I took the photo above yesterday. Today was just as nice.
We were heading through the park along Log Cabin Road on our way to the lake when an exceptionally clean cut man approached us. Peggi thought he might be a religious missionary. He asked if we had heard that a body was found in the park last night and we told him we had seen the headline. He asked if we minded answering just a few questions. At that point we started putting it together. His shirt read “WROC News” and he had a camera in the bag he wore around his shoulder.
He introduced himself as Alex Love and and I asked if that was real name. He said it was. “How often do you walk in the park?” “Almost everyday.””Do you think there should be a bigger police presence in the park?” “No.” “Are you afraid to walk in the park now?” “No.” He told us he had talked to woman earlier who told him she usually walked alone in the park but she brought her Rottweiler with her this morning. And then, “Do you think this is some kind of trend?” We laughed. Sure, this is the second body found in the park this year but people aren’t gonna start stabbing people because it is trendy. Here is the news clip.
We stopped in Canaltown to pick our usual order, ten pounds of Rochester Choice whole bean. We ordered two lattes while we talked to Pete about business and retirement. He’s sixty now and toying with not being in the shop seven days a week. While we talked a customer came in and ordered a cold brew. It was sitting on the counter in a large glass jar with a spigut. I asked Pete if he brewed it in that container and he started to explain his 18 hour process. While he talked the cold brew was overflowing and I felt bad for having distracted him.
Over at the Co-Op they were playing a satellite radio station with early disco and things like Blondie’s “Dreamin” mixed in. Last time I heard that was in Home Depot.
NYT had a nice obit for Pee Wee Ellis, Jame’s Brown’s musical director and co-writer of “Cold Sweat” and “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Pee Wee spent his formative years in Rochester, played with Cheryl Laurro‘s father and every jazz band in town. The story had a great photo from that period taken by Rochester’s Paul Hoeffler at the Python Room when he was playing with Ron Carter.
The scooter below brought Bob Martin into town from Chicago. He’ll be joining us at the Little Theatre Café on Wednesday.
“Oh Yeah” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.13.19. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Yellow and white wrought iron chairs in front of house on Culver Road
If I was a few years younger I would have been at the Joywave show last night at Parcel 5. And if I was even younger than that I would have loved to hear Roy, son of Margaret Explosion guitar player, Phil Marshall, playing drums with Spencer, one of the four opening bands. It was a perfect night for an outdoor concert. Our windows we’re open but we couldn’t hear the sound system.
The guy in the wheelchair was all alone, sitting in the middle of a grassy area off Log Cabin Road in the park. I was trying to picture how he was able to to roll up the path and out that far when we spotted a woman scooping up something under a tree. As we walked by her I asked, “What are you collecting?” She smiled but clearly did not understand what I had said. I asked again and she said “mushrooms,” pronouncing it like a Russian. She looked Russian as well.
She opened her hands and showed us a batch of little reddish mushrooms. Peggi showed her a picture that she had just taken of the egg or breast-like mushrooms that we had just seen. She shook her head no like they were not desirable. At that point I noticed the woman was wearing a Home Health Care t-shirt and realized she was out in the park with her client.
“Sam” painting by Paul Dodd oil on canvas 68″ w x 44″h 1998
In 1998 Sam used my camera to take a self portrait. I did the painting above based on his photo. It hangs near the front door in our home. Geri called us this morning to give us the bad news. Her son, Sam, died last night of an apparent heart attack. I can’t imagine her grief.
Eternally youthful, Sam was special in so many ways. He had his oxygen supply cut off during childbirth and he was later diagnosed with autism but his personality was fully developed. Like his late father, Bill, he was an early Macintosh enthusiast. He sent us a photo of his old Mac Plus which he kept in the basement. For years he would call us whenever a new Mac OS was available and he always kept all his gear up to date. We took him out to the Apple Store when he broke his iPad and we watched as the Apple representative explained that breakage was not covered and then he gave Sam a brand new iPad. He was that sweet.
Sam Jones camping at Pete and Shelley’s
We celebrated a few of Sam’s birthdays at Chuck E Cheese’s in Henrietta, Sam’s choice. The place was heaven to him. Sam and his family camped out at Pete and Shelley’s place in the mountains the same weekend we were up there. He formed an immediate bond with them.
For the last few years Sam was living in a group home in Elmira and then independently in an apartment with the same organization. We went down there to visit one weekend and Sam took us to Five Guys and Target. We will miss him.
My doctor wanted me to get a Covid test before she did my colonoscopy. The closest testing facility to my house is Wilson (named after the founder of Xerox) on Carter Street. The test was a saliva test and the nurse coached me to think of favorite foods. I took the little tube (and the tiny plastic funnel) out to car and filled the tube to the red line in ten minutes. I never got to the part where I would need to think of olives or tortilla or pulpo.
The test came back “Not Detected,” which sounds a little fuzzy. I did the prep yesterday and was still able to play horseshoes with Rick. I drank the two containers of Gatoraid mixture and we watched Barcelona barely manage a draw with Granada. I still had not budged. It was a little worrisome but the time the sun came up I was clean as a whistle.
Peggi drove me out to the maze of doctors’ offices on Jefferson Road. The nurse told me I could keep my socks on and she handed me a heated blanket. She marveled at my veins and set up the IV for the anesthetic. I was kicking myself for not bringing the newspaper in because I laid there for about forty-five minutes. There was a lot of hubbub out by the front desk and then I saw my doctor walk by slowly. She looked a little long in the tooth so convinced myself that it was another patient and not my doctor. When she came back down the hall she was in a wheelchair and someone was pushing her. I figured the patient had some sort of episode and that was why everyone was rattled.
The nurse came back in my room and explained that they had had some sort of equipment failure and they were not going to be able to do my colonoscopy. But they said I could go back over to Wilson and a doctor there could perform the procedure. Or I could reschedule and do the prep all over again. They took the IV out. I got dressed and we drove over to Wilson, a decidedly more urban environment but more comfortable.
I asked the receptionist there if she knew why I was transferred and she told me my doctor wasn’t feeling well. So now I await the diagnosis on the three polyps that were removed and my next colonoscopy.
Harlequin Glorybower in Durand Eastman Park along Log Cabin Road
Tuesday mornings we often run into the Cornell Cooperative Extension volunteers in the park The park is severely understaffed and these people, the nicest and most knowledgable people you will ever meet, are donating their time. So we limit ourselves to one question.
Last week they were pulling invasive Tree of Heaven plants. One of them held up a root ball that looked like six foot long white carrot. This morning they were just getting out of the vehicles down by the lake and we asked them about the white flowering plant that seems to be everywhere. They told us it is called Snakeroot, it is native to this area and it is not technically invasive. But they agreed it is acting like one this year. One of the old-timers said, “we like to call it ‘a brut.'”
It is called Snakeroot because the roots were commonly used to treat snakebites but the plant is poisonous to the touch. It is everywhere around here and Peggi has a few afternoons pulling the plants on our property. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln’s mother died from drinking milk from a cow that had eaten the plant.
I sort of remember when this willow tree split apart. The back half fell across the creek and died but the front half continued to thrive. New branches have sprouted from the top side of the trunk. I’m so glad the laissez-faire owners have left it alone.
We intended to take a walking route that would finish at our garden but got talking and turned the wrong way. Peggi was telling me about her dream. We were at the Jazz Festival and she was holding front row seats at Kilbourn Hall for me. I was late for some reason (which sounds about right) and then the whole first row of seats began falling backward. People were screaming and that might have been when Peggi woke up.
We spotted a photographer up ahead of us on Log Cabin Road. I wondered if it might be Aaron Winters because of the way he was walking, lumbering under the weight of his camera equipment and long lenses. It turned out to be Fred SanFilipo who coincidentally often sits in the front row at Jazz Fest where he is one of the official photographers. He recognized us from Jazz Fest and then introduced himself to us.
I had met him many years ago back when he had an ad agency with someone named Younger. I was in their studio when the two partners were having an unforgettable blow-out. Today he seems much happier. He told us about a beautiful nearby bush he had discovered, one that attracts humming birds. Peggi told him about her Jazz Fest dream and he said it sounds like the beginning of a novel.
Margaret Explosion played a weekly happy hour gig at the Bug Jar for a few years in the late nineties and I occasionally brought my camera. I took a series of mugshots there one night. Almost everyone who was there that evening agreed to sit for one. I printed them out large and had a show there with them in 1998. I recently searched my computer for “BugJar” jpegs and created this movie with them relying heavily on the Ken Burns tool in iMovie to animate the stills.
The song is one we recorded a few years later in 2003 called “Floating at the Bug Jar.” We recorded it in the basement of our home in the city. Peggi Fournier plays sax. Jack Schaefer plays guitar. Greg Slack plays bass. Pete LaBonne plays Yamaha electronic piano and Farfisa organ and I played percussion.
At least five of our friends, pictured here from that period, have moved on. RIP Bug Jar Bob (the creative force and one of the three original owners), Bill Jones, Chuck Cuminale, Ted Williams, Janet Williams, Michael Barone and Shalonda Simpson.
“I’m not afraid of dying’ and I don’t really care,” or whatever those words to the Laura Nyro song that Blood Sweat & Tears took over the top are, was blasting from this guys’ sound system as he rolled by us. Obnoxious and hysterical at the same time. We passed this guy many times in the park, along the lake and even saw him coming down Culver Road from East Ridge one time. He gets around and thinks nothing of cranking his tunes, the Baby Boomer hits, for all nearby.
As hard as it is to believe, the new owners of the Playground Tavern, located across the street from School 33’s playground, are changing the name to “Jackie-Ray’s Tavern.” I always thought that was a killer name for a bar.
Our band was in the middle of a month of Wednesday night gigs when the pandemic hit. We have not been back since and the only gig we have had since was in the theater in front of a blank movie screen with masked people sitting in in pairs separated by police yellow tape. The gig was so nerve-wracking for me I unplugged the recorder before writing the nights’ music to disc. I’m hoping tomorrow nights return to the café will be a return to form for Margaret Explosion.
Peggi and have been warming up for the gig by listening to a minute of so of songs recorded at the café in the last few years and then playing duo versions of the themes. “Sonata,” originally performed with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet, “World’s Fair” and even the dark brooding “Witness.”
The newspaper box under our mailbox still says “Times Union.” We were subscribers of the afternoon paper back in the day, right up til their last issue, and then we switched to the D&C. The picture on the front page of today’s D&C showed five Times Union reporters, the late Jack Garner among them, celebrating their Pulitzer Prize in 1972. They won it for reporting that it was police gunshots that killed the hostages in nearby Attica Prison and not the prisoners’ homemade knives, as we had originally been told.
Check out President Nixon on the phone with Governor Rockefeller patting each other on the back for the debacle.
Dick Cooper, one of those five TU reporters has a great piece in the paper that re-tells the real story.
American flag and Fuck Biden banner at 129 Avondale
How did the terrorist attacks on our country (and others) drive us further apart from one another? What kind of bungling leadership would feed this division? We were told they attacked us because they resented our freedom. We were told the the people who commandeered airplanes directly into tall buildings were cowards. None of this added up.
“You’re either with us or against us,” “Love it or Leave It.” After 9/11 the Pentagon paid $6.8 million to the NFL and other professional sports teams to put on patriotic displays. That felt genuine. It feels as though someone is engineering our demise.
Michelle Goldberg, writing in the NYT on 9/11 says “. . . this epoch of aggressive jingoism, ethnic profiling, escalating paranoia, torture, secret prisons, broken soldiers, dead civilians and dashed imperial dreams has left freedom in retreat both globally and here at home.”
Peggi agreed to walk up to Aman’s Farm Market with me if I didn’t get any beer. We were going for fresh corn and fruit but we also needed garlic and onions and milk and cheddar cheese so the weight added up. And this was the longest we had walked since I sprained my ankle. Since we only get up here two or three times a month I put a 4-pack of 3 Heads Ha Ha! Nelson in the bottom of my backpack.
I wasn’t able to walk with Peggi today so I took a photo of her as she walked by on the street below. I sprained my ankle watching a soccer match, the Brazil Argentina World Cup qualifier. The PA at Urgent Care thought I must have overstretched it while sitting with my legs under me down in front of the tv where I can see who’s who on the pitch. And then as I descended our basement stairs, trying not to put too much weight on my sprain, I stubbed the big toe on my good leg. There was a crack and it hurts worse than my good leg.
The artificial intelligence on our tv apps recommended two stellar movies based on what we they think we like. “The Wicker Man” from the golden year of 1973 was sensational. Extolling the virtues of paganism over Christianity I felt like was inside a Bruegel painting. When that was over we started “Trilogy of Terror” with Karen Black from 1975. I can’t wait to get back to that one.
Stewart Davis Self Portrait in “A Memorial Exhibition” at Rochester Contemporary
I didn’t know Stewart Davis when he was practicing law. I only met him when he hooked up with Anne Havens, our favorite local artist. He was a gentleman and I never would have took him as an artist. Apparently what he saw in Anne’s art was a vehicle for a whole lot of rich expression. He was eternally young and where most artists strive to paint as directly as they did as a child Stewart had no art baggage to shake. He painted in the garage of their home and he blossomed in retirement. His art was pure. We bought one of his abstracts from a RoCo Members Show and it is one of our favorites.
His self portrait (above) is from “Stewart Davis – A Memorial Exhibition,” on view now at Rochester Contemporary. We were marveling at the uninhibited, primitive work while Bill Keyser was studying the show. He described the work as being “sophisticated.” That is quite a range.
In the lab space at RoCo Anne Havens is showing drawings she made of Stewart when he was in Sarasota undergoing cancer treatment. This show is stunningly beautiful, a loving tribute to a great man.
Anne Havens drawing of Stewart Davis in “Sarasota 2003” show at Rochester Contemporary
Rochester’s Arena Group has a show at RoCo as well and I can’t say I saw the whole show. I like to look at the walls and then move in on what calls me. And when I’ve had an internal conversation with that piece I move to what attracts me. I love Peter Sucy’s 3D prints. He prints his file, a few times, swaps out the ink color and arranges the pieces. And then he chose the perfect frame!
Peter Sucy 3D printed tiles in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
Evelyne Albanese has two beautiful watercolors in this show, both based on musicians. I had to look up Melody Gardot.
Evelyne Albanese “Melody Gardot” in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
I knew this was a Barbara Fox from across the room.
Barbara Fox “History Of The World” in Arena Artists Show at Rochester Contemporary
On the forth floor of the Anderson Arts building Studio 402 has a show of new work by Gail and Jim Thomas. Gail has been been painting flowers for the last year, luscious pastel drawings, while Jim has been playing with space and form by revisiting the fallen oak in Genesee Valley Park, The Tree of Life. This was a fantastic show with both artists going in new directions. It has only reinforced my idea that the pandemic has been good for artists.
Jim Thomas “Tree Of Life Reborn” 2021 from Jim & Gail Thomas “Side by Side” paintings and pastel drawings Studio 402 Anderson Arts Building1 Comment
Homegrown Pimietos de Padron. Too big, too red, too hot.
Pimientos de Padron are a favorite tapa of ours when we are in Spain. We were planning to do another Camino walk, el Primitivo, when the pandemic hit. Spain closed its doors for good reason, opened them for a spell and now recommends against travel. So we sit on this side of the Atlantic.
Fruition Seeds in Naples, just south of us, offered Pimientos de Padron seeds this year so we grew our own. We were surprised how big the plants got. Bigger than our bell pepper and jalapeño plants. And bountiful.! They grew so fast the first few batches were already too big. We were aware that servings in Spain often had one or two in the batch that had some heat and they surprise you because the rest are so deliciously seductive.
So instead of letting then grow large and well before they turn red we we’ve been picking them young, when some are only an inch long. They go great with a La Liga match and bring us one step closer to Spain.
You don’t really have to own a mid-century modern house, you could just put these stylish numbers from moderndwellnumbers on your house. They go a long ways. This photo doesn’t show it but the numbers are about a half inch off the house because the screws come with spacers. They send you a paper template that you can tape on your house. The holes are are marked for drilling and the kerning is thought out. We went with it but in retrospect I wished we had spaced the numbers out a little more.
Each year we watch this guy pull up at our neighbors house in late August to wash their windows. Inside and out. And each year we think, “That would be nice.” It takes us most of a day to wash the windows and this year, after the gypsy moth invasion and the new roof, our windows are especially dirty. So we tagged along with them and had our windows professionally cleaned. It took him about three hours and they have never been cleaner. So clean that a robin flew into our front window about an hour after he left. It was temporarily knocked out but we watched right itself, walk around a bit and take off.
