Category: Lopsided Observations

With the lake level at an official record high we tossed around the idea of driving across the river and walking along the lake but we decided to just walk from our house. So we zigzagged our way over to Titus Avenue Extension and wound our way down to the bay where the road became impassable. In fact a mother duck and her six little ones paddled across the road as we stood there. We are lucky to have so many dreamy little neighborhoods to wander around in within a five or six mile loop.

We passed a neighbor on the way out and we told him we were going down to look at the lake. He said, “people say it’s global warming but we had more rain in (some year, 2014 maybe?) and the lake wasn’t this high. It’s because of the IJC didn’t let enough water into the Saint Lawerence. Having spotted Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal” book on his shelf we just kept quiet.

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It is hard to resist the pull of the lake especially when the water levels are at historic highs. We checked out what’s left of the beach at Durand when we walked Peggi’s sax over to the repair shop. And walked down to the pier at Sea Breeze when the waves were pounding the shoreline. Wind surfers were out but hardly any boats. The emergency speed limit is 5mph and the state boat launch is closed. A big sign on Mayers Marina read, “Repeal IJC Plan 2014.”

In the Schnackel Drive neighborhood on the east side of the Bay, where many of the homes don’t have automobile access, we saw a sign calling on “every able-bodied resident/owner and renter” to get out and help at Saturday’s “Road Work Party.”

“The road and drain systems have taken a beating from all the heavy construction equipment and deliveries to properties that invested in flood fortification. We would especially like to see those properties represented with this work effort.”

You hear that when someone fortifies their shoreline the water hits their neighbor’s harder. And here the neighbors who brought in sand bags and heavy equipment tore up the road for everybody.

We live near the world’s largest fresh water supply and we have more than ever but our friends on the west coast are watching every drop.

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I needed an extra cup of joe this morning so I suggested stopping at the coffee shop on Exchange Street up near the Elmwood Avenue Bridge. Its pretty laid back in there but we managed to get waited on and my latte was perfect. They have a nice little stage and sound system for bands and I noticed the cooler was stocked with 3 Heads The Kind. Margaret Explosion needs a few summer gigs so I notice these sorts of things.

We walked up the west side of the river from the Ford Street Bridge and back down the east side to Gloria’s house in the South Wedge. UR was really quiet as school is already out for the summer. We picked up some small kale plants at the CoOp and planted those as soon as we got back. Our cilantro came back, a little late for some reason, but we we won’t have to plant any seeds this year.

Rick cancelled our horseshoe match so we will just get an early start on the three month free HBO package that Spectrum TV was forced to give subscribers for some sort of bad behavior.

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On the way home from our Margaret Explosion gig we saw someone riding a bike down University Avenue, a bike with lights on the spokes, a mini light show on wheels. Do they have LEDs that work with a generator, something like that old setup where your tire spun a gear that powered the light on your handlebars, or do we have technology now that has leap frogged that?

We used to have a man child who rode his bike down our street, turn around at the dead end and then ride by again. We could never get him to say hello, or look up even. Was he seventeen? Forty-five? We took a walk in Turning Point Park on the boardwalk that is built out over the river where the big ships used to turn around after they had dumped their stuff on the docks of the Port of Rochester. And we came cross a few sartorial bikers. The guy above was wearing yellow pants that matched his wheels. He was riding a tandem bike and head not found his soulmate yet. He said hello just after I took this shot..

A party boat, patio boat, what do you call those things, passed us, headed upstream with the best sound system I have ever heard in the open air. They were playing salsa and I wanted to be onboard. And then this guy rode by. He blew our minds, or mine anyway. With fenders, saddle bags and a light on the front end he was fully loaded. But his sound system, the black thing hanging from his handlebars, was playing the Righteous Brothers Greatest Hits. I told him I loved it. He parked his bike and pulled out a Genny 24 ouncer which he worked on while we listened to a few more tracks. On the air valve of his front tire he has a red die.

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Garry Winogrand’s photos, the color slides projected on the Brooklyn Museum’s walls in the show, “Color,” are slices of humanity that are so rich you digest them viscerally, just as Winogrand shot them. And then you savor the expression, the composition, not studied in any way, but just as the world is. You want to say, “Thank you” for each and every shot.

Peggi secured tickets to the Women’s National Team last friendly before they play their opening World Cup match in Paris. And this was the real reason we were in New York this weekend. Red Bull Stadium was packed for the match against 26th ranked Mexico. We’ve US team in their last six or seven matches and the team keeps playing better as the lineup gels.

If Jill Ellis, coach of the the national team, had said, “Paul, why don’t you pick the starting lineup .” It could have not have looked as good as this one did. This one was perfect in every way.

Naeher in goal
Dunn, Saurbraun, Dahlkemper, O’Hara across the back
Mewis, Ertz, Lavelle in the mid-field
Rapino, Morgan, Heath up front

The subways in NYC were covered with posters of the star payers but Rose Lavelle is too new a sensation to have been featured. I’m not the only one who has fallen in love with Rose Lavelle. SBNation says, “There’s no one in the USWNT who’s more exciting to watch with the ball at her feet than Rose Lavelle.”

They were passing out flags at the game and we planted ours out front for Memorial Day. Note the horseshoe stake above the right hand flag. Maybe there will be time for a match today.

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Ran into Doug Rice in MoMA today and had a free-range chat. We were just wrapping up a whirlwind tour, truncated by the closing time message in a UN stew of languages. Spent most of our allotted time with Miro’s “Birth of the World” show. And then a sprint through “Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern,” a collection of work showcasing the New York City Ballet’s cofounder’s influence on MoMA and art. Some beautiful Gaston Lachaise drawings and this Guevara self-portrait.

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For $3800 you get a “drivable project.” What more could you ask for?

Most years we have our garden in by now but this is not most years. It has been cold and rainy. We planted lettuce seeds a few weeks ago and only a few sprouted. They were last year’s seeds. The spinach seeds were old too but they are up. And we have a few cilantro volunteers from last year.

We had dinner at the Little tonight before our gig. Band gets half price there. It was so crowded the week before the voices almost drowned out our recording but this week there was some breathing room and the band sounded better.

Between sets we talked to a friend who is organizing a “Creative Journaling” workshop, something for women only in a “safe” environment. I made the mistake of asking why it was for woman only and then just quickly realized it was because of manly questions like mine.

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Time goes so fast these days it is starting to scare me. And that’s one reason why I am enjoying this prolonged, cool, wet, dark, rainy Spring. As Jeffery said in yoga class last night, “My Forsythia has been in bloom for a month!”

Peggi and I took a walk down Hoffman and we stopped at the marsh for the longest time. We were watching a doe with her brand new fawn and then a bright yellow bird caught our eye, a Warbler no doubt, and then a whole group of them dive-bombing bugs near the crumbling willow. The Warblers are bright yellow. They make the yellow in the Baltimore Orioles look orange and there were quite a few of them darting about. Our favorites, though, are the descriptively named Red Winged Blackbirds, although that only describes the male. They have a chirp and a distinctive call, something that sounds like one of Peggi’s sax lines. We watched them land on cattails, those still standing from last year. The cattail bends under the weight of the bird but it springs back to an upright position and male performs his mating call.

Pete LaBonne joins Margaret Explosion on the grand piano on Wednesday night. I hope you can stop out. We tend to get into a blues groove when he sits in. Here’s a song from last year when both he and Bob Martin were sitting in with the band.

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Jared told us the lake was 21 inches above normal so we had to walk down there and see for ourselves. We chatted with a wind surfer, who was suiting up, and saw that the waves were pretty big. There is a five mile an hour speed limit in effect for boats so there were hardly any on the water. We walked out the pier, timing our pace so as to miss the crashing of the big waves. I got soaked anyway.

Our friends, Kerry, Claire and Benny, are all going to France for the Women’s World Cup this summer. We saw the US in the semi finals four years ago in Montreal. Paris is too far, especially in the summer when things get so busy here. The team plays South Africa on Sunday in a friendly and they play Mexico at a stadium that is only nine minutes from my brother’s house in New Jersey so we might go down there for that one.

As hard as it is to believe, we saw the two best soccer games in my life in the last week. Barcelona (our favorite team) who beat Liverpool in the first half of their two match semifinal in the European Champions League, met Liverpool again, this time in Liverpool. Barcelona was heavily favored to win and to go on to take the trophy. But Liverpool, playing without their key striker, Salah, came out aggressively, playing so fast, stealing the ball at every opportunity and preventing Barcelona from controlling the flow, as is their wont. It was shocking at first and then thrilling. They played so well we switched allegiances.

The following day, in the second semifinal match between Ajax and Tottenham, Ajax, after winning decisively in the first, dominated the first half and scored twice. We assumed it was all over. We recorded the second half and left to play the Little. We queued up the second half after the gig and the tables were turned completely. Tottenham, the underdogs in anyone’s book, playing away, dominated possession and scored three goals, the last in the final seconds!

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We’re getting together with Jedi to watch Barcelona meet Liverpool in the second of their Champions League semi-finals. Although Barcelona won the first in their home stadium Liverpool performed a lot better that the final score indicated. But then the great Salah got injured in a Premier League match so Liverpool will have a tough time this afternoon.

We celebrated Matthew’s birthday at Captain Jack’s in Sodus Point where the bar was just barely above water. Matthew suggested a Mexican place in Alton, Mi Hacienda Jalisciense. It’s on Old Ridge Road just a mile or so from El Rincón. That’s a serious matchup right there. If it was a horse race. I would put my money on Mi Hacienda Jalisciense. We had some mind blowing ceviche.

We drove out with Jeff and the three of us stopped in Ontario on the way home to take in the Kentucky Derby. We always make a point to watch it, the anniversary of our first date, and this year’s was something else. We stood at the bar in front a tv with the sound off so the excitement level was missing. And the silent elation of victory, the countless video reviews where we saw something different each time and then the long shot reversal all played dramatically.

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Chipmunks are driven. I recognize the trait. Whether it’s chasing one another or darting into holes. they run the same pattern over and over all day long. We found a chipmunk in our screened-in porch. I opened the door and let him out. Next thing you know he was back in there again franticly looking for a way out. I showed him the door and we went back to reading the paper. I couldn’t see any hole for him to get in. About ten minutes later the Woodstock chimes that hang on the porch started ringing. There was no wind. He must be getting in through the rafters and dropping down the chimes, an impossible route to do in reverse. I sealed up three possible openings and we haven’t seen the guy.

Chipmunks are cute but they are really a garden pest. They ate all our tiny beet plants before they had a chance. Our neighbor on one side shoots at them with a BB gun and Jared, on the other side of us, wired his garden with electric fencing. The lowest line is only a half inch above the ground, chipmunk height.

We spotted some beautiful birds near the ground on the other side of our bedroom window. They have Mohawk striped heads and a Zebra-like chest. They are a dull yellow overall. We found them in a bird book and were able to identify them as “Ovenbirds,” in the Warbler family. I am not in a hurry for summer, this has been a perfect Spring.

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Earl, the Cassorla brother on the right in the poster above fell asleep at the wheel while driving back from Reno. Randi Winterman, who was sitting behind us at Earl’s services yesterday, ask us how long we’ve know Earl. Without thinking much I said forever. Earl was legendary and we knew of him and his brother way before we met them. Friends of ours who went to Irondequoit High with them had incredible stories of their high school pranks. The Rabbi yesterday talked about Earl wearing a key ring, like the janitors, in high school. He told the knowing crowd that Earl could get into any room in the building.

Earl was an all around great guy and everyone who knew him has stories to give witness to that. The Rabbi told us that Earl’s spirit, there is a Hebrew term, would now move to his brother. And I saw Steve’s head nod in agreement. The Cassorlas opened a fireworks store in Nevada where everything is legal. I wrote a bit about about the Cassorlas last year in a post that includes a short movie about their venture. They will remain legendary.

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A few weeks back a branch broke off a tree above our house and went right through the roofing and tongue and groove boards below it. It landed between the rafters and luckily it didn’t break through the plaster and copper plumbing in the ceiling of our living room. It got me wondering about Newton’s gravity thing. The branch was hanging horizontally above the house and when I found it it was standing up in our roof. The thickest part of the branch apparently fell the quickest.

We walked up to Wegmans to pick up some fish. Our branch gets fresh seafood in on Thursdays and we always find something – scallops, perch, red snapper or tuna. Last week we bought one swordfish steak to split. They call it steak for a reason. It is oily and meaty and tastes great on the grill. I knew there was something funny about swordfishes. I looked it up and found most healthcare organizations recommend that you don’t eat any because it’s full of mercury. And how does mercury get in the ocean? The number one source is airborne particles from coal burning power plants. So glad the Trumpster is bringing back coal, “beautiful coal..” That will be our last piece of swordfish.

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Blue is my favorite color so Rick gets the green. By the end of the season we will hardly be able to tell these apart. They should be dry by tomorrow and it may be opening day.

The blue paint was suspiciously thin and we plan on painting our metal chairs so we walked over to Home Depot and bought a pint. I brought the stick that I used to stir up the old blue and they matched the color. It is about a seven mile round trip but we made it fun by stopping for a Flat White at Starbucks and calling Duane in Brooklyn.

The recap of my carpentry career in my last post didn’t mention why I got out. Swinging a 20 ounce hammer all day, lifting walls that were built on the deck, getting the scaffolding up on the metal brackets, carrying full sheets of three quarter inch plywood in the wind and hoisting tresses up to the second floor completely drained me. As satisfying as the job was, there was nothing left at night. So I got a commercial art job. A “pud” job as they would say in Indiana.

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I did my homework this year by reviewing the list before we left the house. It took some of the fun out Record Store Day but it also gave us more freedom to just hang out, drink coffee and eat cookies. There were only a couple of things that caught my eye and I snagged both the Art Ensemble 45 with the African poet, Alfred Panou, and the John Cage Meets Sun Ra 45 (plus dvd of the complete Coney Island performance). I put that on as soon as we got home.

We left our car in the old Tops parking lot on Winton and walked to Monroe where stopped at Bop Shop and Hi Fi Lounge. We stood in front the sound system in the back room. I asked the guy how much the pair of speakers cost and he said “around $300 but don’t quote me. They sounded fantastic and I was considering so I asked the owner when he came in. He said “about two thousand.”.

I brought my Hauser Wirth bag with me and filled it with vinyl, a few more 45s from the sixties and Silver Apple’s debut 1968 lp on milky blue vinyl. They sound like Nod, Can and Suicide, all bands that came after them.

We took a different route over to Record Archive where a big inflated dinosaur was bouncing around in the parking lot. A local brewery called Single Cut was giving away samples of beer that tasted exactly like grapefruit juice. A young mod-like band was performing in the back room you had to get in a long line in order to look at the Record Store Day product.

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I will sleep good tonight. I spent a good bit of the afternoon rebuilding the short concrete wall that sort of marks the property line between us and our neighbors. I do this every years as the pachysandra bed on the other side continues to expand the wall tilts toward us. It is not even a foot high and from our perspective, an eyesore. I proposed removing it but that didn’t fly so I rebuilt it again. 

Our local newspaper has been promoting the Pulitzer Prize winning, USA Today documentary, “The Wall.” The movie was free so we signed up.

Once the Trumpster announced and made the big fence a pledge a group of journalists decided to fly the the border from from the mouth of the Rio Grand to the Pacific Ocean. The winding river makes a natural border for large sections and and the terrain is so rugged and inhospitable I kept trying to picture the engineering feat required to run fence up and down the sides of mountains and over huge ravines  Currently there is only 600 miles with an actual fence. The one feasibility study of effectiveness of the wall, which was done in 2006, showed the astronomical costs would bring negligible benefits. So full stream ahead.

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God creates Eve from Adam’s rib and they have two sons, Cain and Able. Then Cain takes a wife. Did you ever stop to think about where that woman came from? Was there someone around the corner that was also doing creation?

This is just one of the arguments Spencer Tracy’s famous defense lawyer character uses against his famous prosecuting attorney in the 1960 recreation of the famous Scopes trail. This damn movie, which was screened at the Dryden Theater yesterday, is sixty years old and the story it retells is 100 years old. Yet the movie is still relevant. One third of Americans don’t believe in evolution. The clutches of the fundamentalists, those that believe in a literal, word of god, biblical creation story still go as deep as the Tennessee townspeople singing “Give me that old time religion,” in Stanley Kramer’s “In Inherit The Wind.” And I find that depressing. But the movie is not.

The movie is vivid. It is witty. Quips fly by. Gene Kelly playing a reporter from the Baltimore Herald, lets the most fly. The smallest characters are as large life. Claude Akins is fantastic. Fredric March goes over the top. Spencer Tracy is brilliant. Distrust of science and distrust of journalism is nothing new.

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Four of every member of the sax family plus one bass saxophone. A saxophone orchestra. The Eastman Saxophone Project rearranges work for the saxophone and plays from memory without a conductor. We heard at noon today in the Hochstein performance space and you can catch the rebroadcast on WXXI at ten tonight.

With a little bit of help from a small percussion section they performed Emanuel Chabrier’s “Espana,” Astor Piazzolla’s “Contrabajjissimo” and Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, something that would be immediately familiar because it has been used in many movies. It is amazing to me that the sax can do it all. The group will perform again at Kilbourn Hall on Thursday, April 11, 2019 at 7:30PM.

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