Peggi Fournier of Personal Effects performing live Scorgie’s in Rochester, New York
I love this photo because it features Peggi. She was the star and wrote most of the songs. I wish I knew who took the photo. They deserve credit. It may’ve been Gary Brandt or his friend Al. And even more credit should go to Duane Sherwood for the dramatic lighting.
Frank De Blase at City News wrote a piece on Personal Effects that went online this morning. “In the ’80s, it seemed that the bigger the show and the bigger the venue, the bigger the band sounded. It manifested itself through the keyboards and lone sax. The rhythm section swung mightily and dreamy along with the ethereal guitar. It was as if they were playing to the walls and threatening the roof.”
Nothing lasts forever.
Personal Effects – “Nothing Lasts Forever”1 Comment
We used to go to a yoga class at the yacht club right at the mouth of the river in Charlotte. It was a dramatic setting for the Saturday morning class. In the summer we were out on the deck and in the winter we were upstairs in the ballroom. The members’ sailboats are all docked in a sheltered cove and it is right there, where the waterway runs off the river that I found all these pieces of driftwood bobbing in the water.
They were sculpted by nature and are beautiful just as is, so the challenge is how to present them. I tried this experiment this afternoon, cut the base from a piece of rough cut white pine, drilled a hole in the center of it, pounded a nail through the hole from the bottom, drilled the same sized hole in the base of the driftwood and stuck it together.
If we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic and if I didn’t worry I may have been exposed, I would have gone down to my neighbors. They have a drill press in their garage and Jared loves a project. He would have devised a way to secure the organic driftwood while drilling a perfectly aligned, plumb hole. I rolled the piece up in a towel and clamped it to my workbench while I tried to hold the hand drill steady.
I decided the base needs to played down, maybe a half inch shorter in both directions, and it should probably be black.
I took this one apart, drilled out a different, bigger piece of driftwood and put it on this base and then painted the base black. It takes about four days for the oil paint to dry and turn matt rather than shiny. I will evaluate it then and consider mounting some other pieces.
“Art to an artist is a question: Is a series of questions his response?” Eduardo Chillida
Our Christmas tree was a live one and in order to keep it that way we had to get it out of the house and into the ground. We don’t really have a spot for more trees so we planted it near two tall white birch trees. There were three there when we moved in and one has already fallen so we’re thinking the other two will be gone before this three foot Blue Spruce grows up.
We dug the hole last week on a relatively warm day but we needed some peat moss to mix with dirt around the tree, something that would be too heavy to carry back from Aman’s so we drove up there and stopped at Starbucks on the way. We thought it odd that there was no one in the drive-thru but then realized they apparently had a covid outbreak and have temporarily closed their doors.
145 at night near Christmas. Photo by Peggi Fournier
Christmas rolls in, slowly, for weeks, but when it’s over, it’s over. My brother and his family usually stay at the downtown Hyatt when they’re up here for the holiday but this year, in the middle of pandemic, they rented a place on the lake out near County Line Road where they hosted a family gathering outside around a fire. They told us that one of their neighbors was flying a Confederate flag along with a Blue Lives Matter flag. They were aghast although my sister-in-law didn’t know what the blue striped American flag was. Probably not too many of them in Montclair, New Jersey.
One of my other brothers said he agreed with the whole Blue Lives Matter thing and I said what I thought about that. Pathetic that they can’t even give Blacks that much, that their lives matter. It was a lively discussion, one my brother characterized as an argument.
Funny how people in the same family can have such wildly divergent perceptions. We have a niece whose posts attack Bill and Melinda Gates, who are some kind of saints as far as I can tell, and memes of “Normal People” (picture a generic small grouping of people without masks) versus “Conspiracy Theorists” ( small grouping with masks on). I used to hop on Facebook to promote the band gigs and I was always running into my cousin’s rants about the government taking away our guns. Or another relative badmouthing Greta Thunberg.
We saw the American flags out at the road on way out to my brother’s rental. People used to hang flags on their house or on a pole in the yard but now they put them out by the road, an in-your-face display of patriotism.
I’m hoping the gathering was not a super spreader event. Our friend, Steve, called us on Christmas to tell us his daughter, her husband and Steve’s two grandkids had tested positive. Steve was with them two days before and he sounded hoarse.
Tires in front of garage in Sea Breeze neighborhood
Dick Storms calls this “Backyard Brutalism.” There is quite a bit of it in the Sea Breeze neighborhood and that’s what makes it so much fun to wander around in. There is plenty of it in the city but I don’t live there anymore. We moved up near the lake fifteen years ago. Nature trumps this stuff in most cases but I am still attracted to it.
If ever there was a year to send and receive holiday cards this would be the one. And yet I tied myself up in knots just thinking about it. With so much suffering out there and at the same time so much mistrust, even a peaceful message feels like a cop-out. And sharing the news that Peggi and I are finding it really easy to hunker down would be best kept to ourselves.
Years past we nodded to the solstice, the religious significance of the holiday, winter, the new year and our cats. I drew the frames on one card on our Atari 1040, we did snow angels in the backyard and we dressed up like Spanish royalty. The year we dunked old floppy discs in red and green paint presented a shipping postal meltdown.
My father was never afraid to say what was on his mind in his holiday card. Each featured one of his drawings or paintings, maybe a quote from Chesterton and a message like “The war must stop!” One year, late in his life, he said “Mary and I fill our days recounting memories.” And when he died just days after Christmas he left a layout on his computer for that year’s card, an old photo of us kids and this verse –
“What if you couldn’t remember Yep!………Return to an event Where some time was spent When surrounded by people Some of the people you bore But the image you recognize no more What if you couldn’t remember”
My mother went out with vascular dementia and my father went out like a light.
Maybe we’ll do a Three Kings card this year. El Día de los Reyes Magos.
Covered graffiti on wall leading to Seneca Park bridge
We celebrated the solstice in our front yard around a fire with a few friends. Kathy told us about some elephant ear kale that she has been looking at in the miniature neighborhood behind the miniature golf course. That became our destination for today’s walk.
We saw a man sledding with his daughter in what was left of the snow on the hill near the old zoo. And then what we were guessing was a man and his grandson out on the golf course following the stream that runs through it. He was carrying a pole with a little basket on the end of it and a plastic bag. We watched him pull a ball out of the water. We stopped to look at a tree near Tamarack Swamp, one that was hanging onto all of its leaves. There was a tag on the tree identifying it as Quercus Bicolor Swamp White Oak.
We found the kale plants, still thriving in snow and an empty lot nearby where someone is building a new house. The sign out front had a sweet looking picture of the new home, two bedrooms, one bath $139,000.
We watched Real Madrid defeat Eibar last night and slide into second place in the 20 team La Liga, just behind our other favorite team Atlético Madrid. The matches have all been played without crowds but in Eibar, a city of just 27,000 in the Basque Country, two tall apartment buildings tower over the stadium with small groups of fans crowded onto the balconies.
Peggi was making an Adobo recipe that called for fresh cilantro. We didn’t have any in the refrigerator but . . . Was there any under the snow down in the garden? It was dark already so I took a flashlight with me. Luckily we left an upside down seed packet on a stake near where our patch was. I found that and dragged my boot across the plants to remove the snow. The leaves were not wilted or fazed by the snow. I brought back a handful.
For dessert, Peggi is thinking about this Mid-Century Modern gingerbread recipe.
Harold Budd, with Paul and Peggi in the front row, at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville Tennessee 2019
It is kind of a kick to be in the A Section of the New York Times. We found ourselves in the print edition this morning, in the front row (or pew) of this Harold Budd concert at Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee 2019. The photo is black and white in today’s paper and cropped as it is above. The online version of the story, Harold Budd’s obituary, has a bigger version of the photo in color.
We hardly knew anything about Mr. Budd but loved his set. We were there to see/hear Joan LaBarbara, Larry Grenadier, Bill Frisell, Meredith Monk, Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette with Ravi Coltrane, Mary Halvorson and the amazing Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Hope you found a chance to see the Philip Guston movie. We watched it last night and loved it.
The Veteran’s Bridge, finished in 1931, looks majestic in any season. I remember driving across it, from left to right, with my father in the passenger seat. I had asked to use the car after school so I drove him to work at Kodak. At that time there was a big traffic circle at Saint Paul just before the bridge. The circle had two lanes of traffic spinning around it and you had to work your way out to get off. I remember going around a few times before escaping while my father watched in horror.
This weekend only! Hauser Wirth is offering a free screening of “Philip Guston: A Life Lived” (1981) directed by Michael Blackwood. This is Guston himself, talking, thinking, painting, knocking you out. This is must see tv.
If you’re stuck for a unique gift, you may still be able to get an original painting by Eric Goulden delivered in time for the holidays. We bought an F chord.
Sometime after Sun Ra died in 1993 we saw Marshal Allen’s Arkestra at Milestones, that place on the corner of East and Chestnut that keeps changing hands. It was sad without the maestro and that is the last word I ever would have used to describe a Sun Ra performance. Maybe I was still in mourning.
Marshall Allen, at 96!, has kept the band together with three former members and I read an intriguing review of their newest recording. I ordered the vinyl and the first side is amazing. “Swirling,” the lp title, is apt. The new arrangements of three familiar Sun Ra songs don’t tear the roof off like Sun Ra would have but they do get the room swirling.
Peggi and I saw Sun Ra on five occasions. There is so much info online now that I was able to track down the exact dates.
November 11, 1979 Soundscape NYC I had a few Sun Ra albums at the time but other than the Art Ensemble at the Eastman I had never seen anything as theatrically immersive. In costume the band paraded around the fifth floor loft space in Manhattan’s West 50s while chanting, dancing and playing their instruments. The show didn’t start until after midnight and the sun was coming up when we left. My brother, Mark, who was living on West 43rd with Charlie Coco, came along with us. The show was released on cd, “Live from Soundscape.”
August 11, 1986 Red Creek Rochester, NY Sun Ra was traveling with three drummers and they couldn’t possibly fit on the stage so one set up on the floor. The violinist, Billy Bang, was in the band and two of the horn players staged a theatrical, circus-like, wrestling match with their horns as they circled each other on the dance floor. I hung on to the ticket. Someone recently posted a recording of this show on YouTube.
Sun Ra autographed record
I bought two lps, “Outer Reach Intensity-Energy (Stars That Shine Darkly, Vol. 2)” and “Hiroshima” from the band after the show. Both were in a white liner sleeves without covers. The label was blank on one side of each lp. They were five bucks a piece and I got Sun Ra to sign the the white label side of each.
The albums I bought did not sound like the Arkestra and only later did I learn they both featured live tracks from the Sun Ra All Stars European tour, a sensational line-up with Don Cherry, Clifford Jarvis, Lester Bowie, Don Moye, Philly Joe Jones, Richard Davis and Archie Shepp along with Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and Sun Ra!
September 5, 1987 Village Gate NYC The Village Gate was no bigger than Red Creek in Rochester so this was an intimate show. It was Labor Day weekend and my brother Mark was having his wedding rehearsal dinner at the Chinese place near their apartment on 96th. I spotted a listing in the Village Voice for this show and we headed downtown after dinner. The band played two long sets and sounded better than ever.
July 25, 1991 Jazzberry’s Rochester, NY Sun Ra had had a stroke and had to be helped onto the stage but once seated he and the band launched into an extended drum/percussion improvisation. We were sitting maybe six feet from the band. Sun Ra could only use one hand and I remember him soloing during that first song with set kit sound on a Yamaha keyboard. The band sounded great “The Theme of the Stargazers,” “Second Stop is Jupiter” and “We Travel the Spaceways.”
October 18, 1991 Jazzberry’s Rochester, NY
Sun Ra had regained the use of both hands and the band, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, and June Tyson with Buster Smith on drums, sounded as good as ever.
Marshall Allen is also a huge Sun Ra fan. If you only had one Sun Ra lp you could not beat his hand picked collection of Sun Ra tunes, Marshall Allen Presents “In The Orbit Of Ra.”
We each came home from Aman’s with a peck of apples in our backpack. Peggi had 20 Ouncers for apple sauce and I had Snap Dragons, our new favorite eating apple. I also had a six pack of Buffalo’s Big Ditch in mine and a quart of raw honey. It was a big shop and our packs were heavier than they have ever been.
We found a couple movies to stream on the Film Forum website and both were fantastic. “Gunda,” filmed entirely in Spain, featured no actors, only farm animals, mostly a pig family, and it was riveting. There was was no voice over either, just the animals’ voices.
“Crock of Gold” features the great Shane MacGowan and Ireland and Irish culture, it’s history, the Catholic Church and the IRA. Johnny Depp put up some money so we have to put up with him but he is hardly there until the end. Sensational songs, mostly Shane’s, with a handful of traditional ones and at the end a short tribute to Shane with Bono and Nick Cave who only serve to point out how great MacGowan is. (He is still alive.)
I was up before dawn for some reason and the temperature was hovering around freezing but the wind had died down. There was hardly anyone out in the neighborhood, park and along the beach. We did see a woman we’ve seen before picking up pieces of worn beach glass. She was wearing a “Satanic Feminist‘ shirt if I read it right. I was trying not to stare and the lettering was one of those German gothic fonts. The lake was too beautiful to photograph, a barely discernible horizon and a subtle rainbow of colors in the sky and water. The water was as calm as it gets.
It was warm enough for horseshoes yesterday and paddle boarding today. We watched this guy bounce around in the waves while we walked the beach. We ran into our neighbors on the way back and asked if they were going to Florida this year. “We’re waiting to see if the restaurants are open” was the politically tinged response. And then, “Hope they don’t make you wear a mask on the beach.”
Our friends were telling us their daughter won’t get the vacine because she believes it will make her sterile. Our friends joked that that might not be such a bad outcome. I heard this same story from my dentist. I was sitting in the chair, mouth wide open, the hygienist on one side of me and the dentist on the other. “It’s a messenger RNA,” he said, “not a live virus. I wouldn’t take it!” This really rattled me. And then he tells the hygienist he heard Cuomo might try to make the vaccine mandatory (I wish he would). I interrupted that conversation by asking the dentist if he could explain what he was about to do before the Novocaine made it hard for me to talk.
Really, a microchip in each dose of the vaccine? The amount of mistrust and misinformation floating around is making me much more anxious than the virus. It is exhausting me.
Bittersweet climbing up tall trees in Spring Valley
We were waiting for a day like Tuesday, theoretically too cold for ticks (although our friend, Jim Mott, told us he found two on him after a walk in the woods on a 20 degree day), sunny with no snow, to take one of our favorite hikes. This section of the undeveloped part of the park is completely overgrown with evidence of old horse trails that we follow in a big loop from our house. There really is no park management overseeing these trails so huge trees fall over on the paths and stay there for years.
Back in 2009, when we used to take this trail all the time, we discovered someone had brought a crew in to cut up the fallen trees and widen the path. We assumed it was the park management but the job was so destructive we called to complain. Larry Staub, the Parks Commissioner, came to to see it for himself and the police arrested a guy we nicknamed “Bulldozer Man.” Not to get too close to schadenfreude here but Bulldozer guy, who owned a construction company, was run over by a bulldozer being driven by one of his employees just last year.
The fallen trees in hills here look like art installations and there is never anyone up here. You do have to forde a creek that runs along Spring Valley and the first hill is a serious climb, something that is impossible with snow on the ground. The paths are completely overground with invasive plants in the summer. You would need a machete to get through the black swallow wort and mustard green. Those tick harboring plants have all died back now so our visit was sensational.
I carried the metal frame of this table home from one of our walks. Not that it was heavier than a load of groceries but it was a little awkward to walk with. The metal was rusty and had previously been painted an army green color. I brought some Ornette Coleman cds out to the garage, where our only CD player is, sanded the frame and painted it Rustoleum black.
Back in 2005 we helped our friends, Pete and Shelley, build their new house in the Adirondacks. It was an opportunity to use the few skills I developed at my first job after school. I fell in love with the rough-cut White Pine wood Pete and Shelley were using and I asked them if they could get us some from the sawmill. They brought us a car load and I have found all sorts of uses for it over the years. I picked out three boards from my stack that were all approximately the same width and cut them to length for the table table top. I tied the boards together with three cross pieces on the bottom side.
Our arugula finally took a hit with last night’s temperatures. It was limp but still green and may bounce back with the upcoming 40 degree days. We picked a big bunch for dinner. Our pandemic garden has been amazing. We are still eating the tomatoes and peppers that we picked before the frost and let ripen in the window. We brought home the last of the romaine and spinach and the the Swiss chard, cilantro and kale and are still standing tall but we’ll finished them off in the next week. In four more months we’ll have seeds coming up for next year.
Aman’s, where we have been doing most of our pandemic shopping, gets their apples from nearby Williamson. We’ve been stuck on Honeycrisp for years. I’m announcing a shift of allegiance. We have switched to Snap Dragons. Meatier, crisper. They make you feel alive.
Rochester Contemporary’s 30th Annual Members Exhibition opens tonight in the middle of a pandemic. We will stop by by later in the week. I submitted an old iMac with a slideshow on it. My piece is called “Abstracting Spain” and is a collection of photos taken in Spain between 2006 and 2019. It is my love letter to the country.
You could visit Lake Ontario everyday. We come pretty close to doing so, and it will always look different. Sometimes brutally rough but alway beautiful. For us it is a pagan pilgrimage site. Our meditative walks reach a culmination there. We can’t go any further north on foot. We can only stop and admire the display. The lake level, wind, waves and ice all rearrange the shoreline. Shells, stone and pieces of worn glass get washed in and gather like a carefully arranged art installation. The open sky is nothing but dramatic and the lake plays with the colors in the sky. The horizon is always a dreamy but unattainable attraction.
There was a temporary open air tent set up for Sunday service in front of the Church of the Transformation all summer. And someone in the congregation found creative (i.e. cornball/clever) ways to freshen up the sign each week. This morning the plastic letters read “WORSHIP ON FACEBOOK ONLY.” I have to get back to my Funky Signs project.
We got some junk mail from AAA today that read “DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY DISCARD.” Still trying to figure that out.
We pulled the last of our beets out of the garden yesterday, just before the snow. The arugula, Swiss chard, kale and late spinach still seem happy down there.
“Isn’t art something that occurs to man facing himself, his work an unsparing witness?” – Eduardo Chillida
