Month: May 2021

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Tim Cook Doo-Dad

Scraggily tree at Durand Eastman beach
Scraggily tree at Durand Eastman beach

I spent most of this week, well, on and off, trying to figure out what we could do with an Apple AirTag. Our friends on the west coast sent us one of the Tim Cook doo-dads from a two pack that they had purchased. I spent some time wondering what they may have used theirs’ for, their kayak maybe or the catalytic convertor on their new used car. They told us there has been a rash of thefts from their parking lot.

I was thinking we could put it inside Peggi’s saxophone case but we’ve only had one gig in the last year. We occasionally lose the tv remote but the AirTag would look pretty stupid attached to it. It’s about the size of a thick Communion wafer. I finally decided to put it in our car’s glovebox. Maybe we’ll take the car to a Woodstock reunion and be happy to be able to find our car after the psychedelics.

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Hot Houses

Garden with buckets for cold weather
Garden with buckets for cold weather

The temperature was near ninety a few days ago. The street pool is open and we’ve been swimming for the last week. And now this.

I remember the big guy at Case’s saying, “Wait until Memorial Day to put your tomatoes in.” But that was the old days. We’ve gone with the 15th for years and when the long range forecast looked especially good we put them in early. It will be 70 on Monday but between now and then they are predicting lows around 43.

We rounded up every pot we could get our hands on to create little tents for the tomato and pepper plants. We started everything from seed and we need to protect these little babies. The basil, lettuce, Swiss chard, arugula, spinach, carrots, beets and mesclun will all be fine. They love this weather but we are walking a fine line with the tomatoes.

Our garden is in our neighbor’s old tennis court. He engineered the four tier electric fence to keep the ground hogs out. And he lets us use his hose to water. We make sure to keep him entertained. After we brought every plastic container we had down he let us borrow his buckets, some flower pots, his recycling containers and his wheelbarrow. Our plants are under each one of them. And there’s a few plants out in the open serving as a control group.

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New Normal

Rubino's deli counter, Rochester, New York
Rubino’s deli counter, Rochester, New York

We did a few parking lot pickups at Rubino’s during the pandemic and then started entering the store at off hours. The sloppy mask technique of some customers made it feel relatively dangerous. We were out of oil again so a walk up there was in order. 

At lunchtime the store was packed. It felt festive even, like a holiday, and yet it didn’t feel dangerous at all. Most customers still had masks on as did all the staff and you have to think at least half of them are fully vaccinated. So we’re getting there, the new normal. We buy Zoe Cold Press in 3 liter cans, two at a time. And each time I reach for a can I brace myself for a price increase but it has been $29.95 for three or four years now. I put both cans in my backpack.

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Paul From Rochester

Monolith at Fruition Seeds in Naples, New York
Monolith at Fruition Seeds in Naples, New York

The first voice we heard when we popped our heads out of the car was Petra’s. So familiar from all those instructional videos and so life affirming. We drove down to Naples with Jeff and Mary Kaye. They were looking for seed potatoes but they came back with so much more. We were looking for nothing but we came back with more Arugula seeds and some red pepper plants which we have already stuck in the ground.

We’ve planted lettuce, spinach, kale, tomatoes, Swiss chard, collard greens, arugula, Pak Choy, carrots, beets, cilantro, cauliflower, jalapeños, Padrón peppers, garlic and mesclun. All from seed, and all from Fruition. It was pleasure to meet her in person.

Monolith at Fruition Seeds in Naples, New York
Monolith #2 at Fruition Seeds in Naples, New York
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La Última Jornada

Wildflowers near the Wisner entrance to Durand Eastman
Wildflowers near the Wisner entrance to Durand Eastman

Today is la última jornada for most European soccer clubs. The three teams we follow, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid all play at the same time. They did this last week as well and it surprised us. We record the games and planned to watch them one at a time but they go split screen in the middle of the match when a team in a concurrent match scores a goal and that sort of spoils the ones we have recorded.

La Liga got us through the pandemic. They played the whole season without fans and most of the teams had Covid outbreaks amongst the players but they completed the 38 weeks (the 20 La Liga clubs play each of the other teams twice in the season). We watched well over a hundred matches.

We started the season cheering for Real and Barcelona. One of those two have won the league championship every year but one for the last twenty years. But each time we watched Atlético we liked them more. There is a lot riding on today’s match. Atlético has been in first place for most of the season. Barcelona is out of the race after losing last week but if Real wins and Atlético loses Real would be champs. Atlético has an easier game going against one of the bottom placed clubs, one of the three that will be relegated to Segunda División next year. Go Atlético!

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Sea Breeze

Beach at Sea Breeze, New York
Beach at Sea Breeze, New York

The town projected their Sea Breeze improvement project would be done by December. The new playground is open but some earth moving equipment was still running around. A slab has been poured for the picnic pavilion but that is still left to your imagination. A permeable concrete ramp near the new parking lot runs right down into the water and would be ideal for launching a canoe or kayak.

There is a vending machine that takes money for the boat launch and there are some brand new floating docks stretched out on the bay side. The entire area is a few more feet above sea level so it shouldn’t flood for. a few more years. The walkway is open again and we followed it right up to the seasonal swing bridge, which won’t be operational again until November. A mama duck paddled by with her seven tiny babies. And we were happy to see they have not tried to improve the sandy beach near the pier on the lake side.

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Theater 5

Peggi sound checking drums at Little Theatre 5
Peggi sound checking drums at Little Theatre 5

People were ready to go out and it felt good in a giddy sort of way. We kept our masks on in the Little Theater but removed them when we played. The patrons, sitting in one half the available Theater 5 seats, the ones without yellow caution tape on them, did the same. The pattern, pairs of seats side by side with empty pairs between, kept people apart enough to change the vibe. The chatter, the squeaky chairs, the espresso machine, the laughter was all missing and missed. The band which typically slips into that atmospheric milieu was now the uncomfortable focus.

I read an article in the Times about some live Can recordings that Mute Records is releasing. They quoted Irmin Schmidt, the founder, as saying, “When we went onstage, we didn’t know beforehand what we would play. We just reacted to the atmosphere, to the acoustics, to the public, to the whole environment spontaneously, and started playing something, which we had never played before,”

Phil and Ken were in the cafe while Peggi and I were setting up the recording equipment. Peggi pounded my drums while I set the levels. There wasn’t enough light in the theater to get a proper photo. We had not played together since March of 2020 and we should have at least done a sound check in this new venue but instead we just dove in, in front of a rapt audience. I found it sort of nerve wracking. I forgot to stop the recording at the end of the night so it never wrote to disc before we unplugged the extension cord and we lost whatever it was that we played. But we did it. We emerged from the pandemic.

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Litho In USA

"Litho In USA 09" collage 18" x 24" 2021 Paul Dodd
"Litho In USA 10" collage 18" x 24" 2021 Paul Dodd
"Litho In USA 08" collage 18" x 24" 2021 Paul Dodd
"Litho In USA 06" collage 18" x 24" 2021 Paul Dodd

Back in the early eighties our band played a lot of dates with Paper Faces from Buffalo. They managed to put the art in art rock better than anyone we knew. They would sometimes hang pieces of billboards on the wall behind them, old cigarette and car ads. Dave Mahoney‘s father worked for the billboard company in Rochester so I stopped by to see him. I used the back of the billboard paper to do large acrylic paintings. The paper was thick and big, sheets 54 by 60” inches. You can still see the folds in the paintings.

I’ve had a short stack of the billboard sheets out in the garage for years and recently took a look at them. I made a series of collages with pieces cut from the large block lettering and fields of color. I’m calling the series “Litho in USA.”

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Documenting The Documentation

Studio with Litho Collages on wall
Studio with Litho collages on wall

I’m itching to get back my Adam & Eve paintings. They’re based on a couple from Fairhaven that I had the opportunity to observe a few years back. The drawings need massaging before I begin painting. That gallon of gesso in lower right hand corner will take care of the adjustments. Before I dive though in I want to photograph the twenty collages shown drying on the walls. I popped this photo in a second but properly photographing the twenty, individually with the white in each looking white and the colors when used on multiple pieces looking looking the same, is not so easy. I spent the whole weekend on this, longer than it took to do the collages.

I’m using two Lowel Toto lights pointed at my painting easel. Getting them to light a flat surface evenly is a project. I have my Sony RX100 on a tripod with the timer set and I’ve photographed the twenty pieces three times now. I called Duane in NYC after the first two rounds failed and he took me into Manual Mode, set to 1/80 of a second with the F-stop at 8.0 and the ISO set to 800. We did a custom white balance and I stored that. The photos are much better but somehow the blues, like in the third and fifth one above, are different. The dark blues, like in the first and and sixth above, are different. Could it be that the camera is influenced by it’s surroundings just as our eyes are?

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Ready Or Not

Margaret Explosion poster for Little Theatre 5 gig on Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Margaret Explosion poster for Little Theatre 5 gig on Wednesday, May 19, 2021

The café at the Little Theatre is not hosting live music yet. We were in the middle of a month of Wednesdays when they pulled the plug. Fifteen months later we have our first live gig, this on in one of the theaters, Little Theatre 5, the Jack Garner theater. When Jack was alive and working at the D&C he wrote this description of the band.

“One of the most original and unusual bands in Rochester; a five-piece ensemble exploring all sorts of musical dimensions linked to free jazz, Third World melodies, exotic instrumentation and a spacey, enveloping sort of music. The Explosion plays with a single-minded purpose and organic oneness that’s most impressive.” 

Tickets for the Wednesday performance are available at the www.thelittle.org

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Christianity Today

I really am not obsessed with the Stations of the Cross. I recently posted a new version, fourteen acrylic paintings, and that led to revisiting my 1998 version. Back then I was envisioning a contemporary retelling of the crucifixion with the Passion Play unfolding on a route I took everyday by bicycle, from our home near East High to my graphic arts job downtown.

We loved living in that neighborhood but is hard to romanticize East Main Street. It was pretty dismal. These fourteen locations were pulled from the 36 photos I took in 1996 and some of them were used as locations for my Passion Play 1998. I hope to live long enough to do a third version.

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Funny Suits

Turtles sunning themselves on a fallen tree in Durand Lake
Turtles sunning themselves on a fallen tree in Durand Lake

We were coming up from the big lake (Ontario), walking along the west side of Durand Lake, the sunny side in the morning, and Peggi was telling me about her dream the night before. Ken, Margaret Explosion’s bass player, had suggested that we all wear hat and some funny suits at our gig next Wednesday, the first since they pulled the plug on live music back in March 2020. And he wanted us each to take a drug before the performance, some pills that he got from his mother.

And then I heard a splash as a bunch of these turtles were startled by our presence. We froze and they slow climbed back on the log. If you enlarge the photo above you can see more heads sticking out of the water to the left of the fallen tree. We stayed here for a half hour or so.

Earlier we had watched one of those white swans chase a goose across the lake. Closer to home a bull frog was holding court on Trott Lake. A Pileated woodpecker was competing with the sound of a nail gun from the workers on our neighbor’s roof. Back at home Peggi checked her fortune in today’s paper and found that she “would be favorably impacted by a member of the animal kingdom today.”

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Ask Alice

Flowering bushes and trees on walking route up to Aman's
Flowering bushes and trees on walking route up to Aman’s

We rode out to Port Bay over the weekend in the the backseat of some old friends’ car. Old as in our age and due to the fact that I went to high school with one of them. We had not seen them since their trip to Mexico and we had a lot to catch up on. Traveling during a pandemic is adventurous enough but they pushed the envelope and arranged a guided psychedelic trip on an organic South American plant, Ayahuasca. It is said to trigger the growth of new brain cells and possibly treat disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s.

They took a taxi outside of town and met a young shaman and his girlfriend in a small building with no running water. They were instructed to keep their eyes closed for the entire trip, something that lasted til the sun came up. Their hallucinations were similar in that they both involved brightly colored objects, small Lego-like pieces and numbers on buildings. I was in awe that they were so trusting and so so open to this new, potentialy wild experience. Other than a few mushrooms I haven’t taken a psychedelic trip since 1969.

We walked up to Aman’s this morning and the he humidity was so low today, the cool temperatures so crisp, the flowering tress at peak color, I felt like I was tripping.

Listen to Alice by Margaret Explosion
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Triple Header

Three mice in three traps
Three mice in three traps

There must be a more humane way to get mice out of your house. A better mousetrap. Mice had free rein of our home before we bought it. The droppings were everywhere. We think one died in the furthest reaches of our oven because it took a year of baking to completely eliminate the odor.

We were watching a Perry Mason episode the other night and I was half asleep when I thought I saw a mouse scamper by. We had already heard suspicious rumblings behind the cupboards so I sprung into action. They can’t resist peanut butter. We use Wegman’s Organic Crunchy. In fact, I hear mice on death row request it as their last meal. We caught five in a twenty four period and think we’re good for another year.

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No Tocar

Victorian chairs at Gem Lab on Mount Hope
Victorian chairs at Gem Lab on Mount Hope

Before the doctor set her wrist he had his assistant cut Peggi’s wedding ring off. We were out walking last year on a perfectly dry road when one of Peggi’s YakTrax came off and caught the other. She went down fast and broke her wrist. Now that the pandemic has settled down we entered a jewelry store to have the ring repaired. They were having a Mother’s Day sale of a Victorian collection they had acquired and they brought in some furniture to kick it off.

On our way home from the beach we noticed a couple bent over some green plants. They both were carrying plastic shopping bags and the man was cutting cutting something. We thought maybe they were foraging for mushrooms so I asked “What have you found.”

When they turned back toward us it became clear that they had no idea what I had just said. You know that look. I tried again. Blank faces. I know how they felt. I’ve felt this way many times in Spain. With hand gestures and Asian flavored words the man communicated that they were picking these weed-like greens for soup. Peggi reached down to pick one and the man said, “No.” He held up his hands and showed us he was wearing gloves.

After the couple moved on Peggi used her iNaturalist app to identify the plant as nettles, something we have been stung by in the past.

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Sleepy Town

Black brick house on Atkinson Street in Corn Hill
Black brick house on Atkinson Street in Corn Hill

It’s a good thing Rochester Art Supply opens so early. I dropped Peggi off at the courthouse for grand jury duty and did a little masked shopping. I parked in front of this beautiful black brick home in Corn Hill and walked over to West Main.

When I say “over to West Main,” I mean over the damn highway they dropped into the old Erie Canal bed when the urban renewal architects butchered the city by severing the neighborhoods from one another. It is kind of nice walking bridge. Perfect for skateboarding, it swoops up from Troup Street and plops you right in front of the restored Bevier Hall, home Mechanics Institute, my grandfather’s alma mater.

I worry now that there are so many apartment buildings downtown, newly built and renovated factory space, that this phase of urban renewal while only make the city sleepier.

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Going Green

Parcel 5 Green Space downtown Rochester
Parcel 5 Green Space downtown Rochester

These guys in day-glow suits had Parcel 5 perfectly graded this morning. The grass seed will probably be next. I was one of the contrarians who wanted something other than empty space in the middle of downtown but I’m good with the park idea as long it is more interesting than lawn. I was holding out for the return of city center and all that used to go with it. Stores, offices, newsstands, coffee shops, bars, restaurants and a place to hang out while skipping school. Stuff that is never coming back.

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Brooklyn Strong

Jared's fish being fed by Peggi
Jared’s fish being fed by Peggi

I mention this every year but it is a good excuse to link to this photo of Peggi with a Mint Julep at the Kentucky Derby in 1973, our first date, the year Secretariat won. We’re going with Brooklyn Strong in today’s derby despite the 40/1 odds.

Our neighbors left us in charge of feeding their fish while they’re out of town. These guys all survived the winter but the water temperature was only 50 degrees this morning so they were a little sluggish.

Peggi’s is doing grand jury duty for a few weeks and it has been an education for the both of us. The process seems lopsided to first timers. The prosecutors present their case and walk the jurors to their indictment 99.9% of the time.

So what went wrong for Letitia James’ in Rochester’s Daniel Prude case? Nearly a mirror image of the George Floyd murder and it comes back “no billed.” I don’t know much about the Rochester Beacon other than they just hired Frank De Blase as their music critic but I thought this editorial was pretty thought provoking.

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