Girls running on path in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester NY
We read on the couch and listened to the rain last night and made what might be our last fire in the fireplace until Fall. Tomorrow morning we open the street pool. The temperatures are are headed up for the next five days. Rick kicked my ass in horseshoes after work today. We plan to see Ken Frank’s other band play tonight. Gotta bring earplugs for that. I’ve switched to kids opaque watercolors and plan to paint for a bit before heading out. I’ll report back on these earth-shattering events.
We took a walk with Jim Mott who is staying at our house as part of his “Itinerant Artist in Metropolitan Rochester Series”. Jim’s attention was focused on the Warblers who pass through this area when the trees start to fill out. That explosion of green brings the bugs that the Warblers feed on. When Peggi spotted this baby deer near a tree, trying to stand for what looked like the first time, Jim had his field glasses trained on a distant bird. He told us he was more distracted than ever while painting in our front yard this morning because of all the bird activity. He saw or heard ten different kinds of Warblers along with an Oriole and an Indigo Bunting.
Jim painted a beautiful picture of the chairs in the front of our house. It is gorgeous and I think he knows it. It has been a pleasure to meet Jim and hang out with him. I heard a lecture he gave at the MAG a few years ago and Peggi and I went out to his show at MCC last year but we really didn’t know him. Funny how that changes when someone moves in for a few days. He told us he was a fan the Refrigerator when it was a print publication and he had heard Peggi and I backing Pete LaBonne at the old Jazzberries many years ago. And he reminded me that I wrote something he liked about his lecture. I had forgotten how charming it was to see and hear him talk about one subject while showing ppt slides that had no relation to what he was talking about.
The deal that we took Jim up on is this. We put him up for a few days. He paints, hangs out. We pick two paintings that we like from the batch that he does while here and from those two Jim will select the one for us. This whole experience would be worth it without the painting.Jim has traveled the country doing this and was featured on the Today Show a few years back.
I tried to help our neighbor, Leo, get his tractor started but his battery wouldn’t hold a charge. Leo himself has a similar problem. He told me, this getting old stuff is for the birds.” He managed to get his tires inflated but we couldn’t start the tractor. He says, “I used to be able to fix things” and I know this to be true. He used to have projects lined up on his workbench and most of them were for other people. He shook his head and said, “I’m getting dumber every day”.
Horace Furminger clown painting for Rick Simpson on his sixtieth birthday
I rode by a garage sale last summer and this painting was propped up against a table. It caught my eye from the street. It and another one were selling for twenty bucks. I said I only wanted the one and asked what the price was for that that. The woman said it would be twenty bucks so I stopped haggling and took out my wallet out. She told me she taught art at Irondequoit High School and she said she really liked the painting too. She had looked online for information on the artist, Horace Furminger, but couldn’t find anything. I rode home with the painting under my arm and showed it to Peggi.
It occurred to us that it would be a perfect gift for our friend and neighbor, Rick. He is a clown, went to school for it even, and already has a small collection of clown paintings. I had not seen clown paintings in a home since the paint by number ones Brad Fox’s father did when we were kids. Monica saw the painting in our living room and I told her I was thinking of giving it to Rick for his birthday. She didn’t seem to like it much.
Well today’s Rick’s 60th birthday and I plan to bring it over there tonight. People have been bugging me to paint something other than crime faces and I’m thinking if a clown series. I’d be lucky to do one as nice as this.
My new Obama health plan covers yearly physicals and I had one yesterday. The timing, so close to a significant birthday, made it feel like a test to see if I can handle the whole thing. So far, so good but the blood tests are still out. We walked up to the park to see if the yellow magnolias had opened and they have. We plan on celebrating tonight at the Little Theater. Peggi ordered a big cake. Stop out if you’d like a piece. Not sure who’s gonna be in the band tonight. It’s been been fun playing with James the piano player. If I’m lucky it will be all new and different for my birthday.
The Rochester Music Hall of Fame has a shindig this weekend and we were asked to do a site for them but we have had a hard time getting around to it. We dove in today and did it live. There’s not much up there but an announcement and a form but it’s a thrill building it while it’s live rather than offline. We just finished doing Buffalo’s PosterArtUSA that way. It’s an Xcart site with credit card authorization, and he got an order within minutes of pulling the secure transaction switch. We’re behind with a few other sites so I won’t link to them.
Mall workers on break at the outlet mall in Waterloo New York
We managed to get to the Outlet Mall in Waterloo without getting on the New York State Thruway. We followed a car with one of the new NY license plates, the retro looking yellow ones with blue lettering. This part of the state has more trailers than Bloomington Indiana. And for some reason, in the middle of nowhere, an abundance of storage lockers. What could possibly be inside these things? We rented one for a few months when we moved Peggi’s mom up here and they cost a fortune. “Mini Storage”. Self Storage”.
All of the stores carry essentially the same stuff. Only the music is different. It was kind of fun trying to figure out the demographic they were each going for. Does eighties music appeal to those who were there or today’s kids in the midst of some sort of resurgence? We had to make a phone call arrange assistance for Peggi’s mom and couldn’t find a phone out here. We may be the only people left on the planet without a cell phone. A clerk in Calvin Klein said he thought they still had one in the food court but that was about a mile away. So we did some mall walking.
I wanted to buy another pair of Timberland work/walking shoes (work as in the stuff you do outdoors) so headed to the Timberland Outlet. I tried one one shoe on and walked around a bit looking at others. I decided to go with the first pair. I had the other shoe in my hand. I was looking at it but I couldn’t find its mate. I asked a clerk if she had put it away and I got Peggi got involved in the hunt and then it dawned on me that I had the other one on my foot. The clerk looked at Peggi and said “You’ve got a lot lot to put up with”.
Saucer Magnolias in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
They call these Saucer Magnolias or Magnolia x soulangiana in Latin. Peggi is always looking at the little tags that the park people affix to the trees. She’ll recite Latin phrases all the way home so she can Google unusual tree specimens. It’s not surprising the Vatican still uses Latin when they want to shuffle sex offenders around. I hope they’re not done kicking the pope around. I want to see him cry “uncle” and make some changes to their men’s club.
Martin Edic sent us a link to a lady DJ who uses two iPads. I noticed YouTube has upped their limit to the size of movie uploads and this video Martin sent was about seventeen minutes long. What happened to that ten minute limit? The link made for a nice afternoon break.
I stuck the Facebook “Like logo” in my sidebar and clicked the blue thumb. I keep catching myself giving that goofy thumbs up sign. I gave it to James Nichols last night after a few songs. He sat in with the band and sounded great on the grand piano. Bob was off mending his back. Our neighbors have a house concert tomorrow and we might have dragged our feet too long because I heard it was sold out.
Ruth Bair, the drama teacher at R.L. Thomas, was so sweet. Irene (Palermo) emailed me that she had died and calling hours were held for her last night on Empire Boulevard. I learned that she continued teaching special needs children at St. Joseph’s Villa after her retirement. I too had special needs when she attempted to crack through my numbskull high school zombie state and on some level she succeeded.
She was an “open study hall” monitor when I met her and she decided I should be the lead in the upcoming production of “Teahouse of the August Moon”. I had never acted or even though of doing so. I was more of a clown although the real honors for that went to Jeff Munson.
I had a hard time taking the whole thing seriously and could not remember my lines. In a dress rehearsal before schoolmates I bounced from the first act to the third taking the entire cast with me and had to free associate to get back to the first act. I remember the drama assistant, Miss Brenda Dockery, taking me into her office to sit me down and look me straight in the eye and stress how important it was to the whole cast that I get serious and learn my lines. Somehow I got through but I know I was bad.
Ruth was fun loving and brave. She let us borrow her car during study hall. I remember taking it airborne on Pellet Road and slamming the bottom on the road on decent and then stopping at the Satellite on Ridge Road for a burger. But mostly I remember her making a real connection. Not many teachers could do this.
Old biker bar on Lake Avenue in Rochester New York
Trish, who’s married to one of the letters in “LDR” down at the Char Pit in Charlotte, says they tried to burn this old biker bar building down but it didn’t work. It’s a few doors down from the LDR and it looks like a Hollywood set. This whole part of town is kind of funky but LDR was hoppin’ when we stopped by for a Friday fish fry.
Pete LaBonne is visiting. He played with Margaret Explosion on Wednesday and has been preparing his 24 album “Gigunda” set for a digital release, 320 variable bit mp3s with the original cover art. I put a track from 1994 below. It’s sort of rude.
We watched the T.A.M.I. show dvd Wednesday and then again last night over in Rick and Monica’s basement. That thing is exhilarating. Watching James Brown I was thinking about how the husband of a childhood friend of Peggi’s. He was a huge fan of the Detroit Red Wings and had a heart attack while watching one of their games. The doctor ordered him not to watch any more games.
Easter lamb to the slaughter at Palermo’s on Culver Road in Rochester
My grandfather was a butcher so there is something very comforting about this photo. I used to love seeing him behind the counter and he would always pull on the big tubes of liver-sausage out of the case and slice a few slabs for me. I stopped into Palermo’s to buy some olives. Of course I picked up a few impulse items like freshly made octopus salad. While I was studying the options I spotted the owner throwing a whole lamb on the cutting board and before I could get my camera out of my pocket he had cut it’s head off. That’s the head shown to the left up above.
We had dinner with our friend and neighbor, Rick, and then raced downtown for the early show of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer“. The is over two hours so started at 6:30. We met Monica in the lobby. She had just come from her yoga class. And we took sets down front. We were a little late so it was sort of confusing at first but then moved along effortlessly. Polanski has made some of favorite movies, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, so was definitely not gonna be a “wait for Netflix.” He is a master in full control of this craft. Sparse but beautiful settings heighten the focus, rich characters whose performances stay with you when their parts have only a few lines and way of telling the story that lets all the movies that have gone before carry weight so you’re on the edge of your seat because you just know what’s coming and then something else happens. Ewan McGregor played a perfect ghost and even Pierce Brosnan was perfect.
We caught the second set of Miché and Scott Bradley at the Little and then headed over to Dick Storm’s 64th birthday celebration at the Flipside on East Main. Of course we all sang that McCartney song. And Jeff Spevak wrote about it all on the HerRochester page.
These Christian warriors’ heads look like specimens on a mad scientist’s shelf. I was really taken by this collection in this morning’s paper. I’m planning on painting them. And it has been so much fun to watch the pope squirm. Almost as much fun as watching the Code Pink woman accost Karl Rove in a Beverly Hills bookstore.
I did really simple photo site for our nephew last night. He’s uploading photos to it right now. It’s a one page site with links to photos that display themselves in a slideshow script called shadowbox 3.0. I really like it because he can put large full screen Flickr size photos up there and if the browser window isn’t big enough it scales them down. The site took about two hours to construct.
I love coincidences. Yesterday I took a photo of Rochester’s long gone train station and today we went to work on Mark Corsi’s PosterArtUSA’s site today and he has some posters of the Art Deco New York Central Terminal in Buffalo. It was abandoned in 1975 but was never torn down, probably because the city couldn’t afford to do so. Recently a historic preservation group has brought it back to life. Mark’s site will have Xcart installed so people can buy Buffalo posters while he sleeps.
Now all we need is that high speed train between Rochester and Buffalo that everybody keeps talking about.
Our friend Rich used to write the obit column for The Herald Telephone in Indiana. It was about that time that I put it together that people actually died.
Friday’s obits really got us going. I didn’t realize I had been so manipulated back when I wanted to sleep with my Davy Crockett coonskin cap on. Turns out, with over 3000 Disney/Crockett toys on the market, most kids in America had the same desire. I don’t remember having any of the other products though.
On the same page, right below the Fess Parker obit was Alex Chilton’s. I loved the songs he sang in the Box Tops and bought those singles but never caught on to Big Star. We absolutely loved the Cramps first singles and I knew Alex Chilton’s name was on those as producer. In fact, Peggi drove down with some friends to Max’s Kansas City to see the Cramps during that time period. I was in the studio that night with New Math recording our first single with Howard Thompson behind the boards so I missed the show. And I knew our friend Pete LaBonne played with Alex and would regularly send him his own releases. He and Shelley visited Alex backstage at one of the recent Box Top reunion shows. I played a few gigs with “Pete’s Rock Band” with Bruce Eaton on bass. Buffalo Bruce is a big Big Star fan and wrote the 33 1/3 book on “Radio City”, Big Star’s second album. Bruce wrote the Chilton obit for Salon Magazine.
So now that he is gone, just what was he all about. We downloaded about ten songs from various blogs and put them them in our iTunes library. The songs were pop and grungy and country and bluesy and all over the map. “September Gurls” is stuck in my head. And then I remembered Pete had given us a solo Chilton lp called “Like Sherbert on Flies”. Since he doesn’t have either electricity or a record player he asked us to keep it for him. We played both sides of this particularly odd record. It sounds sort of like Pete’s “Antique Revolt” and I know how that recording went. Pete bought some big cans of malt liquor and instructed Arpad to roll the tape.
On the editorial page of today’s paper Paul Westerberg wrote a piece on his mentor called “Beyond the Box Tops. He talked about Big Star and how Alex went on to record more challenging and artistic records “Like Flies On Sherbert.”
We spotted this dead mole in the woods and and Steve Hoy called us on Friday to tell us his mom had died. I feel especially lucky to be alive.
Pete and Shelley live in a dead zone and they like it that way. There are no cell towers near by and the mountains block the distant ones. There’s no electricity or running water either so well meaning family members give them battery operated toys. Last time we were up there I took this photo of Pete preparing food with a head lamp. And we came home with some coasters that Shelley’s sister gave them.
I read a small piece in our local paper (most of the pieces are small) about the government’s efforts to provide Internet access to all Americans and much faster connections to those of us who already have it. The article finished by saying the FCC was facing stiff opposition from broadcasters. So what are we to think about the Time Warner arrangement in this area where a giant media company controls our internet access? That’s an open question.
We switched to Time Warner’s digital phone service a couple of years ago and it has been pretty reliable. When our internet connection goes down it is usually just confused so I reboot the cable modem and routers and we’re back in business. Last week though that routine didn’t work. I picked up the phone to call Time Warner and it was dead too. I called Time Warner on a phone company land line and only got a recording saying they were “experiencing difficulties”. (I remember when the tv used to do that) Without internet access our small company ground to a halt. The rush revisions to a job we were working on couldn’t get through. We took a walk.
The next day our lawyer called from San Francisco. We were chatting and the line went dead. This usually happens when someone is on a cell phone and the signal is dropped but this time it was phone and internet problems in SF. Luckily we had already covered important matters like pre-ordering the iPad and finishing “Willmaker”, the 2006 Nolo publication that walks you through creating a will. Fortune magazine says “Willmaker is such an easy-to-use program that users may never need to look at the manual.” Sounds pretty easy and I committed to finishing the project but I can’t find the Quicken PC cd that came with the book/manual. I want to go on record saying “I leave everything to Peggi”!
Jaffe sat in with Margaret Explosion at our last gig and Peggi and I felt like the sound got to crowded and the conversation was all run-on sentences. It’s not Jaffe’s fault, it’s just a delicate thing. We thought the night pretty much sucked until we heard the recording. Funny how perception seems to carry so much weight.
Yellow flowers in the snow, March 10thWinter Aconite flowers in the snow, March 10th, 2010, Rochester, NY, 2010, Rochester, NY
The long cold winters in Rochester make for a dramatic Spring entry. The first sign for us is these yellow flowers popping out of the snow. We have a batch right near our work windows but there is still too much snow back there for flowers. We spotted these behind our house and were elated.
There is a sense of dread though when the weather breaks. Activities are piled on top of one another and it is almost impossible to get anything done. The winters here are perfect for holing up with indoor projects and I sense that season coming to a close.
Someone called this morning on our work line pretending to be happy because the sun was shining for like the seventh or eighth day in a row. I say “pretending” because the delight in the sunshine was wrapped in a a complaint about typical Rochester weather. I know some people suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder but if the sun is that big a deal leave. Why do we have hear about it? Go to Florida or South Carolina.
We spotted Monica coming out of the woods with the dogs so when we came across this in the middle of our ski path we knew this snowwoman was her handiwork. The snow had started to melt yesterday and then it froze again today so it was quite slippery. I fell three times before getting off our property but we stuck with it and then really zipped along in the relatively flat woods behind our house. It was warm in the sunny spots and we spotted a chipmunk surveying the landscape. They hibernate all winter and breed first thing in the Spring. Come to think of it, maybe that snowwoman is breeding.
Fallen tree on frozen Eastman Lake in Durand Eastman Park
We had been buried in work, a brochure for the Cancer Institute, and unable to get out for the last two days. But today we walked out of here just like that dramatic scene in “Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel” when the bourgeois party goers finally decide they are able to leave the house they have been holed up in for days. Well, it was almost that dramatic. There were plenty of fallen limbs in the woods as a result of the heavy snow we had over the weekend but the skiing was surprisingly good. We stopped along the path that follows the shoreline of Eastman Lake and I took this photo. This tree has been sticking out of the pond for years but it looked especially good to me today.
We’ve used a few different shopping carts over the years and Peggi has decided to give X-Cart a try on our newest project. She has chatted with and emailed the Russians that work for the company and they seem quite friendly. Not sure what that cold war was all about. You download and set up the software for free and you pay when you implement it. So far, so good.
Speaking of shopping carts – I grabbed one of the small ones over at Wegmans but I was shopping with two lists, one for us and one for Peggi’s mom. I filled the cart with Depends and Dr. Pepper. I wasn’t sure if the cashier could get all the groceries back in the cart so I apologized for filling up the buggy. Buggy? Where did that word come from? Another era and I was there.
Indiana had some fierce poison ivy. A girl I knew when I was going to school there got it so bad her eyes were swollen shut. When I was a kid I could pick it up and not get it but my body chemistry changed and I got it real good one year. We skied by this poison ivy voodoo like installation over the weekend. I would be afraid to even look at it in the summer. Our friend, Steve Hoy, told us poison ivy thrives where the earth has been tortured in some way. You see it on the side of roads where the highway department is continually cutting it back. It has a vengeful streak.
We sold two “Live Dive” cds to people in Germany in the last week. Can’t figure out what that is all about. I know Jack, who plays guitar with us often, loves Krautrock. Maybe they are returning the favor.
Kathy called this morning and asked how our weekend was. I said, “Really nice. A little bit of work and a little bit of skiing.” I sort of lied about the work part. We’re doing a big job for Kathy and except for a few hours we pretty much blew it off this weekend. She said “I don’t understand the skiing part and I don’t like snow.” Thought provoking comments to start the day. I don’t really think of it as skiing. Its just something different on your feet while you walk in the woods.
This weekend we drove to opposite ends of the county to ski and dine with friends. The groomed trails at Mendon Ponds on Saturday made it a lot more like skiing than walking. I now have a much clearer picture of our trudging style after watching people in spandex skate/ski/whiz by us. And the bushwhacking through deep snow and vines in the marshlands of Scotsville on Sunday was much closer to walking. Both were thoroughly enjoyable and I keep replaying the conversations we had over dinner about art and mindfulness.
