Month: June 2024

We’ve been walking early this week, before our second cup of coffee that is, in order to beat the heat. We were amazed at how many people were already at the beach on Juneteenth. You run into different people at that hour. This morning we ran into Fred Sanfilipo. His camera looks like a military weapon. He said he had been taking photos in the park since six.

Fred had his own agency back in the Mac II days and each year we’d see him in the front row at Jazz Fest. A couple of years ago we ran into him in the park. He brought our attention to an unusual bush with magnificent flowers, a Harlequin Glorybower. He gave us the address of his Flickr page and said he would put us on his mailing list. Now three or four times a week we find an email with a nature photo, just the photo and a witty subject line. These two photos are recent examples. Almost all his photos are taken in Durand Eastman Park and all are something special.

Fred says he hates Facebook (we seconded that) but he loves sharing his photos. If you would like to be added to his mailing list comment here and I will pass your email address along to Fred.

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We kept the last disc we rented from Netflix and we have yet to watch it. The “Muscle Shoals” documentary is still sitting by the tv. Funny how antiquated that process looks already. I know newspaper home delivery is just a matter of time. I went to the NYT site to report a no show for our paper this morning and found this message when I logged in. “We’re sorry, but we’re unable to deliver your paper today. However, we’ll redeliver it tomorrow.” Redeliver? They’ve already fired their copywriter.

We stopped out to hear Wren Cove at Red White and Brew on State Street. It was the same night the Yankee sensation was on the mound at nearby Red Wing Stadium. They had a record attendance that night and the bar was nearly empty. Wren Cove is just a duo so they only sounded better. Melissa, the cello player (she also plays with Margaret Explosion) turned 40 that night so we had a card for her. After the set Melissa told us she feels so old now. We laughed. Andrew, the guitar player in Wren Cove said, “You’re a musician. Musicians are 29 forever.”

I’ve taken over the table in our place with the construction of another “Brief History” episode. It takes about a year to collect the images (please redeliver) and a few idle hours for the match-making. And then I will take my time with the digital release.

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This Sun Ra Sunday (link) was a gorgeous sunny day. So sunny I felt the back of my neck burning as we sat on a blanket in the middle of Parcel 5. Gentle Sun Ra music was coming from a blue bag and Jason was reading what he described as an Appalachian gothic novel. It was a small book with wide leading. An envelope with found photos spilling out of it was sitting in front of us. Each was a jewel, intriguing for completely different reasons and each prompted digressive conversation.

The second musical selection was a collection of Arkestra tunes featuring June Tyson. My head was swimming with memories of Midtown Plaza and the promised revitalization shows. The Manhattan Restaurant, the stores that used to surround this area, the friends that worked in the buildings around us. The music was transporting us.

Tents lined Broad Street, near where we were sitting, a flea market overstuffed with vintage gear. I bought the found photo (above) for a dollar. On the back of the photo was a handwritten description, “Bob’s new boat. He built it. It will go 70-80 miles per hour. This is at Millerton.”

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We have been putting together songs for a live cd (is there any other kind?) and a few of the tracks are from a night when Peggi couldn’t play because she had broken her finger. She is playing around with overdubbing (I know that would make the track not quite live) electronic sax parts. I shared the songs with her from my Apple Music (formerly iTunes) app and Peggi found she could only play along with the first 30 seconds of each song because of some sort of copy protection. I sent the songs to her directly from my hard drive as a workaround.

We watched the Apple Event, not live and not the whole thing but enough. The presenters were creepy, even Tim Cook. If I have the gist right Apple has borrowed ChatGPT, branded it as Apple Intelligence and incorporated it into their family of apps, all of which we use. The stock went bonkers and we sold some more. We bought our first shares back in the 90s when we were playing the Bug Jar happy hours. Steve Brown, one of the three original owners was tending bar and selling stock.

Our neighbor, Rick, bought the Lou Reed tribute lp at Record Store Day and he just let us borrow it. We have watched the Keith Richards “Waiting for My Man” video many times. It turns out it is the best thing on the album. Second best actually. The cover is the best thing. A Mick Rock photo of Lou with a mirrored reflection printed on a silvery stock. I was looking forward to Joan Jett’s track but it was a flop. Mary Gauthier does a beautiful version of “Coney Island Baby” and Bill Bentley writes the thoroughly enjoyable liner notes.

Bentley talks about working for Warner Brothers when Lou recorded “The Raven,” an album we never caught up with for some reason. So this morning, before our walk, we streamed The Raven! It is sensational!

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In Judy Gregory‘s artist statement at Richard Margolis’s Gallery she says, “Throughout history, regimes and individuals who have felt threatened by words have done their best to eliminate the sources from which those words have come.” Gregory was in the audience at Chautauqua Institution on August 12, 2022 when Salmon Rushdie was nearly killed by a knife-wielding attacker. In response to that experience she created the piece “8/12/22”, a panel made from transparent used tea bags in which “WORDS turn into SWORDS. “

On the wall, in the fourth floor hallway between Margolis’s space and Colleen Buzzard’s space, I found this sheet of paper taped to the wall. That is indeed where the magic happens – between the spaces.

I liked Jon Gary’s photographs at Colleen Buzzard’s, particularly these two. The show was called “High Contrast” and I was thinking about that property when I said to Jon, “So, these are high contrast.” Jon said they were but also he was thinking of the contrast between the photos he had separated into pairs when he hung this show. Even though I was drawn to the pair above I had missed that aspect.

In the back room of Colleen’s, where Hucky holds court, art books are typically laid out on the big table. An open invitation to browse and ideally, prompt art talk. Hucky said they were in NYC last week and I’m guessing they stopped by Printed Matter. I found a Laura Fields book in which each spread had the top half of the front page of an issue of the New York Times with one color photograph on the left and a reproduction of a flat, abstract painting on the right. I flipped through the book a few times and was drawn to the paintings but I could not figure out the connection with the newspapers. Peggi pointed out that Fields had picked up a detail in the NYT photos, a linear pattern, whether it be from a piece of cloth or made of metal pipes, and created a painting with that motif.

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