We walked by this garage sale this morning. We looked at the wares from across the street and decided it wasn’t worth risking our lives for. I moved close enough to get a picture the disturbing doll, Corky.
I had a disturbing Covid dream last night, the kind where I must have forgotten that the pandemic was still going on and then found myself surrounded by people in a busy marketplace without a mask. The dream followed the cocktail hour party we threw for our neighbors last night. I put 5 -6 pm on the last minute invite but the three couples stayed until 8:30. We sat around our patio. Four people were out on the lawn and we filled a bucket with beer, four different IPAs. I brought my turntable out and played Pharaoh Sanders, Joe Henderson, Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane.. I could see how the distancing thing can fall apart with beer.
Statues with rosaries on Culver Road near former Saint Salome’s Church.
A bunch of us on our dead end street split the cost of the swimming pool that sits on an empty lot. The arrangement predates our arrival by decades. The pool was put in in 1960. One of the neighbors has been mowing the lawn there for years but his tractor has bitten the dust. I’ve mowed it by hand before but it takes forever and it is boring. I’ve only mowed our lawn once this year and I’m hoping I won’t have to mow it again. We are surrounded by trees. I use the mower in the fall to chew up the leaves.
The presidency of the pool corp rotates and Peggi and I are stuck with it for two years. It was up to us to find someone to mow the lawn. Jeddy and Helena live across from the pool and they have a guy that mows their lawn. We’ve heard them talk about the guy. Not unreliable but, “He said he would come today . . .” And he doesn’t just come like clockwork during a drought. He waits for there to be a need. He’s our guy.
I called him this afternoon. He said he would come tomorrow, mow the lawn and then tell us how much it will be. He said he charges one dollar a minute. I asked, “How fast does your tractor go?”
We brought back our fort three tomatoes from the garden and had them with some basil and Manchego theses. And then we vacuumed the screen on our porch. The tree debris, catkins, cotton wood seed and the gypsy moths, have finally subsided. We are deep into summer now.
Our tomato plants are now taller than I am. And more importantly they are taller than our stakes. Peggi reminded me that other years we strapped extensions onto the existing stakes so that may be tomorrow’s project. We have more plants than ever this year, two different kinds, all started from Fruition seed. We don’t get full sun, maybe four hours a day, so they are probably reaching for as much light as they can get.
Peggi got stung by a ground bee on walk yesterday. Her second bee experience in her long life. Last time it got infected and compounded the hurt so her doctor started her on antibiotics. In line at Wegmans to pick up the subscription she noticed the woman next to her, speaking loudly, was not wearing a mask. Peggi asked the pharmacist how the woman got in without wearing a mask and pharmacist said they can’t force people to wear masks.
Observation point at Sodus lighthouse on Lake Ontario.
Today is the feast day of Santiago, Saint James the Major, one of the twelve apostles and the patron saint of Spain and Portugal. We celebrated with a Spanish Rioja and muddled lime on ice. The two pilgrimages we did in Spain and the one we canceled when Covid hit all finished in the Galician city named after Santiago.
We picnicked with good friends in Sodus at the old lighthouse yesterday and it was idyllic. I guess I wasn’t sure if that was still possible. We picked up food at El Rincon and took the back roads to the lake, by Christian Holler and along Mud Lane. God’s country.
We looked for a rest stop on our way home. We were traveling along the lake on the Seaway Trail and we found a spot next to a historical marker for a house that was once owned by an abolitionist. It was thought to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.
We parked next to two cars in what looked like a small parking lot. Every fence pole surrounding the lot had an American flag on it. After reading the historical marker we ducked down the road next door, one that led to a State fishing sight, and we found a place to go to the bathroom. When we got back to the car we found a couple in the lot yelling at us, “Is that your car?” I thought it had acted up or something. “This is private property. This is private property. This is private property,” the woman kept screaming. OK,” I said. “We surrender.” and I put my hands in the air. She yells, “Didn’t you see the signs?” I said, “We saw the American flags but we didn’t see the signs.” “They’re right here.” And she ran over to point them out out to us.
The couple was selling their house and the lakefront property. There was a Sotheby’s sign out front. Everything was in order but they had a design problem. Those damn flags took up all the visual space.
Back in town we went down to the pool with a beer. Someone was yelling on the other side of the fence. And then it sounded like a woman in pain. Was she crying? I got up on the fence to see what was going on. I heard Marsha, our neighbor with the big dog named Topher, yelling, “Larry. Get it out of his mouth.” I couldn’t see what it was but I’m guessing it was some sort of animal.
Altar boys Paul Dodd, Andy Finn and Rick Switzer, alter boys eating their lunch after serving mass at Holy Trinity in Webster
My large, extended family was solidly Irish Catholic. But my parents canceled church as an obligation when they bailed on the culture of Catholicism. I was in high school and was thrilled with their decision. I had been begging them to let me attend public school where my friends were. Bishop Kearney (named after an early Rochester bishop) was run like a prison. A lot like “Orange is the New Black” but the uniforms were blue and there were a lot less Black people.
The church was changing but not fast enough for my parents. They thought priests should be allowed to marry and women should be allowed to serve, something that is still out of the question. The church is desperately hanging onto an anachronistic, dark ages script. Bishop Clark, in his recent testimony followed that script, a script that attempts to keep the clergy above the law.
“There is also to be a secret archive in the diocesan curia or at least a safe or file in the ordinary archive, completely closed and locked which cannot be removed from the place, and which documents to be kept secret are to be protected most securely.”
Clark claimed he never looked at the secret files when he took over as Bishop. Two of my first cousins, both near my age, were abused by priests. Bishop Clark was asked about a long list of area clergy, most of whom he acknowledged knowing about, who were accused during his time as Rochester’s bishop. Apdf of his testimony is available online but it will make you sick to read. Here are some excerpts.
Father O’Neill Q. Were there other complaints during your 32 years at the Diocese of Rochester that priests had sexually abused minors other than the first two Bishop Hickey told you about? A. Oh, yes. Q. What position did you hold at Albany when you had that kind of responsibility? A. I was the chairman of the Priest Personnel Board. Q. Were you aware of any allegations prior to arriving as bishop of the Diocese of Rochester that there had been complaints that priests had had inappropriate – – A. Oh, yes, yes. Q. And after Father O’Neill admitted A. Well, I sent him to — what’s the word I’m looking for? Q. Rehabilitation center? A. Yeah. That’s — I’m not sure that was the exact title, but, yes. Q. Was it the Institute for Living in Connecticut? A. No. It was in St. Louis.
Father Larrabee
Father Eugene Emo Q. Did Father Emo ever admit to you that he had acted inappropriately with minors? A. Yes. Q. And did you meet with Father Emo on this or did he meet with somebody at your direction? A. I met with Gene, I would say, three times. Q. Okay. After Father Emo went for treatment, was he reassigned to a position with the diocese? A. He was.
Father Paul Cloonan Brother John Walsh Father Albert Cason
Father Ronald Frederick Q. Was he allowed to still work at parish assignments? A. Yes.
Father Vincent Panepinto Father John Gormley Father Dennis Sewar Brother John Walderman Father Joseph Beatini Father James Burk Father Thomas Burr Father Robert Guadio Father G. Stuart Hogan Father Robert Meng Father Thomas Kent William O’Malley Francis Pilecki, a teacher at Aquinas Father Foster Rogers Father John J. Seger Father David Simon Father Anscar Sullivan Monsignor Joseph Vogt Father Francis Vogt Father Otto Vogt Steve Ward
Father Paul Schnacky A. I know he offended, and I know he eventually returned to ministry.
Father William Lum Brother John Farrand Deacon George Finch Father Gerard Guli Father Robert Hammond Father Robert Klem Father Bernard Kuchman Father Gereon Lindsay Father Joseph Lynch Father Charles McCarthy Father Neil Mille Father Bernard Newcomb FatherLawrence Pais? Leonard Riforgiato Brother Dennis Sewar Father Dennis Shaw Father Gary Shaw Father Francis Taylor? Father Zenkel Father Gary Shaw
Many of the clergy have been profiled on the Democrat & Chronicle’s site where Steve Orr has been doing some bang-up reporting. Add to this list John Tobin, Father James Curry and Father Harry Utereiner, three McQuaid teachers who were named yesterday in sexual abuse cases involving students there.
When I was going to Kearney it was common knowledge that Brother Heathwood was chasing the girls. The Irish Christian Brothers, who ran the place, agreed to pay $16.5 million to satisfy about 420 abuse allegations. The Kearney building on Kings Highway South was put up for sale to help fund the order’s abuse settlement. Billionaire philanthropist B. Thomas Golisano purchased the building in 2014 for $3.4 million and gave it to the nonprofit that was then running the school.
I still have a deep soft spot for the iconography and rituals. And Christianity without the miracles is fine by me. But Bishop Clark’s testimony illustrates how corrupt and morally bankrupt the organization is. He comes off like a good soldier if there is such a thing.
Q. What is Exhibit 2? A. It’s a draft of a book I was working on at the time and I have yet to complete it. Maybe I never will.
From the book: “It is the abiding pain in these young people and their loved ones who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests in whom the young — by instinct and training — so readily place deep trust.”
“It makes it incumbent on us to learn what systemic deficiencies, what actions or omissions helped to create an environment in which such horror could even be possible.”
Q. When you had priests go to psychologists or psychiatrists for evaluation did you usually get back a written report from the psychologist or the psychiatrist? A. Yeah. They would send reports. And they would be —
And with that, the three hours of allotted time for testimony was up.
“Philosophy of Andy Warhol” with Campbell’s soup can drawing and autograph.
Before climbing the walls in the depths of the Covid crisis the British writer, Sophie Atkinson, reread “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” and in a recent NYTs piece she recommended it as a roadmap to navigating the countless days at home. She was reminded of an obvious truth: “I don’t need to go outdoors or online to have fun. Life has started to feel a little lighter. ” I made a note to reread the book.
And yesterday I read Brigid Berlin’s obit. She was the “B” in the subtitle of “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” – “(From A to B and Back Again).” She too was an artist and she recorded most of the conversation transcribed in the book. From her obit -“Her most radical act, late in life, was to become a near replica of her mother, with a similar apartment, identical pug dogs and conservative political views.”
Because we ordered an early copy through Interview Magazine, our book is autographed with an original Campbell’s soup can drawing.
Paul and Peggi in Milton Avenue house, Bloomington Indiana 1973
Here we are in our first house, a small rental in Bloomington, Indiana. Peggi was finishing up school and I was working construction. From here we moved to Rochester and eventually got married. Today is our anniversary.
Bloomington was a one horse college town but we found some magic there. I rounded up some photos and a few movies from this period and posted them here. Sort of an anniversary card to the two of us and the friends we made there.
You would never know the world is out of balance by looking out at the golfers. I don’t think we’ve seen one with a mask. A favorite trail of ours comes up from the lake and parallels Horseshoe Road. It continues along the ridge trail until it meets the golf course. There is a green to our right and a tee to our left and this is where we observe the golfers for a brief few minutes. The encounter was especially nice this morning because there were no golfers. We got a later start than usual and we’re guessing a league had just finished. The only ones we saw on the course were maintenance workers and the four woodchucks above.
The out of balance reference is not only to the virus but the gypsy moth infestation, the invasive black swallow-wort and the divisive political situation. Its been dry as hell here all summer and today it rained like hell. Our neighbor called to say he had a technique he wanted to demonstrate for us, another way of battling the gypsy moths. In yesterdays post I talked about how we were putting a small dent in the male population by constructing clear plastic whore houses (we have six) with pheromones inside and a pool of a water to drown in. We went out the Garden Factory to buy more bait and the cashier was wearing a mask that covered her mouth but not her nose.
Our neighbor showed us how he had tied his garden hose to a long pole in order to blast the white female gypsy moths (they don’t fly) off the underside of branches. They each lay a few thousand eggs for next year’s caterpillars.
Our movie selection, Spaceship Earth, about the Biosphere experiment, interweaved perfectly with this whole balance theme. I was blown away by productive the people involved were. And by the fact that were still friends after those two years.
It is revenge time. The gypsy moth caterpillars, that have been particularly bad this year, are in their next stage. It almost happened overnight. It doesn’t rain caterpillar pellets of shit anymore. Pieces of green leaves no longer cover our driveway. Instead the air is full of sex hungry, male moths.
The female moths have hunkered down in some sort of nest and the males are out looking for them. They use their sense of smell as a tracking device and we and many of our neighbors are playing a dirty trick on them. We bought artificial female gypsy moth “pheromones ” at a garden store. One of the tiny strips is stuck to the underside of this Jasmati rice container. The moths find their way into the container through the holes I cut in the sides and once inside they flap around until their wings hit the water and they drown.
The Swollen Monkeys song, “On Vacation,” has stayed with us for almost forty years now. And it, like so many other things, has taken on new relevance during the pandemic. the Monkeys were label mates of our at Cachalot Records. They played at our record release party at Danceteria. Ralph Carney, the sax player. went on to play with Tom Waits, the B-52’s, Marc Ribot, Jim White, Jonathan Richman and our buddy, David Greenberger.
Last time I played horseshoes with my neighbor he asked, “Who cut your hair?” I said “I did.” And that was all there was to that conversation. A guy thing. I used the clippers we bought at Sears and pretty much buzzed the whole thing. The front, top portion was done with sizers and there’s an inch or so there.
Airstream trailer in driveway on the walk up to Aman’s Farm Market
If I am not mistaken this is same driveway that we spotted a turquoise Metropolitan in about ten years ago..
I love the hot humid period we get in the the northeast as much as I love the bitter cold period in the dead of winter. Variety is the spice of life.
We typically get a reprieve from the leaf blower racket once summer rolls around. But this year, in the middle of summer, we are experiencing a fall of pieces of green leaves. The gypsy moth poop pellets cover the ground. Even we have taken to leaf blowing.
Ours is electric and once I turn it on I don’t turn it off until I am done. We have some neighbors who strap on the gas powered blowers and throttle them up and down every few minutes. In an ideal world this should be against a town ordinance. You can tune out a lot if it is a constant but on and off . . .
With our canopy being eaten we are getting more sun and the house is hot. We don’t have or want air conditioning so Peggi fashioned a poor man’s AC unit by filling a Guinness glass with ice and placing it in front of the fan.
Of course Monarch butterflies mate in the air. I just had never seen it before. These two flew just above our heads while we were playing horseshoes in the front of the house. It looks like one does all the flapping and the other goes along for the ride. They landed in our pine tree which is being decimated by the gypsy moths who are currently in their caterpillar stage.
The caterpillars are eating the leaves on most of the trees in our canopy and their droppings, about the size of a BB, cover every surface. According to the neighbors the gypsy moths were last this bad in the eighties. We are surrounded by oaks and they love those. The distinctive red and white oak leaves look completely different this year. There are huge holes in them and only half half of each leaf is still hanging on. I picture the caterpillars on the end of the leaves eating the leaf they are on and then falling to the ground with the leaf piece just like in the cartoons.
My sister, Ann, stopped by over the weekend and we had dinner out on the deck. She is back to work, behind the jewelry counter at Parkleigh. We tried to keep our distance but I think she might have forgotten that we are in a pandemic a few times, like when she leaned in to show us a picture on her phone. Somehow we came around to the types of meals we had when we were kids.
Even though my grandfather was a butcher there was very little meat on the menu. Maybe because there were nine of us counting my parents. Tuna melts were one of my mom’s go to’s. Warm and creamy served over Pepperidge Farm toast. We had Spaghetti from a can, Chef Boyardee until Ragu came along, with the pasta all swollen and soggy. Rice A Roni, the San Francisco treat, was in regular rotation. There might have been some chicken pieces in that. Seems like we had Sloppy Joes once a week. The spices came out of a French’s foil pouch which was mixed with loose hamburger and served over a toasted roll. We loved this stuff!
We ate a lot of steamers, boiled skinny red hot dogs. At least once a week. We ate canned corn, peas and mixed vegetables. Occasionally my father would give my mom a break and make what he called “Mickey Mouse sandwiches.” Little cubes of ham were stirred in with scrambled eggs and served with ketchup. For some reason my father always cut the crust off the bread, all four sides.
There were some clunkers. Chicken Pot Pies were a regular but invariably gave me indigestion. I think it may have been the lard in the pie crust or maybe it was the chicken. Every other week or so we would have Salisbury steaks, one notch above hamburgers, pounded flat with a hammer that left a pattern of upside down pyramids in the meat. I would often put the piece in a napkin and feed it to the neighborhood dog. Of course Motts applesauce was served with that.
My mom’s cookies and raspberry tarts were out of this world. Desert was always a hit.
Peggi went out on the deck to water our lemon grass plants and found this little guy, standing there, unafraid. And didn’t fly away while she watered the plants. We didn’t recognize the bird as a baby robin but continued watching from inside and saw its orange breasted mom land nearby and drop a worm into its mouth.
I was thinking of Lou Reed’s song where he kicks around the idea of having childen.
“I’d keep the tyke away from school and tutor him myself keep him from the poison of the crowd But then again pristine isolation might not be the best idea it’s not good trying to immortalize yourself”
Book cover for Paul Dodd artist book “Brief History of the World • Vol XIX”
Will Heinrich reviewed a 56 Henry virtual art exhibit called “Labyrinth of Solitude” in this morning’s NYT and described it in a way that sounds very familiar to me. The curator, Jens Hoffmann, chose 13 masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum, and matched them with new paintings in themed pairings that elaborate on the timely theme of solitude, from “Death” to “Salvation” and “Identity” to “Isolation. The show is presented online as if it was hung but the Metropolitan paintings were never borrowed.
One of my pandemic projects is creating eBooks from my artist books. Called “Brief History of the World,” they are an ongoing project and are constructed in a similar manner. Old and new images, mostly borrowed from newspapers , are presented in pairs. I have five of them online now. I suggest starting with Volume XIX, the most recent of the five. It’s an easy and safe read.
The book can be viewed with any reader on any device but the phone is just a bit too small. And the book reads best in 2 page spreads because there is a dialog there. Here is the link to the free download of Brief History of the World Vol. XIX. I hope you enjoy it.
The Times ran a story this morning about the small percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but won’t vote for him again. One woman, a 53 year old finance executive. was quoted as saying, “I think if he wasn’t such an appalling human being, he would make a great president .” And I think her point is that he has been incredibly effectual. He has stacked the courts with conservatives for decades and he’s rolled back so may regulations we may never be able to restore them.
I probably shouldn’t follow politics. There’s so many shades of grey. We watched Trump steal every item in the Republican playbook and then knock off every candidate in that large 2016 pool. He is formable. You have to give him that. I think Biden should run with the campaign slogan that Thomas Friedman gave him. “Respect science, respect nature, respect each other.” That is a winning platform.
Haim’s “Summer Girls” borrows from “Walk on the Wild Side” and that only makes it better. But my favorite is “Want You Back” because a poster for the Hammer Museum is featured in their early morning walk through Westwood.
