped into the Niagara River near the base of the Falls in 1829. He made his last jump in Rochester on Friday the 13th in November of that same year from a 25-foot high platform over the 100 foot High Falls of the Genesee River. 8,000 people watched him land with a loud impact and never surface. His frozen body was found downriver in Charlotte the next Spring. Local ministers and newspapers were quick to blame the crowd for urging him to jump, and put the guilt of his death on them
Robin egg on the trail in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
I couldn’t get my Nikon to focus on this Robin egg. Of course I was in “Auto” mode so I can’t really complain. The camera does have a manual focus but that would take me ten minutes to figure out. Imagine how difficult it would be for an auto focus mechanism to find a surface on the egg on which to focus.
I occasionally buy the organic eggs at Wegmans. They clearly taste better than the regular Wegman’s eggs but at almost four times the price they are a real luxury item. And I don’t like the little red Wegmans logo stamped on top of each of the brown eggs. The packaging is bad enough but it really bugs me when they put their mark right on the produce.
Logo on door of old police station in Penn Yan, New York
A call on our home line from “FOB NY” got us out of bed this morning. Even though that line is on the “National Do Not Call Registry the cops get an exception for their extortion-tinged cold calls.
We borrowed my fathers car because ours is in the shop. He keeps his radio tuned 90.1, the jazz station, so we left it there and heard Pharaoh Sanders’ “Astral Traveling” on the way home. First song I heard back home was Sun Ra’s “We Travel the Spaceways.” I doubt that “Support the Police” sticker they would have given me if I had donated would do me any good in these worlds.
My favorite artist/philosopher, Robert Irwin, is deep into the ponies. Peggi and I usually tune into the Kentucky Derby because it marks the anniversary of our first date when we traveled to Louisville in the back of Steve Hoy‘s van and watched Secretariat win. The derby is one of my favorite sporting events because it only lasts two minutes.
Yesterday’s winner, “I’ll Have Another”, is owned by the former philosophy teacher, Paul Reddam. In the winners’ circle he was asked to quote one of his favorite philosophers and he chose this one form Ludwig Wittgenstein. “After all the philosophical problems have been solved, nothing of importance will have been accomplished.”
Purple kids’ car at Sea Breeze amusement Park in Rochester, NY
I get sick on rides that go around on circles so my favorite attraction at amusement parks is the kids’ cars. They seat two and you have to be tiny to fit in. The steering wheel spins around but does no control the car in any way and the kids don’t even care.
We stopped down to Sea Breeze Amusement Park for number 27 of the Rochester Institute of Technology “Big Shots“, pictures made at night using either hand-held electronic flash units or flashlights. Volunteers were instructed to show up at eight and wear black. That was pretty easy because all our clothes are black. The organizers effortlessly divided thousands of people into small groups and assigned them trees or rides to illuminate. We had to keep moving so our bodies weren’t captured in the long exposure. I used the flash on camera to help light this purple T-Bird.
NEXUS Percussion Ensemble at Parkleigh Pharmacy with the Eastman School of Music’s John Beck sitting in (on far left)
The Percussion Rochester festival has popped up in Parkleigh Pharmacy. We used to buy the New York Times here on Sunday mornings when we lived in the Park Avenue area. It is no longer a pharmacy and has morphed into a high end trinket shop. My sister works here and I was hoping to see her but she had finished her shift and was out waking the dog by the time the NEXUS Percussion Ensemble started playing in the Mckenzie Childs section of the store. That’s Steve Gadd’s (Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Joe Cocker, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jon Bon Jovi, Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, The Bee Gees) drum teacher, John Beck, the longtime Eastman School of Music faculty member and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra percussionist on the far right. Peter Erskine performs music from Weather Report tonight.
Two geese on lake in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, New York
I check the temperature in seven locations with my iPod weather app. Rochester (where we live), Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla (where we traveled), New York, LA, San Francisco, Paradox NY (where we have friends) and Huntsville, Canada (where we camped last year). It is not often the case that Rochester is the warmest but today it is. So there.
