Grand Avenue, Leighton Avenue, Bowman Street, Upper and Lower East Main Street and Lamont Place. Sonja Livingston glanced at the list of streets that surrounded our old house in the city. I had jotted them down as I read her book, “Ghostbread“, and Peggi had opened it to that same blank page in the front of the book in order to have Sonja sign our copy. It is interesting to me that so much of her bleak and beautiful memoir took place on the streets of our old neighborhood.

Sonja had a packed house at the downtown library on Super Bowl Sunday. Standing room only. Her husband, painter Jim Mott, manned the merchandise table and sold every copy of the book they brought. We’ve given copies of her book to a few people as gifts and we learned from the question/comment session that many others had done the same. The book is that moving.

Sonja read from “Ghostbread” but she read too fast. Even though the chapters are short I wanted her to linger over them and so I could savor their beauty. She had many in the crowd tell her how much this book meant to them, some were people who grew up with her, and it was all quite emotional. There were publishing and craft-like questions from other writers which Sonja handled with charming efficiency and I was thinking, “Can’t you see? This woman is a natural.” But what do I know. I can’t even spell. She said she hoped we realize that people in poverty are just like you and me in every other way.

We always have a January thaw but this is ridiculous. We finally get a few inches of sow and now it’s 50 degrees and sunny, too messy to walk or ski in the woods so we headed off toward the bay. This house with the “Let It Snow” banner in the window expressed our sentiments exactly.

My aunt is in hospice and my father was thinking it would be nice to get someone up there to play some music for her. Of course we suggested Phil Marshall, a music therapist and genuine top shelf musician. My aunt is going to suggest a few songs and I’m certain it will be great.

Years back we did a “My Funeral“print version of the Refrigerator I remember thinking about a few songs that I would like to her at my own funeral and of course that doesn’t make any sense at all because I will be in a little can at that point. Peggi Lee “Is That All There Is?”, George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game”, Eric Dolphy’s “Serene or maybe James Brown’s “Night Train.” I’m pretty sure no one would want to hear the long version of Sun Ra’s “Space Is The Place.”

When my brother’s father in law died the funeral home had his body in a closed cassket and they wheeled him into a room where we were all sitting and they played Sinatra’s “My Way” over the little speakers mounted in the ceiling without any introduction or set up and it was a very strange experience. He was a lot more fun than that. So there are a lot details to work out if you want pull off something like this. It has to be done in a party atmosphere for starters.

Remember the Chevy Nova? Peggi had an orange one when I first met her. We drove it all the way to the bottom of Mexico. Terrible name for a car in a Spanish speaking country. “No go!” “El Glop” is not the best name for attracting English speaking people to your restaurant and maybe that was the whole idea. We had coffee there and some tortilla and then returned for dinner. The place was fantastic.

We’ve been savoring our Barcelona hangover, pouring over photos, having our big meal early like they do in Spain, getting up late and buying Spanish products at Wegmans like Manchego and Valdeon cheese, caramelized pecans and chocolate covered figs. We’re almost as bad as the kid in “Breaking Away” who thought he was Italian. Peggi’s reading the Spanish version of Architectural Digest that we bought at the airport as I write this. A good snowstorm would snap us out of this but I don’t think this winter has it in it.

Last night we made fish with a mushroom and fig sauce, something we had twice in Barcelona, once with cod and once with hake. And the other night we made a batch of Espinacas con Garbanzos, something we went looking for in Spain because we’d fallen in love with it. Spinach, chick peas, paprika, saffron and cumin, it almost tastes Indian or maybe Moroccan. We found a recipe online.

Our iPad has become an essential kitchen appliance. I loved Thomas Friedman’s column the other day on how a tablet at the table in restaurants will allow you to put your order through to the kitchen, list ingredients with photos, tally your calories and pay your bill without a waiter. He left out the part about how your food gets to the table but it will take a big bite out of the service industry which has become the backbone of our economy. Our friend, Kevin Vicalvi, used to say, “In the future we’ll all be delivering pizzas to one another” but that was a long time ago.

We walked by the Circ Raluy tents a few times in the last week before deciding to buy a couple of tickets. We waited in line with families, kids with their grandparents and other couples for about a half hour before they opened the gates to the big tent in grand fashion with music from Nino Roto’s “Amarcord” soundtrack blaring from the sound system. I take back what I said last week about animal abuse in the circus. I mean it may still be the case but this circus had no animals, only clowns, jugglers, acrobats and some amazing entertainers. We realized the clowns are not just some fluff between the acts, they are the real meat of the circus. They play to the kids but get to the kid in all of us. They won us over. I do remember the clowns being my favorite part when I was kid but I guess I forgot.

Margaret Explosion – Turntable
Margaret Explosion “Turntable”

The best part of the day in Spain for us is drinking café con leche. We pick our cafés carefully and sometimes pass up ten before choosing the right one. It’s nice when the spot is lively but not too crowded and preferably off the beaten path a bit, típico places with locals drinking their coffee out of small glasses. There is one near where we are staying that we’ve even been to twice because the coffee is great and we love our server. Last time we were here we had café con leche, pinchos de tortilla (one with zucchini in it, one traditional Español) and we followed that up with two cortados (a small cup of coffee with hot milk served in a short glass). We came all the way over here for this.

Hard to say who got the worst of this deal. The deer has been gutted, stuffed with clothing and coated with silver. The guy has his head cut off.

The circus is in town! They’ve set up their tents on an empty lot near the port of Barcelona. They’re here for the month of January. Attendance should be mandatory but we’re way too busy and there is the issue of animal abuse. It’s a complicated world.

If someone wheeled a sound system on to one of the streets in downtown Rochester and sang arias in Italian at the top of his lungs he would probably be arrested. The guy in the trench coat above held this crowd of passersby captive and had a woman kissing him on the cheek and whispering in his ear as we strolled by.

We live in Rochester for reasons that are not entirely cultural. They are perfectly valid reasons and as varied as we are. We like a small city with easy access to the countryside and weather of all extremes. Opera on the street is not on the menu.

Indoor horse courts are grown man’s fantasy. We stopped at a gas station on the way up to Pete and Shelley’s in the Adirondacks a few years ago and we asked to use the bathroom. They told us to go through a building out back and use the bathroom there. It was this amazing site. I think about this at this time of year when we put our horseshoes away. We don’t live in Floyd, New York so I can only dream about what color to paint the shoes this winter.