God Is Good

Passing train on tracks along 104 in Sodus
Passing train on tracks along 104 in Sodus

We agreed to engage in a rather unusual video conference in Sodus New York. Once we were inside of our friends’ storage locker we called Bill, a shipping company representative, and waved our front-facing camera around so he could provide an estimate for the cost of shipping the contents to Hawaii. The cell coverage was spotty and we kept losing our connection so we shot still photos and texted them to the representative. I used the wide angle lens to make the contents look small. Someone was struggling with a washing machine in the locker cross from us so I helped him load it into his truck. He thanked me and added, “God is god.”

The ride out along the lake was beautiful. The apple trees, pruned to maximize yield while growing close to the ground, looked ever so sculptural. Up on 104 we stopped for gas and I took a photo of a train on the other side of the road. I can’t see the train in the photo but I like it. On the way home we stopped at Abarrotes Mexicano, a store that caters to the migrant workers, and we bought some peppers and hominy.

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Nothing Lasts Forever

I love this house although the flat roof could be a problem around here. It looks like a house in the old section of Beverly Hills. Culver Road in Rochester, New York.
3124 Culver Road in 2004

As many times as we have been up and down Culver Road I never get tired of it. It is one of the city’s main arteries between downtown and the lake. We lived just two block off Culver in the city and we’re just two off it here. I road my bike from one end of it to the other and photographed some of the highlights. I always liked the house above. It reminded me of a house in the old section of Beverly Hills.

The new owners have making some changes (i.e. wrecking it). So with the temperatures in the seventies yesterday, I rode my bike over to the house to take an updated picture. Nothing Lasts Forever.

3124 Culver Road in 2024
3124 Culver Road in 2024
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Everyone’s A Winner

Cynthia Hawkins "A Priori Map S6 2023 at Rochester Contemporary
Cynthia Hawkins “A Priori Map S6 2023 at Rochester Contemporary

I remember a Little League coach going out of his way to make sure everyone on the team got an equal amount of playing time. I wanted to win and I thought that approach was crazy. If Diego Simeone coached Atletico Madrid like that he would be fired. A community supported art gallery must be as inclusive as possible. Not all the shows are going to be winners. IMHP this one is.

Ronald Mario Gonzalez artwork at Rochester Contemporary
Ronald Mario Gonzalez artwork at Rochester Contemporary

These two artists are featured in the main galleries. “David Cowles: Roc Stars” is in the Lab Space and a elekhlekha moving image on view in the multimedia room. Hope you can stop out.

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Lenten Roses

Saint Salome’s on Culver Road
Sign in front of Saint Salome's on Culver Road
Sign in front of Saint Salome’s on Culver Road

We walked over to Kathy’s today expecting to find her garden in first gear. Her Lenten Roses were in bloom and the daffodils were almost open. Kayakers and fishing boats were out on the bay and the temperature was headed toward seventy. We walked by the new townhouses on Culver, the ones that chased Matthew and Louise out of the neighborhood. I miss them and St. Salome’s, the church they tore down to build the townhouses (you can see one of them behind the sign above). The church was looking pretty run down. I always like that they advertised the “Sacrament of Penance.”

Saint Cecilia’s on Culver Road
Bingo sign in front of Saint Cecilia's on Culver Road
Bingo sign in front of Saint Cecilia’s on Culver Road

St. Cecilia’s, further down Culver, still has one weekly mass but no parish priests, no school and no bingo. They sold most of their property to a senior living facility. According to the Diocese of Rochester website, Rochester had 54,500 Catholics when the diocese was formed in 1868. The average Catholic then was socio-economically poor and they gathered according to their ethnic background in 35 parish churches (and 29 mission churches.) By 1966 there were 155 parishes (and 36 mission churches.) Each had parish priests and two or three daily masses. Today they are closing shop all over town. There are so many alternatives. Spiritualism was founded in the city of Rochester by the Fox sisters. The Mormon faith originated in Palmyra, just east of Rochester.

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Abstracting Further

Three windows on South Avenue building
Three windows on South Avenue building

The blue in the photo above is not the sky although it was a perfectly blue day when I took this photo. It is same sort of plastic paneling on the exterior of a building on South Avenue downtown. I have been drifting toward this sort of composition for a long time. I rounded up just over a hundred of my photos in this vain and put them in an album as source material for acrylic paintings that abstract them further.

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I Miss Winter

Marsh on Hoffman Road in February
Marsh on Hoffman Road in February

February’s bonus day brought a brief but welcome reappearance of winter weather. We walked to the end of Hoffman Road in a snow squall. The red winged blackbirds that we’ve been listening to for the last few weeks were nowhere to be found. The marsh looked like a Tarkovsky still. Twenty-four hours later the sky is blue and the temperature is fifty degrees.

Since my father first identified the yellow flower pushing its way through the snow on our hillside I’ve noted the date. They were out on February 14 this year, the earliest date since I started keeping track. Jared spotted a ground hog in the garden a few weeks ago so he already has the electric fence on to protect the lettuce that wintered over. The cherry blossoms in the park are worrisome. It is good to see the chipmunks are out of hibernation but I miss winter.

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Painters Tape

Violet Dennison with her work in her studio. Photo by New York Times.
Violet Dennison with her work in her studio. Photo by New York Times.

An article in NYT’s T Magazine on artists spaces in New York City included this picture of Violet Dennison’s work. I was immediately attracted to it but began to wonder whether the green tape, the strongest element in this diptych, was even part of the work. I looked her up online and didn’t find anything like this so I guess the tape was only a temporary mask. I guess it reminded me of some of my photos. The article describes Dennison as a conceptual artist. That covers a lot of ground and holds open the possibility that this is one of her works.

Plastic covered windows on South Clinton
Plastic covered windows on South Clinton
Door with blue painters tape NYC
Door with blue painters tape NYC
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Table Saw To The Rescue

Paul Dodd "Untitled" acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (1 of 4 for RoCo 6x6)
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (1 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)
Paul Dodd "Untitled" acrylic on plastic panel 2024 2 of 4 for RoCo 6x6
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 2 of 4 for RoCo 6×6
Paul Dodd "Untitled" acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (3 of 4 for RoCo 6x6)
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (3 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)
Paul Dodd "Untitled" acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (4 of 4 for RoCo 6x6)
Paul Dodd “Untitled” acrylic on plastic panel 2024 (4 of 4 for RoCo 6×6)

There is no such thing as leftovers in the studio. I had 20 of these small plastic panels, 12 inch square pieces, leftover from my “Arcadian Forms” and “Passion Play” series. I covered them in acrylic, flat organic shapes just two or three colors per panel and then tried to make them work as a whole – twenty tiles in one piece with the simple forms sometimes jumping from on e panel to the next, sometimes changing color and other times staying the same. I rearranged and repainted the pieces many times before accepting the fact that it was a logistical mess.

Yesterday I cut a hole in a piece of white board and moved it around on top of the pieces until I found compositions that I liked. I took the panels out to the garage and used my table saw to cut out four 6 by 6’s for Rochester Contemporary’s upcoming show.

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Out Of The Frying Pan

Pat Moschiano performing with Frying Pan at Skylark Lounge in Rochester
Pat Moschiano performing with Frying Pan at Skylark Lounge in Rochester

Pat Moschiano organized a gig for four bands at Skylark. The show was dedicated to Dave Ripton and the proceeds went to his favorite charity, AA. Pat’s band, Frying Pan, went first. He was backed by Phil and Ken from Margaret Explosion and Brian from Nod (on the drum riser). Pat delivers his Kerouac-like lyrics like Mark E. Smith from The Fall or James Murphy in LCD Soundsystem while the band mines Chicago blues. We were thrilled to be able to hear the lyrics this time.

The place had filled up by the time Annie Wells took the stage, with people who had not been in the same room together in a long time. Stan Merrill showed me his scratching technique for making swinging sixties style movies. He moves his finger up and down on the lens dial as he shoots. Don Blair gave us a recording of Ripton reading four poems in the 80’s in this very same room. The place was called Mothers. Annie played three of Dave’s songs but it was hard to hear them. Still this one was the best thing I heard all night.

Margaret Explosion played next. Ken’s electric bass gave us an especially full sound. I set about half of Brian’s drums aside and played the rest. I kept getting my foot stuck under the bag of sticks that was hanging off the tom tom. We are used to playing without a sound system so Peggi’s sound is a 50/50 mix of natural sax sound in the room and the pickup to amp with some digital delay. Here the room sound was lost and her pickup collected the whole band and sent that through her effects and out her amp (which was miced) and into the PA. We could have made it all work with a sound check but none that mattered. We were there for Dave. Through tears Dave’s daughter told us the last place she went with her dad was to Margaret Explosion at the Little.

I looked through my pictures of Nod before the gig, inspecting Brian’s kit before sharing it. I did a file search for Nod and came across a photo I took years ago of the Penfield Road underpass. I was confused as to why that photo was in with all the Nod photos and then realized the graffiti on the bridge read “No Draft.”

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Number Nine

Sutton Park Apartments on East Avenue in Rochester
Sutton Park Apartments on East Avenue in Rochester

US News & World Report ranked Rochester as number 9 on their “Best Places to Live for Quality of Life” list. Aren’t they the same organization whose list of Best Colleges was found to be suspect for some reason? I have always liked the fact that the city is under the radar. It’s small enough to get most places in fifteen minutes and big enough to not run into the same people all the time. It still holds surprises for me.

We stopped into Canaltown this morning to pick up a few bags of coffee beans and while they were bagging the coffee we walked up East Avenue toward downtown. Past the apartment building Anne and Stewart used to live in, the one Frank and MaryAnn lived in, the one Bernie lived in when he was in Personal Effects, the one we considered for Peggi’s mom when she moved up here and the one Jeff’s parents lived in at the end of their life. Peggi and I joked that we’ll be looking at that place again for ourselves. We walked by the Frank Lloyd Wright house, stopped at Wegmans and came back to Canaltown for a latte.

Employees at East Avenue Wegman's
Employees at East Avenue Wegman’s
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For Lovers Only

Durand Eastman golf coure in winter
Durand Eastman golf course in winter

The two trails shown above are actually connected. Such is the nature of pano mode. We were coming from the right, back from the lake, when I stopped to take this shot. That’s the club house up on the hill. If we were in Europe there would be a café up there. We have had a string of beautiful weather days and perfect cross country skiing.

Four days after Valentines Day Ying Quartet, the Grammy winning, longtime ensemble-in-residence at the Eastman, selected a program of romantic string quartet pieces to perform at Kilbourn on Sunday. It was a perfect match with the Greta Gerwig Criterion pick we had watched the night before, “A Brief Encounter” with Celia Johnson.

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The Weight Of History

Main Street East Rochester by the tracks
Main Street East Rochester by the tracks

This photo doesn’t come with audio but if it did your left ear would be rumbling with the sound of an Amazon container on top of a JB Hunt container on a CSX train crossing Main Street in East Rochester. A historical marker explained that this was once the center of town and there was a tunnel that took you under the tracks to the factories that still fill the landscape.

Speaking of landscapes, we saw the Wim Wenders “Anselm” movie at the Little Theatre last night. There is a 3D version of the movie. This was in only two but it felt like three. His paints are so big they almost are landscapes. We are knocked out by his work every time we see it. We love many of Wenders movies and he’s been a friend of Anselm Kiefer’s for thirty years so this was a match made in heaven for us.

Born in Germany in 1945, Kiefer is not as ready to move on as his fellow countrymen so he has been a controversial figure at home. The weight of history is in his monumental work. It is dark and it is exceptionally beautiful and the movie only whet my appetite for more.

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Five Minute Vacation

Garage sale 35mm. slide, anonymous photographer
Garage sale 35mm. slide, anonymous photographer

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.

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Jesus Goes To The Super Bowl

Jesus's house, Rochester, New York
Jesus’s house, Rochester, New York

We sat on a couch with my sister as we watched the Super Bowl. She laughed heartily at many the commercials and said she thought they were especially good this year. We see so few commercials we really have no reference point. The big budget ads featured a parade of celebrities, Beyoncé, J.Lo, Arnold and even Messi but that only cheapens the appeal for me. I like to think I still have a sense of humor but I didn’t find them funny. There was one I found really interesting though.

Called, “He Gets Us,” (there were a few in this series that ran last year) one ad grabbed my attention with a simple technique. A series of still photos. Or rather carefully crafted, staged and lit illustrations of hyper real people in role reversal parts. A policeman washing a Black man’s feet. The ad is payed for by the Hobby Lobby family and their hate group foundations. There are multiple layers of deceit in the one minute ad and then a tag line that reads, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.” 

The illustrations were surely created with AI and the concept was probably generated with twisted prompts. The Times ranked the ads, Best to Worst, and included this disclaimer. “Religious, political and social advocacy spots were not included so He Gets Us was not included. USA Today ranked them all and He Gets Us came in at 44. For me, this one stood out from the pack.

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The Red Zone

Beaver damage along Eastman Lake 2024
Beaver damage along Eastman Lake 2024

I don’t watch enough football to know what the red zone is but there was an awful lot of red in last night. Enough red in both of the teams’ uniforms for me to keep getting them mixed up in the opening half. And then there is the red in Taylor’s lipstick. The 3D ‘s Super Bowl LVIII graphics, painted on the center of the field were so distracting I couldn’t follow the plays. Going in, Peggi and I sort of thought we were for Kansas City, having watched a few minutes of game earlier in the season while at our neighbors.’ But everyone else in the room, three of my brothers, both of my sisters and our brother-in-law were routing for San Francisco so we had to watch it. It turns out they had all had enough of Mahomes, Kelce and especially Taylor before the game even started.

The lead switched a few times and it was a great game by other Super Bowl standards but we watch so much European football that it was really hard to keep our focus on the game. The US game all happens in snippets, incremental movements of the ball with heroic force by armies of players, with ads between every play. The European version, by contrast, is fluid, 45 minutes without commercials, a fifteen minute break and 45 more. Last night was a five hour proposition with fantastic food and good company.

I didn’t like seeing Kelce slam his helmet on the field and scream at the coach. I worry about Taylor.

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Someone Died Here.

Photo found at curb in front of George Brandt Jr.'s house at 1060 Garson Avenue in Rochester, New York
Photo found at curb in front of George Brandt Jr.’s house at 1060 Garson Avenue in Rochester, New York

As nice as it is to walk in the woods, the park and along the lake our walks were often more interesting when we lived in the city. We would find stuff on the street and at the curb. In the late nineties we came across a kid carrying boxes of stuff out to the street. We asked him what was going on and he said, “Someone died here.” So we went through the boxes and found personal effects like a social security card, a Taylor Instruments id, a Blinded Veterans Association card and a pass that would allow George Brandt to ride City buses for free if accompanied by an aid.

We also found a lot of photos. Strange photos in an interesting way. Some of them so odd we surmised they were taken by someone who might have been blind. But then George was in quite a few of the photos. So I don’t know who to credit these photos to. I am putting some of the on my “Found Photos” page. I have quite a few of those so it will take me some time to populate this page. I like to think someone will find some of my junk when I’m gone and at least puzzle over it.

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Copa Del Rey

Trail off Pine Valley in Durand Eastman
Trail off Pine Valley in Durand Eastman

We can sometimes walk through the park and get all the way to the lake without seeing anyone but the sixty degree weather brought a lot of strangers out. We ran into two couples on the trails who both asked us how to get back to the parking lot. Our response was the same. “Which parking lot.” The roads are closed in the winter and you can park at any of about ten entrances. Oddly, neither of the couples had the patience to sort it out.

Young Peggi
Young Peggi

We’re celebrating Peggi’s birthday all weekend. Dined at Lucano’s last night and picking up Mexican to go from Atlas tonight. We’ll watch Atletico Madrid play Athletic Club (Bilbao) tonight in the first their two home and away semi finals for the Copa Del Rey. We determined this the fiftieth of Peggi’s birthdays that we have celebrated together.

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Command I

Melissa Davis playing cello at the Little Theatre Café
Melissa Davis playing cello at the Little Theatre Café

“Command I” in PS Elements nicely altered the photo I took on Monday night of Melissa Davies and her cello. She was playing with Andrew in their duo, “Wren Cove” and she will playing there tonight with Margaret Explosion. We hope. Part of the fun is wondering who will be available for gigs. In the last year alone we’ve played gigs without the cello, without Peggi’s sax, without Ken’s bass and for the last two month’s without Phil on guitar. And the wild card is Jack on bass clarinet or guitar. He would like to be there every gig but only manages a few.

Wren Cove sounded otherworldly on Monday. Their best songs, often improvised and always in minor keys, completely sweep me away. They both loop fragments of their instrument’s sounds and play on top to create rich, gentle soundscapes. They are playing Friday night at  Red, White, and Brew on State Street.

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That’s Italian

Postcard of Caruso's in Canandaigua
Postcard of Caruso’s in Canandaigua
Interior of Caruso's in Canandaigua
Interior of Caruso’s in Canandaigua

Surely Rochester has more Italian restaurants per capita than any other city. At least it always seemed that way. The Refrigerator, the website not the broadsheet, had a section called “That’s Italian.” We, the editors, mostly me, would post reviews of local Italian restaurants and readers would send in their reviews, sometimes anonymously. We took the site down years ago but I kept the content and posted it under “Features” in the nav bar.

Me, on the left, before Junior Prom 1966
Me, on the left, before Junior Prom 1966

The only Italian food we had growing up was Chef Boyardee. My father would pronounce the word Italian will a long “I” (like eye-talian.) I had Italian friends though and quickly developed a taste. Caruso’s Restaurant on Canandaigua was the first Italian restaurant I remember eating at. In high school my girlfriend’s older brother (center above) drove us to Caruso’s on Canandaigua Lake for dinner before the prom. I think the main attraction was their reputation for not asking for id but the place felt exotic to me. We ordered Chianti and lasagna.

Peggi’s birthday is Thursday and we’re planning on having dinner at Lucano’s, a long time favorite Italian restaurant. There should be a review of it in “That’s Italian.”

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North King Steamer

"Blind Date with a Book" display at the Irondequoit Library
“Blind Date with a Book” display at the Irondequoit Library

Thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is the perfect temperature for walking. We headed up to the library today. Took Titus in both directions instead of the Kings Highway up and Titus back loop. I was tempted by the “Biblical Tales” and “80’s Mobster” packages in Blind Date offerings. I thought the idea was particularly creative but figured it was in the Librarian playbook. Peggi read a bit of Thurston Moore’s book while I checked out the art section. I bought a two dollar book titled “Windows to Rochester” in their sales section, a local history book put together by the Rochester School for the Deaf for Rochester’s 1984 Sesquicentennial. I was struck by this April 28, 1896 entry:

“The steamer, “North King” made her initial trip of the season yesterday. She arrived from Kingston and cleared for Coburg and Port Hope. She will make day trips from Charlotte this season instead of night trips, as has been her custom for several years past. The growth of steam navigation on Lake Ontario has met the requirements of modern progress, and for many years there has been a daily service. The perfection of steamboat navigation service in these days is one of the greatest boons. It enables people to make quick trips to new and interesting regions with little expense and much comfort. The North King is indeed a very different vessel to its venerable ancestor, the Frontenac, (launched on Lake Ontario in 1816,) whose ghost, if it sails the lake or walks the earth, must look with bewildering astonishment at the electric motors which provide the means to illuminate the saloons and staterooms of the North King with electric lights, and at the speed with which it conveys its passengers in luxury to the most charming and quaint resorts in the queen’s dominion, where many Rochesterians spend happy days in summer time.”

Rochester Fast Ferry Pass 2004
Rochester Fast Ferry Pass 2004

A steamship with saloons and staterooms making daily luxury trips to Canada! Mayor Johnson brought this idea back in the nineties and we crossed to Toronto a couple of times on the Fast Ferry before he was laughed out of town. We are indeed going backwards.

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