Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
It Better Be
Kids still play hockey on frozen lakes. The world is not completely upside down yet. We skied up to the lake, the big lake, the one they used to call Lake Ontario but in the spirit of Manifest Destiny we have renamed “Lake New York.” We have just a few more days of below freezing temperatures and we’re going to enjoy every bit of it.
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We were just getting so we could remember our new neighbors’ names. Alliteration like ours and Dan and Diana across the street. They had only been here a year. We learned Chris had passed suddenly at 71 so we stopped down to give our condolences to his wife. As we walked up to their house we saw this hawk perched on a branch above. It looked right at us, posed for a photo and then took flight. Carol was still in shock and we felt so sorry for her.
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We sent out holiday cards this year, first time in years, and when we saw Kathy at the Margaret Explosion gig on Friday she told us our card looked just like one of the photos we had taken in Spain. Kathy is a craftswoman, a hands-on sort and creative. I said, “it is one of my photos.” I didn’t want to read too much into it but it was clear Kathy didn’t know we had the cards made. That fact would have been obvious if we hadn’t cut the cards in half before mailing them out.
I did commercial art my whole working life and I remember how much pressure was relieved when websites came along. If you made a mistake on a project you could just hop online and fix it unlike a print job where you had to eat 10,000 catalogs with the wrong phone number printed on it. Well, we did the mechanical files for our Christmas card, a 7″w x 10″h piece that folds horizontally to 7″w x 5″h, and uploaded it in a flash. Only when the box of cards arrived did I discover we had backed the card up wrong. When we opened the card Eduardo Chillida’s quote, (“Isn’t planning a way to steal the present’s greatest mission?”) was upside down. Considering that quote was so fitting to our lack of planning we debated whether to send them out that way and hope someone got the joke or, as we decided, to cut the cards in half so the image was on the front and quote on the back.
We did receive another comment on the card. John Gilmore emailed us. “Thanks for the card. Perplexing I must say.”
Happy Holidays!
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If you can’t make it to the Nam June Paik show at the Memorial Art Gallery you owe it to yourself to watch “Edited for Television,” a 1975 glimpse into the artist’s life at the height of his creative output. But then you would miss his works on paper dedicated to John Cage. You have until May 4, 2025 to see the show. The video looks a lot better over there too.
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You know how a retiree’s calendar can have big blocks of emptiness and then everything at once? Thursday was one of those days. It’s a First Friday now and we are staying in. We have the red lights on for an Atletico Madrid Copa del Rey match.
Years ago my father spearheaded a movement to save an old farmhouse in Brighton. He and a small group of residents formed an organization called Historic Brighton and Leo Dodd was elected as their first president. Peggi and I did the logo and the website in the early years. My sister, Amy, is now the president of the ever-growing group and they held a special event on Thursday in the now restored Buckland House where eight of Leo’s paintings of old Brighton will be on permanent display. Of course nothing is permanent as my father discovered.
Ray Tierney found donors to pay for the framing and I hung the eight paintings before the unveiling. It was fun to spend some time with them again. All were painted during a twenty year period when my father and I were in Fred Lipp’s class at the MAG. We students all worked on paintings at home and met once a week for feedback. No painting was done before Fred said it was “Done.” And it was often before you wanted it to be done. “Painting is not the execution of a plan” Fred would say.
The mayor, other Brighton dignitaries and members of Leo’s family were there for the opening of “Leo Dodd Paintings at the Buckland Farmhouse.” Leo would have been so proud.
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When Steve Hoy was in town he would sit in the front seat while Peggi drove and I rode in the back. Not that we did that much driving. We took him out to the airport for his trip back and he learned his flight was delayed because of fog. We didn’t see any fog so he suspected some sort of ruse. It was trash day in the city so the streets were aligned with garbage totes and boxes. Steve said, “Americans need to learn how to break down cardboard.” I jotted it down.
Peggi and I were scheduled for physicals this week and made the appointments back to back. Peggi went first and I sat in the waiting room. I was reading the paper but I was also enjoying the banter between the two receptionists and the calls they were fielding. At one point one of them said, “Alexa, play instrumental music” and that ruined the mood in a hurry.
I was reading how Aaron Rogers, the conspiracist/quarterback for the NY Jets, threw a Hail Mary pass to rattle the Bills at the end of the first half in their game last week. They make a big deal about him being 40 years old. Luka Modric, the Croatian midfielder for Real Madrid, is nearing forty and he is clearly at the top of game. His position as the midfield playmaker is very similar to the quarterback’s role and it is very nice thinking about aspects of your game that can get better with age.
I had a little trouble getting to sleep last night, a lot of things on my mind, and I tried counting to four as I inhaled and then to five as I exhaled. I spent some time thinking about why the one number would be lower than the other. And I thought of the Hail Mary, something I used to be able to say in seconds in grammar school. I struggled to get the verses and had to check online this morning to see if I still had it. It is really a beautiful prayer.
It had rained all day Monday and through the night. We were watching “The Terror” on Netflix and the wind outside, coupled with the rain and acorns falling on our metal roof added to the oddly cozy, marooned in the Arctic on an 1850 war ship, period piece. I was up early on Tuesday and had already made coffee. I was working on a blog post when our power went off. We made a fire in the fireplace and moved chairs to the window so we could read the paper. RGE estimated a thousand people were out of power.
The power came back on around noon and we went out for a walk. We were almost to the park when someone on an eBike stopped near us. He told us his battery display was acting up and he wasn’t sure he could make it down to the lake and back without running out of juice. God forbid he’d have to peddle. He told us he had passed a huge, fallen tree somewhere after Walgreens on his way down Culver. We changed directions and walked through the woods and out to Culver to see if we could find that tree.
A few blocks south of Titus we spotted the scene above. I remember how we felt when one of our trees fell across the road and blocked in or out traffic for twenty five neighbors for most of a day. We have talked to the woman who lives in this house on our walks up to Wegman’s and I feel her pain. The fallen tree cut the power line as it fell and luckily it did not fall on their home.
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I don’t remember giving Dave copies of the cd compilations I did back. . . when was that when we got our first cd writer? I remember hiring Kevin Condo to come over to our house with his equipment and we watched him write a cd of graphic arts files. It seemed like magic. I did the compilations as “Sam Patch,” because I dj’d a few times under that name, and I named the cds alphabetically but only got as far as the “F Word” before cds were passé. I submitted the Sam Patch series to Apple Music but only 37 of the 89 songs were accepted.
In our time on this planet we are lucky to meet someone who is larger than life, out of the ordinary, like a rich, well developed character from a novel. It just happens. It is a gift. Carrol Hall took care of Dave Ripton near the end and she sent some pages Dave wrote for us. He framed the passages around the two Sam Patch cds. (I made one redaction.)
“(for Paul & Peggi)
Apostle-Pt.1
Collection of dead faces beneath acrylic varnish, begging.
Within slow montage, rack-focused edits from face to face, soundtrack
Of Apostle recalibrates time and tries to repair the damage that MTV
Has caused with the disease of jump-cut it thoughtlessly spread.
When Sun Ra makes his 2cd Coming, I have faith, the both of you will
Be pulled up from this terminal planet and spared from disintegration.
If Death gets to you first, I beg of Christ that you die together.
My concept of True Love is based upon the example that you’ve set.
Your wise smiles ever-floating just slightly out of focus in me.
Birdbrain -Pt.6-13
I am guilty of spousal abuse. I confess this sin to you because I need
To feel deeply ashamed, your opinion of me matters, I have to tell you.
My partner lied to me many times. Fear of getting older, combined with
Drug-induced impotency, used my growing distrust of her to fuel episodes
Of jealous savagery against her. I believed she was fucking around on me
And it caused me to explode into psychotic rage. I thank God she wasn’t
Injured, physically, at least. The spiritual toll is unmeasurable.
Birdbrain Pt.4.0
Your hands are like two shovels/ digging into me…
Apostle Pt.2
Dark Bug Jar circle of Margaret Explosion orbiting wildly as Ginsberg
Was dying in NYC. Grass brownies dropped me into visions of an unlit
Foreign jail cell where I screamed loud and long enough to summon you
All for protection, and ultimately, for escape. Later I drove home
And smiled upon hearing the bad news.
Birdbrain-Pt.3
I force myself to believe in a peaceful afterlife where the secret
Roots of my sins will be explained and forgiven. I will see you two there
Apostle-Pt.1 1/2
I have tasted your disappointment in me. Addiction, like Love, cannot
Be explained or experienced second-hand. I have sacrificed everyone and
Everything of value in the dead pursuit of intoxication. No degree of
Respect or acceptance ever came close to the rush of shame or the high
Of alienation that I’ve wrapped around my carcass for its thin warmth.
I have fought myself, tried to be as honest as I could. Truth is the
First fatality of addiction, knowing that, I’ve struggled to be truthful,
Even though it has cost me dearly. As a young teenager I was asked what
My future goals were during a conference with a guidance counselor.
I answered his question saying I wanted to be the lead singer of a band
And a heroin addict. Gratefully, I never abandoned my Dreams, not very
Many people can claim that, which is nice.
Apostle-Pt.1969 (Rochester, NY)
When, and if, Jimi paid his visit to Son House- I bet he felt like a
Fucking poser. Stretch limo sliding through Niggertown to pay respect.
I’d feel like an asshole; wouldn’t you?
Birdbrain-Rows: G-W(Mezzanine Level)
I had attained invisibilty through strenuous spellcasting and various
Nauseating and dangerous potions. “Look here/To what I’ve wrote on my
Shirt:.” I watched you perform at the ’83 Grammys- front row, center.
I assumed, incorrectly, that Peggy played a clarinet. I had to be unseen,
Due to outspoken contempt for New Wave bands- I was a rabid Dead Boys fan
And risked getting killed if any another scumbags spotted me there.
I enjoyed PE, in spite of myself. Those five Grammies were deserved, kids.
When I realized I was materializing back to visibilty- I panicked and
Quickly dropped to my knees, …pretended to blow a couple of A&R guys.
I think one of them was Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, but I’m not 100% positive.”
Dave, We’ll see you in “the peaceful afterlife.”
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The timing of the Paw Paw Party at Coleen’s could not have been better. The morning was warm and sunny. So warm in the sun that we hung around the pool watching the Tulip tree leaves collect on the winter cover after we covered the flower pots, piled the tables and chairs under a tarp and turned off the heater for the winter. Peggi and I took a walk that finished at the garden and brought home a sweater full of peppers, arugula and salad fixings and then headed downtown. Colleen had three paw paws ready for us to sample.
We started with the dark skinned one. It was especially softe and overripe. The fruits sweet but tasted like it had starting to ferment. The second brown skinned specimen, also the consistency of custard, tasted like passion fruit. Delicious. It surly was at peak. The third was still firm so we brought it and the seeds home with us. The party was short as Coleen’s dog had to go out. The clouds darkened and It started to rain as we said goodbye.
The fruit came from a tree that grows near the public market and Colleen and Hucky got them from a vendor there. They gave us some seeds last year and we have a paw paw tree growing in our backyard now. We sang the song in grade school but never came across one. A lifetime later we discovered a tree in the park. Peggi submitted a photo to iNaturist and an Associate Professor of Geography at SUNY Geneseo contacted her to say even though Pawpaw is native to our area it is quite rare in NYS. It is classified as a threatened-species designation. Pawpaws produce the largest edible fruit of all native tree species in the United States.
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Earlier this month the Landmark Society conducted a tour of the Gibbs Street, Selden Street and Grove Place neighborhood just a few blocks from the Eastman Theater. Along with six spectacularly renovated apartments we toured The Center For the Study of Civil and Human Rights Laws, a civil rights museum in what was once Susan B. Anthony’s lawyer’s (Samuel Selden) home.
The 4,000 square foot building located at 18 Grove Place serves as the office of Van White, currently a Monroe County Assistant District Attorney, formerly School Board President for the Rochester City School District, Chair of the Council of Urban School Boards Association and Director of the National School Boards Association.
Motivated by his father’s experiences of discrimination and his participation in the March on Washington in 1963 White embarked on a journey to preserve his father’s memory by collecting books and photographs from that pivotal time. His thriving civil rights law practice allowed him to build his collection with memorabilia like Martin Luther King’s pool table, a recreation of the lunch counter at Woolworth’s and a bus from the same fleet as the one Rosa Parks sat on.
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The last time we visited the 1821 Brighton Cemetery was with my father as a guide. We placed our order at Canaltown yesterday and while Pete was packaging it up we walked over here. The cemetery is two hundred years old and with the help of the “Leo Dodd Fund,” Brighton Cemetery is now a designated landmark of the City of Rochester.
Just steps into the cemetery, at the end of Hoyt Place overlooking the Eastern Expressway and the former Erie Canal bed, you’ll spot names that are very familiar to locals. Penfield, Blossom, Watson and Hungerford. William Bloss, a tavern owner turned temperance advocate fought against slavery and for the right of women to vote. There is a monument to him and his wife Mary near the entry gate. I love the inscription below Mary’s face.
“Oh blessed harvest yet to be
Abide thou with the love that keeps
In its warm bosom tenderly
The life that wakes and that which sleeps”
The owners of the former brickyards in Brighton are all buried here with their families. Abner, Leonard, Amos and Hobart Buckland. Although we have no photos of these. In retirement, my father unearthed the history of Brighton’s brickyards and created portraits of the former owners.
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If you walk every day you crave variety. We take various routes to the lake and sometimes walk in the neighborhoods. We don’t walk in the woods as much as we used to because of the prevalence of ticks. When we get out for an errand during the day we take a walk while we are out. When we go to the Co-Op we park in their lot and walk around downtown before shopping (and visiting Pete and Gloria.) We brought pimientos to my brother’s corn roast and left our splatter screen there. So we returned the next day and took a walk in the park near his house. My brother has never set foot in there.
You used to see abandoned farm equipment and automobiles in farmer’s fields all the time. It is a long decay process for cars and I’m certainly not the only one who finds them beautiful. Four Mile Creek winds its way through this Preserve and then crosses under Lake Road and passes between the funky cottages and Hedges Restaurant before it flows into Lake Ontario.
The decomposing cars in there bring a sense of history to the woods. Today’s cars with their transistors, plastic parts and forever chemicals would look hideous in the woods.
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We had more fun last week than we have in a long time. We had swim dates at the neighborhood pool with three different sets of kids. Melissa, who plays cello with Margaret Explosion, brought her kids on Tuesday afternoon. Jeff and Mary Kaye brought their two grandchildren over on Thursday and my sister brought three of our niece’s children over on Friday. We played Marco Polo for four hours! Penelope told her father “it was the best day ever” when she got home.
Phillipe Petite’s feat made it into The “Guinness “World Record Holders” book. I had a paperback copy of the book and made a series of paintings based on the book. Done very quickly I used house paint on the back of big billboard sheets that I used to get from Dave Mahoney‘s father. The paintings were shown in 1989 at the cavernous Pyramid Arts Center in Village Gate. John Worden was the director and Kathy Russo the assistant. She brought Spaulding Gray up here and left town with him. They spent the rest of his life together. It is so easy to digress.
Phillipe Petite will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this feat in a performance in Manhattan this week. If you haven’t seen the 1984, Academy Award-winning documentary, “Man on Wire” now would be a good time to track that down.
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It was hotter than the Fourth of July this fourth. We walked to the lake, lounged at the pool and watched France beat Belgium in the Euros. We are all in for Spain in this one. Our favorite players from La Liga are all on the national team. Young for the most part, really young – Lamine Yamal joined FC Barcelona’s youth academy when he was seven years old. He’s a sixteen year old wunderkind now. Peggi made Shrimp Adobo from our Miami Spice cookbook. We watched “The Stones and Brian Jones” after dinner and then fireworks from the town hall out on our deck.
We found obituaries from two people we know/knew in the paper. We first met Julie when she was going out with Brian from the Paper Faces. As HiTechs, we shared gigs with Faces in Buffalo and here. Peggi remembers dancing with Julie when Brian Horton’s band was playing at the Firemen’s Exempt on Saint Paul. She took her bra off while dancing and Peggi still doesn’t know how she managed to do that. Her funeral mass is Monday.
We got another call for help from our friend, John. He’s been having a hard time lately and he got too weak to get out bed. I microwaved a Chicken Teriyaki package for him, washed his dishes and fetched him a clean pair of underwear.
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Chris threw a “grill thing” in his backyard, just blocks from where I grew up in the city. He picked a rainy day but we surmounted it by hanging out under a tarp and in his detached garage where he was cranking the tunes, old WAYO radio shows of his. Arpad and Danita were there, Joe from Nod, Gary from New Math, Pete and Gloria, Kathy and Jan and Chris’s brothers, the Floating Anvils.
The Schepps grew up in West Irondequoit and Joe lives there now. We spent some time discussing the difference between East and West Irondequoit. We couldn’t come up with much other than different water districts. Our water meter recently stopped working. Sea Breeze Water Authority sent us an email that read, “Either no-one is living at the this address or the water meter is broken because it has had the same reading for six months. Please call our office.” Someone came out a few days ago and fixed it and told us we probably wouldn’t be charged for the water we used in that period.
Irondequoit is a Native American word for “where the land and waters meet.” The town is bordered by Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, Irondequoit Bay, Lake Ontario and the City of Rochester. It is close to heaven.
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I had dream that Peggi and I were working with someone who was doing orchestral arrangements for songs on the new Margaret Explosion record. We just sent sixteen files across town to Arpad for post production and I’m afraid the dream came out of the hours I’ve spent editing the live songs. I’m kinda stuck on the orchestration idea now.
Peggi and I drove our friend, John, down to his doctor in Geneseo, a small college town about an hour south of here. We hadn’t been down here in years. My brother Mark went to school here. He roomed with Chuck Cuminale, aka Colorblind James. We drove past John’s old house on Triphammer Road and stopped to look at the new metal roof and red door. John built the place with the help of his friends back in the day. Peggi and I will never forget his party when the house was finished. John, shirtless, sitting up on the hood of a car, singing “Crown of Creation” at the top of his lungs while the driver circled the house. We drove past the Statesman where John and Catherine used to play pool every other Friday and dropped John off at his doctor.
While he was in the doctor we went down Main Street and stopped in Sundance Books and Buzzo’s Music. I studied a promo shot of a young Buzzo playing trumpet with a jazz band while his assistant went in back to bring out a box of 45s. I found a KC and the Sunshine band single and a George Jones song. On the way home we stopped at Schaller’s so John could pick up a bacon cheeseburger for dinner.
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There are three generations in this photo and it is only one side of the family. My maternal grandparents are sitting in the middle surrounded by their five children and their spouses (the next generation) and all of their grandchildren at the time (my youngest sister was not even born). The grandchildren shown here have their own families now and some of their children have children. The grandchildren in this photo are sitting in my grandparents’ shoes now because the last of the middle generation, my parents’ rung, is gone. My Uncle Bob, one of our favorites, shown top row, fourth from the left standing next to my mom, has passed away. We’re heading to Niagara Falls for the funeral.
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Our second (and final) stint of storage locker duty fell on an absolutely gorgeous day. There was frost on the grass inside the wire fence that surrounds this complex and the sky was perfectly blue. The grass under the fence, about six inches away on either side, was dead. It had obviously been sprayed with a nasty chemical. When we were out here last month we FaceTimed with a representative of the moving company. They wanted to see the boxes of the locker so they could provide a quote for shipping the contents to our friends in Hawaii. This time we we stood there as they logged each box in a notebook and slowly loaded them onto a truck bound for the west coast. These were hourly employees, in no hurry at all, just putting in their eight hours. I stepped outside, determined to find a photo, and I struck gold.
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Glorious spring days like this one could convince you. Cherry trees in full blossom line a stretch of Log Cabin Road. We stood under this one for quite a while as it was alive with bees, butterflies and color. Up on Zoo Road we found the most of the white magnolias over already. The wind and rain of the last few days hurried them along. But the pink and yellow ones are still gearing up. We continued on through the fruticetum where fruit trees of all sorts were beginning to show their stuff.
The park is understaffed by design these days but they manage to get the job done. We run into volunteers, master gardeners and members of the Cornell Cooperative Extension, all the time as rid evasive species from portions of the park. They’re always ready to take a break and talk about weeds. They update the park kiosks as well with information about seasonal features of the park. Today we read how to distinguish cherry trees from apple trees by their bark.
These people have a sense of humor too. Under the photo of horizontal lines in the cherry tree’s bark they had this passage. “And the myth about George Washington and the cherry tree – exactly that. In the story Washington damaged a cherry tree with his hatchet. When questioned by his father, he said “I cannot tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” The story was invented by a posthumous biographer to demonstrate Washington’s honesty.”
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