Skier on Durand Eastman Golf Course in Rochester, New York
Our ski path in the woods had been covered up overnight with additional snow and all that had drifted. Despite the fact that the meteorologists had given the “blizzard” a name and even parked a Weather Channel truck a mile away at the Sea Breeze bridge the storm was just more winter. And this has been a particularly good one. It doesn’t need the hype.
At the other end of the woods we used to ski across a fairway and head up to the lake on one of the trails around the small lakes but a couple of years ago they started grooming paths on the golf course. It can be brutally cold out there in the wind and kind of bleak compared to the woods but in full sun the golf course is surreal. As the guy in this photo whizzed up the hill toward us he said “Who needs Florida?”
Broken vessels in courtyard of cathedral in Jerez de la Frontera
There was barely enough snow to ski on yesterday so we put our skis in the car and drove to the park. Most days we ski in the woods but without a good snow cover you’re libel to trip over a branch or root and your fall is not cushioned. The flat open spaces in the park were especially thin though with all the wind. We hadn’t even looked at the temperature before we left so we unprepared for 8 degrees and wind. Where normally you warm up in minutes we froze and and trudged back to the car. Today looks better. I had to shovel a path to the mailbox so I could pick up our paper in my slippers.
Lake Ontario at Durand Eastman Beach during January thaw
The temperature was near 40 degrees today, the sun was shining and the woods was wet. This is what a January thaw looks like. We had to go all the way to the lake to see if the ice formations were still there. They were but the color was near brown with all the sand that has washed up on them.
Beech tree in Winter fog in woods near Durand Eastman Park
What do you think of when you hear the name “Freedom Industries?” Sounds vaguely patriotic. They’re the company that let their aging coal processing plant dump toxic chemicals into West Virginia’s drinking water supply and then didn’t warn the downstream residents of the peril. They had the freedom to let it go until they were found out. West Virginia is desperate for jobs and government regulations are a hinderance. This is why Congress continues to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. Regulations are a pain in the ass.
Who better to lead a ring that collected a $28,000 kickback from each of hundreds of police officers and firefighters who falsely claimed mental problems due to 9/11 than an ex-agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who once served as a senior Nassau County prosecutor. Who better than Facebook to expose the “injured” as bullshit artists after they successfully bilked the Social Security Administration of $21.4 million in disability benefits.
Today we learn Larry Staub, the Monroe County Parks Commissioner, is in line to take over as executive director of the Monroe County Republican Committee. I guess this move all makes sense. They have cut staff and funding of the parks to such a point that volunteers have taken over many of the upkeep tasks.
I like thinking about these things as I walk in the woods.
January seascape at Charlotte beach in Rochester, New York
The shoreline at Lake Ontario is so beautiful now. It is just other worldly. It doesn’t get this way every year and I can’t remember the last time it got this fantastic, maybe ten years ago or so. I hope you can find the time to go straight north from wherever you are in Rochester and see for yourself.
It felt like a blue Christmas, the whole lead-up, and then on Christmas day we learned Yusef Lateef had died. He was 93 and was still playing. I’m pretty sure it was Russell, the crazy guy that lived across the street from Steve Hoy and me on Driscol Drive in Bloomington, Indiana that first turned us on to Yusef Lateef, 1968’s “The Blue Yusef Lateef.” It was so exotic, so beautiful, we soon had our own copy of the lp and still do. Blue has always been my favorite color.
The sculptural qualities of the woods are in full display in the winter months. No foliage to camouflage the interplay of trunk and limb and most dramatically, the fallen trees and limbs, the tangled piles of branches and the wounded trees innocently caught in the path of a dying elder.
Peggi did a series of watercolors of portions of this birch tree. It has giant mushrooms growing on it now and white limbs scattered about. Where other trees lose their bark and dry out before falling, the bark on these trees, the same stuff Native Americans used to waterproof their canoes, seals moisture inside and the trees remain externally graceful even as they decompose inside.
I hear the town plans to thin the deer herd this year. Last year we heard the town didn’t have the money to fund the “bait and shoot” program. I don’t know if any of these things are true, they are just things neighbors talk about around here. The deer are gorging themselves on nuts this time of year and it is almost impossible to scare them off. I would not want to be the one charged with hunting or trapping these guys. It would be way too easy.
Most days our walk takes us into the park. Yesterday we walked to the park and then took a walk. We met a group at the kiosk on Zoo Road and took one of the Arboretum Tours that volunteers host. We’ve taken these tours many times but always learn something, mostly we learn things over again. No one knows how long the Dawn Redwoods will live or how big they will get because seeds from the species were only recently discovered. When telling conifers apart it helps to remember the cones on fir trees grow up and cones on spruce trees grow down. Hint: There are fewer letters in the the words fir and up. White oaks have rounded leaves (like the Matisse cutouts) where red oaks have pointed leaves. Hint: I forget what the hint was.
Patriotic Budweiser beer cans in woods of Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
A distinctive can tossed in the woods would certainly whet the appetite of a thirsty hiker. And if the can design was patriotic it would resonate with our sense of freedom as well as enhance the brand. A win win situation.
If you took a Sharpie and lightly touched your skin with it the black dot would be about the size of the nymph deer ticks that Peggi and I picked off of each other yesterday. Peggi took one to her doctor last week and she had it tested for Lyme Disease. The tick was not carrying it and thus far there have been no confirmed cases of ticks carrying Lyme disease in Monroe County but it is probably only a matter of time.
The ticks are so small we’ve been using this battery operated loop, a lighted magnifying glass with a focus dial that we used to use to inspect the registration of the rosette pattern on four color print jobs, to verify that the tiny black spot indeed have tiny legs. I couldn’t get a good look at one on my arm and feared that it had already burrowed in so I dug away at the spot with our tweezers until it was a bloody mess. I either removed a mole or an age spot and then put a band-aid on it.
Leo Dodd presentation on Edmunds’ Woods in Brighton, New York
Cobbs Hill near the aptly titled Pinnacle Hill in Rochester, New York was named after Gideon Cobb, the quintessential pioneer and brick company proprietor in the Brighton neighborhood. Saturday was Gideon Cobb Day and about fifty people gathered in a lodge near Edmunds Woods for Leo Dodd’s presentation on the old-growth forest. The annual event was sponsored by Historic Brighton and a boxed lunch was included. The woods, an integral part of the old Edmunds farm, is now trapped between a suite of medical offices, parking lot, mosque, retention pond and expressway but it is a real gem with abundant wildlife.
The event started with a series of technical issues, first of which was helping my father find his glasses. They were in the side pocket of his car. My dad constructed the presentation in Keynote (Mac version of PowerPoint) and he transferred it to his iPad. The projector had a hard time recognizing the iPad so a restart was in order and then the wireless mic which my dad had charged up the night before wouldn’t work even though the red on light was lit. That turned out to be the “stand-by” position so that too was a relatively easy fix.
The first slide had an audio file on and I tried holding the iPad up to the speaker which only caused a screeching feedback loop. I was in charge of swiping the iPad to advance the slides while my father talked and I had a quite a time trying to anticipate when to swipe so he wouldn’t have to say, “next slide please” between each graphic. I jumped the gun a few times and had to go back and I clearly caught him off guard a few times as he looked back up at the screen and saw that I had already advanced the slide he was talking to. But the presentation was flawless on my dad’s part and thoroughly enjoyable. Afterwards he led a group out into the woods.
It has been weeks since we saw any bucks with a rack. Most have shed by now and they’re out there on the ground. Peggi and I went off in different directions as we worked our way through the woods today. We were both generally following the path but covering different ground in an obsessive search for racks. Weathered dead branches, shiny and void of bark look like racks in the leaves and everything out here is all shades of grey or brown.
We came back in eye contact with one another a few times over the course of an hour or so but then I couldn’t find her. I whistled as loud as I could and then hurried along the trail up to where it ends but still couldn’t find her so I hurried back the same distance thinking I must have passed her by. I couldn’t even get my lips to whistle any more. Still no sign so I headed toward the lake again and we finally met on the path. At least I had two racks to show for it.
We managed to stay off trail the entire way through the woods to Durand Eastman Park today. In fact Peggi was off to one side of the path and I was on the other – looking for deer sheds. I managed to disprove the adage that says you won’t find something if you go out of your way to find it. I found a rack yesterday or one side of a rack (is that a half rack?), a four pointer that and a really old Canada Dry Ginger Ale bottle, so now we have the bug.
Tryon Park trail with fallen tree, Rochester New York
We walked up to the Lake Ontario this morning along the trail on the west side of Eastman Lake. A bicyclist whizzed by us, all suited up in bike drag and moving too fast for us to say anything like “Bikes aren’t allowed on trails in this park.” We used to walk over to Tryon Park when we lived in the city. It was a neglected county park at that time and still is really, even though the county has officially reopened it They created a parking lot and put up a sign with Maggie Brooks and Larry Staub’s names on it and someone has already shattered the plastic cover on the sign and the trails are littered with Hawaiian Punch cans but it is still beautiful in a apocalyptic sort of way. ” I found this comment about the park on the RocWiKi page – “When I was a kid (in the 80’s) my friends and I loved to take acid and wander around here at night. Great place to trip.—SavageHenry”.
The 82 acres overlook the basin of Irondequoit Bay and lowland valley that extends south through Ellison Park. Unlike other county parks there’s old car parts in the woods and the remains of old concrete structures and decaying drainage infrastructure. We came across this fallen tree and at first thought it was the work of a beaver but then realized it was the handiwork mountain bikers trying to clear the trail. The park is now a test site for trail biking, the prefered sport of overgrown boys. There are bare trails everywhere sometimes six feet away from one another with exposed roots from ancient trees running through the paths. I’m not sure how long this experiment will run but the way it’s going if we return here in ten years I would guess the undergrowth would be gone, trampled or just washed away, the trees will have fallen over and the place will be a barren rutty hillside. Perfect for mountain biking.
Yellow flowers (Winter Aconite) in snow in Rochester, New York
I’ve spent the last day thinking about Rick Santorum’s observation that Obama has “a world view that elevates the earth above man.” I still going with the earth.
The coolest thing about a blog is the database. It is so damn organized. I use it to keep track of things. Every year we spot these little yellow flowers (Winter Aconite or Eranthis hyemalis) popping through the snow and since there has been a dearth of the white stuff this year the yellow flowers were up yesterday on February 19th. How much earlier is that than the last few years? I went to the db. The yellow flowers were spotted on March 9th in 2009 and March 10th in 2010.
Fragrant Witchhazel in full bloom in Durand Eastman Park, February 2012
The lemon yellow, non fragrant witch-hazel and orange sweet smelling witch-hazel are both in full bloom on leafless trees in Durand Eastman Park. We usually don’t see the yellow stuff until March but this is no usual winter here.
My painting show from the Little is all boxed up and today I took down my painting show at the Genesee Center for the Arts. So it’s time to move on and an excellent opportunity to re-evaluate what it is that I spend so much time painting. I am enjoying this process and considering wild alternatives like en plen air and abstraction.
In the meantime I was asked to paint a portrait for the Memory Projct. They sent me a photo of this kid, an orphan somewhere, and I did a few versions. The kid kid gets the painting. The one in the middle looks the most like him so I’m sending that off. Now what?
Mike Allen stopped by with a 1966 recording of his band, The Realm, from a Fine Recording Studios 45 rpm. Mike’s vocal was as soulful back then as he is today. He was wearing his A.K.O.S. (A King Of Soul) hat as we spoke. He threw a couple of live songs on the cd from a later band, Lake Road, playing live at the Dictionary in Webster in 1968. Mike sounds incredibly soulful at 16.
He noticed Peggi’s mom’s walker in our office and we explained that we were planning to take it back beacuse one of the handles broke. He took a look at it and directed us through the repair. We lost an Allen wrench on our camoflauged carpet during the operation but Mike eventually found it.
Peggi buying cabbage at the Public Market in Rochester, NY
I loaded my mother-in-law’s SUN though SAT, MORN, NOON, EVE, BED pill container like we do every weekend but today I felt like I was loading an Advent calender. We used to have those things in our house when we were growing up and most of the little doors would be open by now. This one though has no surprises unless you forget what medicine you’re taking every day and my mother-in-law just may fall into that category.
We started the day at the Public Market downtown. I love this place especially the way it seems to draw equally from all sub cultures of the city. Red peppers were in abundance for some reason and local cabbage, pears, onions, potatoes and apples were everywhere. Christmas trees were fifteen dollars and every sort of nic nac or common junk drawer product was there, fresh off a Chinese container. One of the fish guys tried to talk Peggi into buying an eel by wiggling it at us. “They’re good in soup”, he said. We had read a rave review of Barry from Fair Game Foods’ pastrami sandwiches in City Newspaper so waited in line for one of those and took it to our car where we listened to a cd of Margaret Explosion with Phil Marshall from last week.
It started snowing on the way home and it looked like a shaker scene. We are up to about fifteen inches of the white stuff now. We had arranged to ski with Rick and Monica so we headed right out in to the woods. Rick led the way and took us across the golf course and down a few thrill seeker hills. When we got back home we built a fire and put James Brown’s “Hot Pants lp on.
There are a few things in the running for tonight. Bob Henrie and the Goners are at Abilene and Watkins and the rapiers are doing their Christmas show at the Flipside. We might try to do both.
Yellow cherry tree in the fall on Culver Road near Clifford Avenue in Rochester, NY
We woke to a dusting of snow this morning. Buffalo got a couple feet! I like it but it’s too early. Fall is not quite done with its Gothic trip. These gray days are perfect for photographing the decay and I want things to slow down a bit so I can take it in. I think this is a cherry tree or maybe those are little yellow apples. Doesn’t look like anyone is eating the fruit. It’s on the corner of Culver and Clifford.
I picked up a cup of coffee at Starry Nites on the way to painting class and I thought I would really make some progress but I must have been in some sort of funk because I barely accomplished anything. I spent most of the night trying different colors in this guy’s nostrils if you can believe that. The guy has a huge neck and he is looking up so there is a lot of description in those features.
I started the painting over the weekend and it developed quickly. It beginnings were so graphic and strong that it was almost done and yet I was just getting started. So if it was almost done, why did it take me all night to advance it? It is at a stage where every move has to be right on. I’ll take a photo of him and post it here when I get it right.
Maureen Outlaw announced that she was going down to the Anchor Inn to celebrate her birthday after painting class so when Peggi picked me up we headed down to the lake to meet her. She was sitting at the bar working on her second LaBatt’s Blue and a plate of chicken wings when we showed up. It was just the third day for the bartender, Amanda, who moved here from Indiana, but it seemed like a pretty comfortable scene.
It was kind of dark and dreary today but that did not get us down. In fact the woods looked more dramatic than usual when we took our walk so we embraced it.
