Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
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.
Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
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.
Abandoned car in Four Mile Creek Preserve, Webster
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.
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.
“Highest Tightrope Walk” Guinness World Record Holders by Paul Dodd. Paintings from 1989 Pyramid Arts Center show. Acrylic house paint on billboard paper, 54″ wide by “60” high.
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.
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.
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.
Turkey vulture with dead raccoon on Triphammer Road
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.
Standing, left to right: Mark Dodd, Paul Dodd, Greg Williams, Chris Williams, Ray Tierney, Leo Dodd with Fran Dodd in his arms, Mary (Tierney) Dodd, Bob Oliver, Jack Williams, Ray Tierney Jr., Rita (Ritzenthaler) Tierney, Jerry Austin, Mary Austin, Jim Austin, Martha (Tierney) Kolb, Ed Kolb, Kathleen Kolb, Debby Tierney, Nancy Kolb, Patty Tierney, Janet Kolb, Ann Dodd, Ann Williams, Theresa Austin. Seated: Far left, John Oliver, Ann (Tierney) Oliver, Isabel (Tierney) Williams, Ray Tierney Sr., Mary (Maime) Tierney, Rita (Tierney) Austin, Dick Austin. Between the tables, back row: Jim Williams, John Dodd, Mary Williams, Mary Ann Oliver, Catherine Oliver, Gerard Kolb, Tim Dodd. Front row: Tom Williams, Liz Tierney, Rosemary Tierney.
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.
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.
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.”
We had no idea Peggi’s sister was an umbraphile. The day she arrived from LA it was snowing and when we dropped her off at the airport this morning the temperature was headed into the mid seventies. In between we had some gorgeous spring weather except for that one window when the moon passed in front of the sun. We walked in different directions each day scoping out locations to watch the eclipse from and settled on this spot overlooking Pat Lake.
About a dozen people were gathered around a tripod on the north side of the lake when we arrived. We watched a man sit back in his lounge chair just as it collapsed to the ground and we struck up a conversation with a woman from Oakland, California. These people were settling in with food and blankets while we sat on a bench under this tree. We couldn’t even tell where the sun was without an app so I scurried home and grabbed some cheese, crackers and a beer to split. We never put our glasses on but we’ve seen that bit before. The real kick was how quickly it got dark, like a full scale, real time lapse. There is a marsh right next to the lake and the peepers started singing within seconds. It was magical.
Our morning walk took us past these Easter decorations. Easter, originally a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, has been suplanted by a pagan celebration of spring. Not complaining, it is more fitting, just too cute. It is why Pope John Paul II tacked a 15th station of the cross onto the Passion Play. A happy but implausible ending. I prefer the gospel of Thomas (no miracles please). I was born on the feast day of St. Paul of the Cross (Italian mystic and founder of the Passionists), named after him. Father Shannon brought home a relic of St. Paul for me when he was in Italy, a tiny carbon piece in a plastic case, and I still get my feathers ruffled when people mess with the all too human story.
My brother, who converted to Judaism, was up here over Christmas and we were talking about the way we used to celebrate Christmas. He and his wife have been to Jerusalem and he was trying to remember why it was that Jesus was supposed to have been born there. His family was traveling there to pay their taxes.
All nonsense. When he returned home he did some research and sent up a link to a 2010 New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnikis. “The intractable complexities of fact produce the inevitable ambiguities of faith.” Gopnikis sifted through what historians do agree on. “All the Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death; all were written in Greek, which Jesus and the apostles didn’t speak and couldn’t write (if they could read and write at all); and they were written as testaments of faith, not chronicles of biography, shaped to fit a prophecy rather than report a profile.”
In 1999 I entered an early version of Passion Play in the Rochester Finger Lakes exhibition and they won both The Averill Council of the Memorial Art Gallery Award and the Harris Popular Vote Award. Ron Netsky, reviewing the show in a City Newspaper wrote: “One of the largest works in the show is Paul Dodd’s Passion Play, consisting of 14 digital ink-jet prints. There are a lot of recognizable images here, mostly convicted or accused killers: the Unibomber, Timothy McVeigh, O.J. Simpson. They are mixed in with popular icons like McDonald’s golden arches and images of Father Callan and Corpus Christi Church. But none of it adds up to much. Reading the artist’s statement makes the work even more muddled: “I read the New Testament accounts and then looked for a modern-day Christ figure”: O.J? McVeigh? I think Dodd could have looked harder.” I agree, it was muddled – “the inevitable ambiguities of faith,” and it would be more muddled today.
In his “The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement” article in the NYT Michael Bender writes Trump recites from a teleprompter at his rallies, “We will pray to God for our strength and for our liberty. We will pray for God and we will pray with God. We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.”
“They’ve crucified him worse than Jesus,” says Andriana Howard, 67, who works as a restaurant food runner in Conway, S.C.
“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways,” Scorsese told the newspaper. “But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life – even in rejecting it.” That is a quote from Martin Scorsese talking about his series, “The Saints,” which will air in November, dramatizations of the stories of eight saints including Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Becket. What I particularly like about this quote is the “even in rejecting it” part. That was so much a part of my Catholic education.
And I believe thinking your way out of the box was the lesson. When we were young we were taught that Jesus died for our sins. I couldn’t figure out why he would do that but the mystery was part of the package. If he was willing to be crucified then the least we could do was give up candy during Lent. We spent a lot of time in church during Holy Week when the 14 stations of the cross took on special significance as they depicted the ritual killing of our so-called savior that happened this week a long time ago.
The whole story is so old it can’t be verified or fact checked. And it was clearly tailored toward increasing the flock. Still, the Passion story is a lot to chew on. I set out to do a modern day version and collected pictures from the front page of the newspaper on Good Fridays. As I understand it neither Ted Kaczynski nor OJ were beyond redemption. I turned the source material into collages. I posted the twelfth station from that 1998 series yesterday. Over time I simplified the whole matter with Passion Play.
During the warm spell we got the first stage of our garden in. Kale, collard greens, arugula, spinach and lettuce seeds are in the ground. It was so nice, we continued working in the yard for two weeks before winter returned.
Our property got a bit smaller over the winter. Our neighbors had a big oak fall over and into their neighbors’ (on the other side) yard. They were responsible for cleaning up the mess but they were uncertain where their property line was on that side so they had their property surveyed. It turns out the row of Hemlocks between our two houses, the ones we had been treating in a losing battle with the woolly adelgid, actually belonged to our neighbors. The trees had bitten the dust so they had them taken down. It took us two days to move the deer fence (that we always assumed was on the property line) over the stumps and onto the new property line.
We had a suspicion that the magnolias may have popped before the snow fell so we walked up to the park today and sure enough they were.
About twenty years ago I bought three carousels of 35 mm slides at a garage sale on my parent’s street. I remember the woman who sold me the slides saying her relative had travelled all over the world. She had passed away and she was clearing out the house. A few of the slides pictured the woman above. I’m guessing she was the photographer. I put about thirty of her photos on my Found Photos page today.
Ripton with Hotheads poster for Halloween Bug Jar gig
I did this poster for a Halloween Ripton gig at the Bug Jar. Came across it in a search for Ripton. Must have been somewhere in the nineties. I played drums in Dave’s band for a while. Dave sat in with Margaret Explosion a few times in the early days and we plan to pay tribute to him tonight. Todd Beers will read one of Dave’s poems and we’ll burn a candle for him.
Dave Ripton self-portrait poster for Margaret Explosion tribute
In a recent Facebook post Dave described Margaret Explosion as a “Two hour dreamscape.” I wish I was dreaming and Dave wasn’t dead.
Dave Ripton at the Bug Jar in the 90’s
Listen “Idaho” by Dave Ripton from “Poetry Sucks Me”Leave a comment
Rebecca LaFevre painting in Rochester Contemporary Members Show
“Untitled 002 with yellow” is my favorite painting in RoCo’s annual Members Exhibition. Show runs through February 10. It’s a good one.
Suspicion and speculation clouded our recent conversations with neighbors. Someone’s dog was leaving piles in the road. Not formed but soft-like mounds. Jared’s grandkids stepped in it when they throwing a football around. We spotted some in front of our house but didn’t think much of it. Monica probably didn’t want us to think it was their dog – the piles were too big for Domino so he was off the hook – and she speculated that it might be a coyote. We hear them all the time but hardly ever see them. Over the weekend Jared found a dead coyote behind his shed. He said it looked like old age had caught up with the greying animal. Peggi and I went down to look at it. It’s frozen and intact. Animal Control was called but they probably have the day off for the holiday.
Before posting my mail art collection the other day I looked everywhere for my favorite postcard, one we had hanging on our refrigerator for years, the one that had Peggi’s mom in hysterics. But no luck. I did find a low res version of front and I’m posting it here.
Our refrigerator was stuffed before the holidays and nearly empty yesterday. A trip to Wegmans was in order. The battery in the key fob was low so we changed that before getting in the car. We watched a YouTube video on how to get it open. I used my knife and the fob fell apart in our hands. All the little plastic buttons fell on the counter. I placed them back in their slots and inadvertently set off the car alarm. I looked out and saw a delivery truck in the driveway. The driver was afraid to get out of his truck while the alarm was sounding. We opened the car door and the alarm stopped.
We put the fob back together with the new battery and got in the car to go to Wegmans. The car wouldn’t start and the dashboard display cycled through a series of warnings. We went back in the house and called Triple A. We have been members for years and have never used the service. An attendant was here in twenty minutes and he ran a few tests on our battery with his phone. He told us we had about twenty per cent left in the battery and we should be ok for a while.
We went up to Wegmans, saw the guitar player from Joywave in the produce department and we spent a couple of hundred dollars on the basics. We loaded up the car and it wouldn’t start. We called Triple A again and the same guy showed up. He gave us a jump again and suggested we go to Autozone for a new battery. 2024 is off to a good start!
Double self portrait by Dave Ripton and Todd Beers 1992
Cheryl Laurro was the queen of Monroe Avenue back in the nineties. Her clothing store, Godiva’s, functioned like a coffee bar with no coffee. Conversation was the main item on the menu, then music by her latest infatuation. She was a big booster of local artists, poets and writers. She released a series of cassette tapes, all produced by Arpad, by local musicians. My favorite was by Dave Ripton, “Poetry Sucks Me.”.
Peggi and I bought the painting above after seeing it in Cheryl’s shop. Later we got to know both Dave and Todd. Peggi and I backed Todd in a series of poetry readings and I played drums in Ripton’s band. Dave was as much a poet as a musician. He tore it up at a Water Street gig I played with him. Every encounter with Dave since the nineties was meaningful. He made it so.
Dave Ripton cleaning our soffits in 2023
Dave moved to Maine for years and ditched most of his bad habits. He painted houses there and we hired him this summer when he returned. It was a treat spending time with him. He asked me if I ever go down a street and think, this is the last time I’m gonna drive down this street? I said, yeah, sometimes. He said “that’s “Black Irish. I do it all the time.” He became somewhat of a regular at Margaret Explosion shows again. I hugged him at the November gig and he was all bones. I held my tears. We heard he was coming to the Christmas show but . . .
Dave Ripton playing with Ani DiFranco at the Tralfamadore in Buffalo 1996. Photo by Arpad.
Listen “Idaho” by Dave Ripton from “Poetry Sucks Me”
Nobody knows for sure but it is generally accepted that Christ was born between 6 BC and 4 BC, the year in which King Herod died. This makes the whole AD, BC timeline a bit suspect. For instance in ten days we will be ringing in the year 2028, 29 or 30 AD. And when Christ became famous enough the powers that be planted his birth day near the winter solstice.
We picked the last of our collards and kale before the snow fell and brought home a big bag of arugula and lettuce. This fall has been unusually warm but the solstice will arrive on schedule and we plan to celebrate. I’m down with the Mayans who saw winter solstice as a time of renewal and rebirth.
Corrine, Gary, Peggi and Kevin in our backyard on Dartmouth Street
I have a flat file drawer labeled “Stuff to Save” that I have stuffed stuff to its limit. I took everything out. I’m at an age where I should be throwing most things out so this will be time consuming. I came across an old photo from Martin’s wedding. Pat Mosch looked so thin. Sitting next to him was Brian Horton, Ted Williams and Sue Schepp. Only Pat remains.
We ran into Brenda down by the lake today. She lives farther away than we do so we were sort of impressed. She’s only baking at Atlas Eats three days a week now as the owners are cutting back on the hours. Peggi congratulated her and said, “People are dropping all around us.”
Dee Generate, 15 year old drummer for Eater. Photo by Corrine Meiji Patrick
Corrine recently joined that club. Last time we saw here was in the Fifth Avenue Apple where she worked. When we first met her she was working Rochester One Stop, supplying djs and the local record shops. She worked for my uncle at the 12 Corners Super Duper for a while. Corrine was a great photographer, even worked for Varden Studios here as their touch-up artist. She taught me how to push film speeds beyond their limit and gave us some gorgeous photos of early Patti Smith in low light. Her father installed a hot water tank in our house. Brought it down in the basement by himself.
Corrine and Kevin spent some time in London when it was the center of the universe. I’m sure she charmed Dee Generate, the drummer Eater before taking this shot. She was good at that and just as good at calling out bullshit. She was one of a kind.
