Category: Lopsided Observations

This mild winter has allowed us to continue walking. We have always walked but we ratcheted up the distance last year in preparation for our walk across Spain and our weather has permitted that to continue. Or maybe it’s not the weather at all. Maybe it is simply that the more you walk, the more you enjoy it so you walk more.

We walked in and out of downtown on both sides of the river and I was thinking about Paris Texas, the movie we had watched the night before. There wasn’t nearly as much walking in it as I remembered. We saw it when it came out and at least once since but I remember marathon walking and there is very little of that in the movie. It must have made an impression.

Like Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” Wim Wenders’ outsider take on America did not initially meet with success. We loved it and the soundtrack. We bought the vinyl and I played it last night during dinner. When Personal Effects was recording the soundtrack for the Planetarium show we deliberately aped Ry Cooder with an instrumental called “Cirrus.”

This time around Dean Stockwell was every bit as good as Harry Dean Stanton. Hard to believe he had quit acting before this film and was apparently working as a real estate agent. The real star of the movie is Sam Sheppard’s script. Hunter, played by Karen Black’s son, was astounding.

The extras had thoughtful interviews with Wenders in German, French and English. I loved “In His Own Words,” Wenders’ movie about/with the Pope and I liked the extras from that, shown on 60 Minutes. My profile has been built and I am ready for more Wim Wenders recommendations.

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My grandfather was a butcher. It is a craft. He took great pride in his work and it was evident when he cut off a big slice of freshly made liverwurst and passed it over the counter to me. He also owned the store so salesmanship, good business practices and knife work were required for him to become successful.

The Asian behind the counter in the fish department at the Pittsford Wegman’s had all these skills. We were considering buying some Red Snapper. (The fish at the top of the picture above is a Red Snapper.) We had made it a few months back. We baked the whole fish and split it down the middle before plopping it it on our plates. It was delicious but we had to eat each small bite very carefully as it was full of bones.

The fish guy told us he would cook it exactly as we did and then eat it with chopsticks because he knew how to pick around the bones.  He drew the fish (above) in a few seconds. He even made the fish smile. He illustrated where to look for the various bones. He grabbed another fish, one that he had just filleted, and suggested we cut the fish open before we bake it, remove the bones, put it back to gather like a whole fish and then bake it. 

His presentation was so good Peggi that told him that Wegmans ought to video him and share his tips on their website. He liked that idea and said he would propose it.

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“You, the proletariat, the blacksmith of the new time, you forge time with forms. . . You are an innovator. We. . . rushed from a barricade toward the world of new transformation, light and non-objective one, because the great recreation of our undying spirit is coming.” Kazimir Malévich 1918

Dada seems to have made its first appearance in Russia where the Futurists’ influence was strong. The “Russian Dada” show at the Reina Sofia in Madrid featured Malévich as a bedrock and he stole the show.

Dada was a reaction to the propaganda and slaughter of World War I and Surrealism sprang from that. Dorothea Tanning was born in a small town in Illinois. She dropped out of school and turned to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago for inspiration. She travelled to Paris to meet the surrealists but returned when World War II broke out. She married Max Ernst and they moved to Arizona. She lived to 102, Outlasting many art movements. “Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door,” a retrospect of her work fills the third floor here and it is a revelation.

Tanning refused to be labeled a “woman artist” saying, “one is given, the other is you.” Her “Woman Artist, Nude, Standing” (above) asserts feminine power as a creative force to be reckoned with. With nods to Goya and deKooning she presents herself armored in her own voluptuous flesh while wearing only a black mantilla with a red poppy.

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This black and white photo in a display case was the first thing that caught our attention at the “Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960” show at Albright Knox. A recording of the metronome piece was playing overhead and a February 1965 letter from John Cage, addressed to Albright Knox, was sitting next to the photo. We wrongly assumed the photo and letter went together. The metronome piece, ‘Poème Symphonique,’ was performed by György Liget at the gallery and John Cage was here for a performance and lecture the same year. Buffalo was and is a happening town. Well, it was really happening when the Pan American Expo was herein 1901 and with a resurgence underway it is happening again.

The show here was was called, “Giant Steps: Artists and and it features major works by some of the leading artists of the period, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, and it reconsiders those who played an underrecognized, but vital, role in furthering the visual avant-garde in the United States and beyond. The permanent collection here is outstanding. Seymour Knox was buying the the collection, mostly modern art, as the artists were making it. This show digs deep into their collection and is well worth a ride along the lake to civilization.

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Leroy, New York is only forty five minutes away but it feels like another world. Like so many small towns it has seen better days. The Jello Museum is still here. Donald Woodward, the son of the original owner, bought Amelia Earhart’s airplane, the “Friendship”, in 1928, and Amelia Earhart drove here to visit her airplane. The airport is being revived. And the Creekside Tavern, built in 1820 on the banks of Oatka Creek, has been completely redone by Billy Farmer. He has bands out back on the weekends and we’ve driven out here twice to hear the Debbie Kendick’s project. I recommend the band for sure and I’d take route along the river. We took 490 the second time and it is deadly how boring that stretch can be. Maybe if you were shopping for an RV it wouldn’t be so bad.

Our neighbor thinned out some pachesandra and offered it to us. We decided to plant it along our driveway. That project took up the better part of day, digging little holes and winding up the roots to poke the plants in. To do something like this now you have wear your tick armour, socks, pants and long sleeve hoodies soaked in Permethrin. While I was suited up picked a handful of blackberries from the vines growing in mini forever wild area.

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William Keeler, Librarian & Archivist at the Rochester Historical Society, gave the featured presentation at the annual Gideon Cobb Day Celebration in Brighton. His talk, “Rochesterville on the Rise,” started with the Native American trading post near Indian Landing a couple hundred years ago. The British controlled the waters of Lake Ontario before the War of 1812. A reenactor can be seen in the photo above along with John Page and Brighton’s Town Supervisor William W. Moehle.

Tryon, where the bike park is now, was where all the action was, a boomtown on the move until the sandbar at the mouth of Irondequoit Bay filled in, cutting off access to the port of Tryon. Carthage, on the other side of the Genesee River, the next biggest nearby settlement collapsed when influenza swept through town. Rochesterville, just south of the High Falls, was nowhere as big as Geneva, Bath and Canandaigua. Gideon Cobb was one of its first inhabitants. He ran a brickyard where Cobbs Hill is today and my father restored Cobb’s folk hero status.

Early Gideon Cobb days were celebrated at Mario’s where the new Whole Foods is going in. Ray Tierney, former Brighton councilman and Historic Brighton board member, has organized the last two and they now feature an award presentation, the “Leo Dodd Heritage Presentation Award.” Last year’s went to Sandra Frankel and this year it went to John Page of Bero Architects. I’m happy Historic Brighton has carried on but I couldn’t help but feel the void left in the organization. They need someone with the desire to dig through the past, willing enough to attend the meetings, lobby the politicians to preserve the remnants, someone who likes taking pictures and illustrating a story and someone who likes to share what they have found. They need someone as enthusiastic as my father was.

Personal Effects – “Boom Boom Town/Violince” from “Personal Effects – A Collection”

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I will talk about politics here just enough to say that following it is really eating into my day. My comfortable middle class life is being impacted by just trying to stay abreast. And imagining the damage being done to the less fortunate is completely draining. It seems you soil yourself by just bringing the divisiveness up. Ignoring it all is certainly an option, an irresponsible option, so we’re stuck. Let’s change the subject.

What is the best looking car on the road today? They pretty much all look alike. We were having dinner with my parents, near what turned out to be the end of their lives, and I asked my father if he thought things were getting better or worse. My father was progressive, an optimist and forward thinking, an early adapter and enthusiast of new technology. I was certain he would say things are getting better but his answer wandered into what I would characterize as a longing for the time when the parish priest knew what you were up to, what kind of trouble you might be getting into. There was accountability. Things were not allowed to run amok.

At my age I want to believe that things are getting better but Im worried. Maybe this is what the trumpster has tapped into with his “Make America Great Again” slogan. Maybe this is why so many bands are content to play roots music – comfort food. Cars were pretty cool in the sixties but nostalgia is killing us.

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Somebody stole our neighbor’s Buddha statue. A hollow black plastic thing that sat about twelve inches tall on an old stump in their yard. Talk about bad karma.

I grew up with Warner Sallman’s 1940 picture of Christ, one of 500 million reproductions of the image from the Chicago Offset Printing Company, so this garage sale Christ with short hair and mousse really struck me. We were out walking and stopped at an estate sale, one that had been going on for a couple days so everything was half price. This picture was hanging on the wall and it had a one dollar price tag on it. Small print at the bottom read “Christian Education Press 1955” and it was signed by Barosin. I looked it up and found the image was painted by famed Holocaust Survivor Jacob Barosin. I plan to give this to a friend.

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The F Train wasn’t running this weekend so we caught the Q at Beverley and just stopped at DeKalb, our last stop before going under the river. Wearing shorts and a dirty white sweatshirt, stinking to high heaven and speaking loudly, like he was giving orders and clearly didn’t even know how to go about soliciting our sympathy. “Please help me out. I’m trying to put some shoes on my feet.”

Looking down I saw that his feet were swollen and I tried to picture him walking the City streets in bare feet. People on the train did their best to ignore him but a couple of teenage boys were laughing as he moved on to the the next car. A few minutes later he came back through our car singing, “I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back.” Would a dollar have helped this guy out? What would Christ have done? We got off at 42nd Street and coming out of the next car was that same guy with his shoes in his hand.

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Our list of shows in Chelsea was shorter than ever. Just one must see, Marlene Dumas’s “Myths & Mortals” at David Zwirner on 20th, so we started there. Luscious, large, thinly painted oils, mostly nudes in gorgeous colors and small watery watercolors, mostly black and white, swiftly executed and expressive, work created for a recent Dutch translation of William Shakespeare’s “Venus & Adonis.”

Hauser Wirth is always good so we headed there next. They have galleries all over the world and their 22nd Street spot is especially comfortable with its café, bookstore and bathroom. They were showing the collection of Sylvia Perlstein, a Max’s Kansas City denizen. The Calder, above, is from that show.

From here we just wandered, staying between 9th and 10th of course, and stumbled into shows featuring Jean Dubuffet’s (Basquiat’s father) “Théâtres de Mémoire,” Al Held, whose heroic, thickly painted abstracts from the fifties look fresh today, Jenny Saville’s new paintings that show the work, the scrubbing out, the reworking, the buttery finish to the strokes and Damien Hirst’s spot paintings, three huge rooms of them.

Coincidentally, the last two shows we saw we’re by a wife and her husband. Both are the parents of the actress and director, Lena Dunham. Laurie Simmons from Cindy Sherman’s Picture Generation is showing her dummies and picture thought bubble photos at Mary Boone and her husband, Carroll Dunham, is showing his “vulgar beyond belief” (Los Angeles Times) male wrestler paintings at Gladstone Gallery. It was a perfect afternoon.

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Aren’t there already too many local beer joints? Too many beers on tap, too many choices everywhere you go? Do we have to overdo a good thing before moving on? I like a good beer but I fall apart after one. I can’t see hanging out at the Beer Garden but I might stop in for a pint.

The outside of the place made me think of my neighbor, friend and horseshoe partner. He drives one those VW vans, a Westie, and he’s a beer enthusiast. He’s been on a bit of a losing streak this season and he’s been bugging me to raise one of the stakes. As if the height of one of the stakes would play to his disadvantage only.

The stake is driven in so deep I need mechanical help to get it up so I put a request in to our neighbor, Jared. He’s been preoccupied with his grandson but he stopped by this morning with his tractor and pulled the stake up with a chain. Sure enough, Rick beat me two – zip in the first two of our usual best of three games.

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Holy cards, the traditional European, beautifully printed, paper ones are getting harder and harder to come by. I’ve had some since childhood and I’ve added to my collection with every trip to Spain but I only bought one in Madrid this time. It was a small plastic coated one dedicated to the Niño de Atocha, another representation of the Christ child but one the street and train station in Madrid was named after. When we got back to our hotel I looked the image up and found it is distinctly characterized by the basket, staff and drinking gourd he carries and the cape he wears that is affixed with a scallop shell, the symbol of the pilgrimage to Saint James.

I gave the card to my cousin, Maureen, when we met up with her today in Saint Jean Pied Del Port. The remains of St. James are said to be in Santiago de Compostello, the city in northwestern Spain that is named after him. Our hiking clothes are laid out and the alarm is set. We start our walk to there tomorrow.

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David Kay Johnston has the goods on Trump and he shared some of the teasers from his new Simon & Schuster book, “It’s Worse Than You Think,” with the crowd last night at Barnes & Nobel. The chairs were full and people were standing around the periphery and ten deep outside the doors. We sat on the floor a few feet from the author.

The takeaway: It is “our government” not “the government.” Get informed, help people register to vote, drive people to the polls. Trump belongs behind bars but then what?. Think about how destructive a less-than-inept politician with Trump’s agenda could be. And his final word of advice to the mostly gray haired crowd. “The next time you come to see me bring a younger person.”

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Today is Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday. It was too warm to ski so we plotted a ten mile walking loop that took us up to Starbucks first. Peggi spotted a dirty cell phone in the snow off to the side of the road. It had a pink cover on it with a heart decal on the back. I cleaned it off in the snow and we carried it up to Starbucks. It rang twice and buzzed a couple of times but I couldn’t unlock the screen. I pictured someone in front of monitor tracking us with a ‘find my phone” feature. I carried it up to Starbucks and asked the cashier if they had a lost and found or something. She said her manager would take care of it.

The parking lot at Conduent, the company Xerox recently spun off, was full when we walked by. The old Wilmorite mall has been vacant for ten years and now its packed with collection agents rounding up money owed to NYS by people who blew off the tolls on the old Tappan Zee now Mario Cuomo Bridge. Meanwhile the rest of Xerox is preparing to do business as Fuji.

The sign out in front of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on East Ridge Road read, “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God.” We headed down the hill to the bay. Someone tore down the old Newport House and is putting up a half assed condominium complex. The bay was still mostly frozen. Wegmans was packed with guys buying red flowers.

After our walk we had dinner at Lanai, Casey’s new place on Alexander Street. We had the Valentine’s Day special for two which came with a glass of champagne. The Bok Choy and shrimp were out off this world. Can’t wait to get back and dive into their menu of Polynesian delights.

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We read that you should have 100 miles on your shoes before taking a long walk. They are apparently optimally broken in at that point but still in good enough shape for El Camino. We put nine on today walking over to Atlas Eats for lunch. I was craving their Kimchee and Tofu bowl. We are very near the hundred mile mark now. I’m hoping the snow, forecast for tomorrow, will put us back in our ski boots.

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We were so happy to have snow again yesterday. We expected to see more people skiing in the park but we only crossed paths with one other guy, someone we have seen more than any other person over the past few years. We had never talked to him before. He would usually zoom by so fast he didn’t even say hello. He always seems like he’s working hard, head down, determined. I have him pegged as vet. He reminds us of our old mailman who had some residual issues from his service but I could be all wrong. Today we talked.

“Why weren’t the trails groomed?” He speculated that the park people don’t want the snowmobile chewing up the golf course. And he thought the skate skiers, the ones that require the groomed trails, were skiing elsewhere because when there is only a few inches the paved golf cart paths get bared and they chew up people’s skis. We talked about the weather. We heard it was getting warm again. He thought it was going to continue to stay cold. And then he offered an odd theory. The weather forecasts, he thought, were deliberately on the high side. He thought lawyers were involved. I laughed and said that sounds like a conspiracy theory. It seems to me that business interests were more likely to pump up forecasts for money-making reasons. He looked down at his FitBit, pushed a button, and took off.

We had dinner with some neighbors last night, one of them, Steve, the deer hunter who we last ran into when he had a deer on the back of his truck. He was taking it to someone who would process the meat and mount the rack as a trophy. He told us his taxidermist told him that the buck was the oldest deer he had ever processed. At least ten years old. He could tell that by examining the jaw. Steve’s house is surrounded by woods and he has names for the deer he sees most often. He thought that he had shot the son of one he called “Paleface” but he now thinks he killed Paleface himself.

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