Youngblood Disposal dumpster behind Village Gate in Rochester, New York
We don’t have a dumpster out front but we have managed to fill our green Waste Management trash containers to the brim every week for the last few months. With the project creep our little home improvement task is surely helping the economy. We did a Home Depot run this afternoon and Peggi and I each a had cart over there. Peggi had electrical outlets, paint, drywall screws, and Ploy Foam CaulkSaver in hers. I had backing board and a bag of Thinset in mine. I noticed the guys who did our drywall drink those 24 ounce Mega Monster energy drinks. We count on coffee and are so tired we may just watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents reruns tonight.
Nativity scene at Church of the Transfiguration on Culver Road
This plywood nativity scene went up last week in front of the Church of the Transfiguration on Culver Road. I love that word, “Transfiguration.” The Transfiguration is an episode in the New Testament where Jesus is transfigured or metamorphosed. He becomes radiant and shines with bright rays of light. Moses and Elijah appear next to him and Jesus is called “Son” by a voice in the sky, assumed to be God the Father.
Last Wednesday, Jack Schaefer played guitar with Margaret Explosion and tried this holiday number (below). We might try it again tonight when Bob Martin returns on guitar and Pete LaBonne joins us on the grand piano.
Here’s Margaret Explosion’s version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
View from outside the smoking trailer at Nick’s Seabreeze Restaurant in Rochester, New York
My father told us he received an email from Apple about the one terabyte Seagate internal drive in his iMac. Apparently two many of these drives had failed and Apple was replacing them for free. We encouraged my father to do it before his drive fails so we made sure he had an up to date backup and as an extra measure he tidied up his desktop by dragging all the clutter to his documents folder.
Apple replaced the drive the next day and he restored from the most recent backup but something was amiss. His documents folder was empty. He called me and I had him go into his Time Machine preference panel, click on the options button and read me what he saw in the list of “Items to be excluded from backups”. Along with the names of external drives he read “applications” and “Documents.” My heart sank. My father has been a heavy user since the eighties. How could these items ever have been selected for exclusion?
We called the Apple Store back, they gave us a Genius appointment and told us to bring the computer and BU drive out there. The store was jammed with fans ogling the iPad minis and the genius bar was a hotbed of people troubleshooting problems with their mobile devices. As far as I could tell we were the only old-timers with a clunky desktop machine. We begged them to give us the old drive back so we could rescue the docs but we were told the drive had already been destroyed for security reasons.
One Apple genius told another, “These guys have an interesting problem here.” Interesting! This was is a disaster! I franticly rummaged through the backup folders and found a documents folder from a few months back and then a month before that I found a folder with his apps. The geniuses were at loss as to how this could have happened. And then in the backup from the day before the drive was replaced we found the hundreds of files that were on his backup before he cleaned house for the Apple guys.
For our efforts in bailing him out my father took us to Nick’s Seabreeze Inn for dinner. Nick smokes cigars and keeps a heated trailer parked out back for smokers to hang out in. There is a little tv in there and the place looks pretty cozy.
The abandoned Central Bank building on State Street is an absolutely perfect venue for “The City Is Asleep And Dreaming,” a building wide set of installations and performance art organized by Jason Bernagozzi and Evelyne LeBlanc-Roberge. We had a little trouble getting in the door last night. That too may have been part of a performance piece. A piece of red duct tape on the lock had worn thin and the dead bolt was keeping the door shut so we knocked for entry. This formerly grand section of town is still creepy but I have faith that it is only sleeping. Jason’s piece is stunning, the setting, the sound, the movement, the whole package. Evelyne’s two video projections on glass doors in this same chamber are otherworldly and beautiful. Remember Init Two?
Onward. First Friday comes but once a month. My father told us about a show at the Axom Gallery on Anderson Avenue of recent paintings by Kurt Moyer entitled, “The New Arcadia.” Kurt’s oil paintings of bathers in woods-like settings combine touches of early Picasso chunky figures, Cezanne’s bather paintings and Maxfield Parrish’s color sense with luscious paint handling. My father had run into Kurt in the woods off Westfall. Kurt was painting Mayflowers and my father, who often paints and sketches in the woods, was cataloging leaves and tree types.
A few more stops and we were home in time to watch “Gerhard Richter Painting.” We were prompted to watch it by an Angel Corpus Christi’s post. I knew I would love this because I love his paintings. I did a portrait of him a long time ago when I was painting my favorite artists. I threw his away because he looked like Henry Kissinger. Whether abstract or near photographic, his paintings are jaw-droppingly beautiful. I was struck by how he paints, blank canvases hung on white, gallery-like walls, and the way he works on multiple paintings at once. I loved his answer to how he knows when to stop. “When there is nothing wrong with the picture.” I don’t really care about the man behind the work but Gerhard seems like a likable chap. I loved his German assessment of the American openness, how they tell you exactly what they think.
Peggi Fournier watercolor in Rochester Contemporary Members Show 2012
Some years ago our friend, Duane, met Charlie Watts at a book signing in a Manhattan. Duane bought a copy of Charlie’s book, “From One Charlie To Another,” for us and had Mr. Watts autograph it. The illustrated book was a tribute to Charlie Parker and I think I still have it but I just spent twenty minutes trying to find it. Anyway, Duane nervously snuck a picture of Charlie Watts, shooting from the belt, and it looks like Charlie spotted the camera because he is looking right at it. The photo is awkwardly cropped but that became a quality and Peggi did a watercolor based on the photo and submitted it the 22nd Annual Members Show at Rochester Contemporary.
The opening was last night and the place was mobbed, so crowded we couldn’t find Peggi’s art on the walls. Each time we took a few steps we would be sort of trapped in conversation and we were way in the back when director, Bleu Cease, made the big announcement about RoCo having bought the building. Someone had already spilled the beans on that one so we were just sort of stuck in the crowd. When the festivities ended I worked my way to the front and spotted Peggi’s piece on the front wall next to Lorraine Bohonos’s, Heather Irwin’s and Anne Haven’s work.
Bob Martin’s newest guitar is a black Strat but it hardly sounds like one after his artfully applied processing. Guitar players are always coming up to him to talk shop and they are usually looking down at all this gear while they talk. These days Bob sits down while he plays. His pedals are on the floor but the effects units are all on another chair that sits in front of him so he plays them by hand.
I took this shot last week as we were setting up for our Margaret Explosion gig and looked up some of the gear when I got home. I’m guessing most of the magic comes from the M5 Stompbox Modeler but I found the rotating speaker system effect from Strymon pretty intriguing. Bob’s playing has been amazing lately but he’s going to miss tonight’s gig. He’s on the disabled list with a pinched nerve. Jack Schaefer will be joining us on bass clarinet and guitar.
Margaret Explosion “Juggler” with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet
Margaret Explosion 45 RPM “Juggler/Purple Heart” (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
1968 R.L. Thomas High School volleyball team with Kit Bower and Paul Dodd
A few weeks ago my girlfriend from high school sent me a message on fb saying she was downsizing and had come across some old soccer clippings that I might be interested in. She sent them along with this picture of the volleyball team. I looked at it for a while trying to recall who these people were and then dreaming about old friends. On Saturday another classmate, Jeff Munson, emailed to invite us over for dinner. He was making homemade pasta with kale and his old buddy, number 13 in the photo above, in town for the weekend, was also going to be there. Looking back, Kit Bower probably picked the number 13. He is that kinda guy. But would he still be wearing those fashionably clunky, horn rimmed glasses? I hadn’t seen him in forty years.
No, he was not wearing any glasses. Funny that number 5 doesn’t have his glasses on in this photo. I have worn them non stop since fifth grade. Kit is little heavier than he was back then and I am a little lighter but then he’s the head chef at a fancy country club in the Hamptons and my family can’t gain weight. He brought some fresh Long Island Bay scallops and sautéed them as an appetizer and reminded me that we were both dancers in the high school musical. I had forgotten about that but I was stuck by how much our personalities and goofy interactions were exactly the same as they were back then.
I wonder if the “Lincoln Logs” will make a comeback as a tie-in to Spielberg’s new movie? I used to love those things. Especially liked putting the red wedge shaped chimney on that Adirondack green roof once I had built a structure.
Peggi had to take her sax in to Carl at Shuffle Music today. Where else would you take your horn if you had knocked it off its stand and it had crashed to the concrete floor at the Little Theater Café?. Jazz Fest promotor, Jon Nugent, was just coming out of the shop as we entered. Carl did a few quick adjustments and asked Peggi to play a little bit. He told her she was too timid and should push more from down below.
It was a beautiful day so we drove out to see my brother, Fran, the best mason in this area, “first call” as they say. He’s been telling us about this log cabin he’s working on out in Gananda, a “master planned community” about a half-hour outside of Rochester. Our friends Barbara and Tom lived out here for a while before selling their place and hopping in a camper to travel the country. Fran apparently had just finished the twenty five foot tall fireplace in the living room because the dry-wallers were going at it and he was nowhere to be found.
Bill Edwards introduces Nathan Lyons at Spectrum Gallery in Rochester, New York
Nathan Lyons is a Rochester luminary as well as internationally renowned photographer. He spoke tonight for about an hour with very few notes at the closing party for his current show at the Spectrum Gallery in Rochester. Once you’ve seen a lot of his photos it’s easy to picture him wandering around urban areas and grabbing the “Nathan Lyon shots.” They are just out there waiting for him to click but there is much more to his work and it was a joy to hear him talk about it. And that’s the thing, it doesn’t need any explanation. He is stimulated by poetry and sees all sorts of metaphors and connections in images and develops thematic groups ofthem as books. I love his keen cultural observations but often I just love the photo the way I love a painting.
Jean Luc Godard still with Jefferson Airplane on Manhattan rooftop
Margaret Explosion plays once a week and in addition to the regulars there are always a few new faces at our Wednesday night gig. Just like with any band, people want to categorize the music and after the gig they’ll stop by to ask what kind of music it is that we play or they’ll want tell us who we remind them of. Pink Floyd, Sun Ra and Twin Peaks are most often cited. Last week Steve Greene sent us this note.
I think you might dig this vid. In fact I have often thought that M.E. were direct descendants of the Airplane. ( really ) Steve
It was a simple remodeling sort of idea but it has turned into a full scale daily Home Depot run. Home owners call it “project creep.” Contractors have different terms for it but the sound effect is the same. Ca-ching! Our spare time, every minute of it, has been devoted to bringing the cost of these improvements down so we’ve been setting the alarm and working like dogs until we collapse.
Our home was built in the late forties but we found a newspaper from July 18th, 1964 in one of the walls, a sign of a previous owner’s improvement efforts. This issue of Rochester’s evening paper, “The Times Union,” was so brittle it came out in tiny fragments. We got pieces of a story about some fellow who won the bid to paint all 2000 of the City’s fire hydrants. He was quoted as saying it’s really like painting 4000 hydrants because he had to do two coats. From Ruth Chamberlain’s society column, “Around the Town,” It’s a Merry “Marry-Go-Round For Miss Dunn. Pretty Gaylord Allen Dunn, daughter of Mrs. Arthur S. Van Brocklin of South Main Street, Pittsford, and Howard M. Dunn of Ambassador Drive is on a gay, happy merry-go-round for the remaining days before her marriage to Navy Ensign Stuart Dudley Hallagan Jr. on Friday next.”
Midtown Plaza, the nations first indoor shopping mall (pictured today as a pit, above), had just opened. A human interest story on 1B talks of the friendly competition between Nick Sarantis’s Soda Spa Restaurant and George Slathes General Sweet Shoppe, which sat next door to one another at 492 and 494 W. Main for thirty years.
“Armory Floor “Fix” Up Again. State officials are trying to get funds to fix the sagging floor of Rochester’s Main Street Armory. The 40,000 square foot floor has been condemned for public purposes since 1960.” Apparently they got the money because my nephew recently saw Slayer perform there. “Fire Damages Schaller’s Drive-In.” “Bicyclist Grabs $27. A teenager riding a bicycle snatched $27 form a man as the latter was about to buy a newspaper at State Street and Main Street East about 12:30 AM today. Police said the victim was Aaron Jacob, 23, of 70 Troup Street.
And from page 10B, “He’s Not Sorry He Got Involved”.” A Rochester truck driver who fatally shot a man while going to the aid of a woman in distress said today that the fear of ‘getting involved’ is mostly unjustified. ‘My experience should show people in New York City that you can get involved and feel good about it later,’ Roy Coffey, 32, of 62 Sullivan Street said. Coffey said it isn’t just a case of fear that that prevents many people form giving assistance to others. ‘A lot of people are are simply concerned about the legal technicalities,’ he said.”
I feel it is our duty to leave a newspaper from 2012 in this wall before we seal it up.
RG&E building on Euclid Street in downtown Rochester, New York
Hard to believe how many mouse turds we found in an insulation packed short knee wall under the stone ledge in our living room. A short brick and mortar wall carried copper pipe that circulated water from our boiler but it pooped one winter when the heat went off while a previous owner was in sunny Florida. We heard all this from the neighbors after we we bought the house and after I opened a shut-off valve in the basement below and quickly spotted water gushing from the ceiling.
I talked to Clarence, the man that built our house in the late forties and who recently died at 100, and he said it should be a pretty simple job to fix this thing. Simple for Clarence maybe but a circular saw, chisel and shop vac can really make a mess in your living room. With encouragement from our heating guy and the can-do willpower of Pete Monacelli we were able to find the weak spot where the copper popped. That ledge by the big window, the coldest spot in our living room, will once agin be the warmest spot in the house, the way Jackie and Jill, who grew up in our house, described it.
One of our neighbors converts his mower/tractor to a leaf picker upper in the Fall. He sucks up the leaves and makes an incredible racket but he complains about his neighbor who takes every opportunity to get out there with his gas powered leaf blower to keep his lawn spotless while surrounded by woods. And there I am up on the roof with our electric blower. I wear headphones with no cords coming out of them to cancel the noise. They pretty much silence the world except the ringing in my ears.
Pete Monacelli is my favorite drummer in Rochester. He has a gentle touch and he is at home on just a snare if need be. He plays three times a week in three different groups but his favorite gig is the one he does on Sunday evenings at the Beale. This guitar-less quartet plays standards and swing. Ethan Lyons plays tenor, Mike Patric plays bass and Gian Carbone from John Coles Blues Band plays piano. We stopped by last night with Jeff and Mary Kaye and ordered three servings of collard greens . They came with pork in them and Peggi and were the only ones who would eat that. I brought the rest home but it didn’t look too good this morning. The band sounded really great and Custom Brew Craft’s IPA was nice.
At nine we checked out the Compline at Christ Church. I had never heard the word compline before but I trusted Jeff’s intuition that this might be good. The compline was originated in the fourth century as a monastic custom of devotion before retiring and it is now described as a service to the community where art and liturgy are seamlessly interwoven. With all of the beautiful reverb in this hall I would say the art easily outweighed the liturgy. OK, I did recognize the English language Lord’s Prayer but the rest was something beyond words. The candle light service was about forty five minutes long and was closer to meditation than performance. The choral group, made up of parishioners as well as faculty and students of the Eastman School of Music, specialize in Renaissance and Baroque music so the weekly program changes. This could become a habit for us.
It was gorgeous Fall afternoon, the perfect temperature to be outside. The leaves underfoot were about a foot deep and we were trying to keep the grizzly thoughts at bay while we searched the grounds for our neighbor’s Autumn colored cat. They had emailed in the morning that Sammy had not been seen since the plumber started making a racket yesterday afternoon. Sammy is pretty street savvy. She’d wandered the streets of New York and had travelled all the way from New Zealand in a box. She is big enough to defend herself but certainly not quick enough to outfox a coyote.
A few hours went by and then I spotted our neighbor loading a ladder into his car. Sammy had been found up a tree in another neighbor’s yard. These people have two white dogs who probably cornered Sammy. I put my neighborhood reporter hat on and went down the street to take a photo. Sammy was about about twenty feet up, out of reach with that ladder, so I went home to get ours, the one I used when we painted our city house five times. As I tried to nestle my ladder in the tree I scared Sammy and she came down a few limbs. I was able to throw a rope over the limb and we pulled it toward the earth. Sammy jumped about ten feet and landed softly.
This blog is so sleepy that days can go by before I even think about checking in. And they did. It seems odd that the more caught up you are in the moment, the faster time goes. You would think a jam-packed agenda would slow down your perception of time? Like, wow, I did all that today? It should have lasted forever. But, full speed ahead. Holidays don’t budge. Like it not, next week is Black Thanksgiving.
The older I get the more I like slow songs. I didn’t have the patience for that stuff when I was younger. I used to skip right over the ballads on records. Slow songs were for girls. I wanted to get wild. Now I can listen to slow songs by Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee and George Jones all day long. And still time slips away.
Deer eating pumpkins at our neighbor’s house. Photo by Jared.
We hear through the grapevine that a bow hunter shot a deer in the nearby woods. This deer didn’t die immediately so the hunter tracked it to Conifer Lane off Hoffman Road where a cop spotted him and arrested him. We suspected it was someone we know who lives down there but when we asked him about it he said he was fifty miles away bow hunting legally. Shooting at deer around here is not even hunting. This area is like a petting zoo.
First Friday, Rochester’s gallery night, has become a victim of of its own success. It been a shot in the arm for the local art scene but the overcrowding made it impossible to find the good art. Every night would be gallery night in a perfect world.
Last week we were sitting in our neighbor’s living room listening to Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby on First Friday but we easily got our art fix this weekend. Art dealer, Deborah Ronnen, who threw the wildly successful Culver Road Armory Bash last year has a knockout show of Contemporary African American printmakers at Nazareth College. There are some big names here and for few thousand dollars you could take home a Kara Walker, Alison Saar, Mickalene Thomas, Martin Puryear or the Trenton Doyle Hancock pictured above that reminded me of Anne Havens work. Or how about some beautiful quilt like prints from the sensational Gee’s Bend artists?
Our neighbors let us borrow the Australian movie, “Ten Canoes.” They had recommended it to us and took it out of the library for us so we offered to return it and their short stack of books and movies. We stopped at gallery in the tunnel to the old Central Library building to see Scott McCarney’s prints that were done in response to the 2007 car bombing of Baghdad’s historic book district. Scott’s book art, enlarged and reproduced here as prints are stunning.
Most artists wear multiple hats. Jaffe who plays and tunes pianos also creates portraits of musicians in marquetry. His show at the Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union is a delight on multiple levels. Jaffe often sits in with with Margaret Explosion.
Santa Arrival at Marketplace Mall in Rochester, New York
A nun at Saint John the Evangelist School asked our class, “How many of you still believe in Santa Claus?” I already had my doubts so she didn’t spoil anything but damn, November 10th and the fat man has already landed at the Mall. We were out that way today to pick up some framing material for the upcoming Members Show at Rochester Contemporary and this sign just struck me as a big bummer. I hate the malls. Hate is not strong enough. I get the creeps out here. If we have to suffer through Christmas can’t somebody bring back downtown? Sibleys, McCurdys, Edwards and The National, Neisner Brothers, HL Green and Macks Army Navy Surplus.
Palermos Market in Rochester, New York goes out of business
Artist and drummer, Pete Monacelli, has been doing some construction work for us. He wears three hats at least and he likes to start early, like 8AM, and yesterday he caught us still in our jammies. He told us the best thing about woking here is how close we are to Palermo’s on Culver Road. Palermo’s is old school with a big communal table and Italian newspapers. They have the best sausage and olives this side of the pond, six dollar meals that out did Wegmans down the road, good advice on the perfect main dish for many of our family gatherings and a deli case that had me drooling every time I set foot in there.
I went up there the other day to pick up some lunch and found this distressing sign on the window. There is a liquidation sale there tomorrow but I think it will be too sad to attend. They’re closing on their tenth anniversary but the note had an optimistic tone in that the owners, Guy and Jill, say they are “following another career path.” I wish them all the luck in the world.
We’ve got a little project going in the basement that involves moving a concrete block wall. It is surprising how easy it is to bust out a concrete wall. Like a lot of things in life it’s just one small step at a time. We knocked a sledge hammer (or maul) against the first block until the mortar cracked and then we moved on to the next block. The bottom course had some souvenirs in there, bottle caps from beverages consumed when this place was first a construction site, back in the late forties.
I expected to find Genny caps in there but had never seen the “Ale” cap. I used to like Ma’s Root Beer and I sort of remember their “Imitation Cherry Soda” but we called soda “pop” around here and still do as a matter of fact. Interesting they would use the word “Imitation.” Now days they would just call it “Cherry Soda.” The Royal Crown, Squirt and 7up were all national brands. I don’t remember “Cliquot Club Pale Dry” from Rochester’s Qualtop Beverages and I don’t remember “Park Club Beverages” either.
