Splitting wood is a perfect Fall activity. I used to swing a sledgehammer at a maul but my elbows hurt for days afterward so now we borrow my neighbor’s wood splitter. It’s a Heathkit. He built it from a kit in the fifties. The chainsaw is technically borrowed too. Bill Jones had one of his trees fall over his neighbor’s driveway a few years ago and bought the saw to clean up the mess and then he loaned it to us. We use it all the time and even let Bill borrow it back to cut down his way overgrown arborvitae.
Our neighbor, Leo, was always one step ahead of us. He made us look like slackers without even trying. Up first in the morning he’d have our paper at the door and he already be involved in a project before we crawled out of bed. He shared his garden with us, his gardening skills and then the fruit from the garden, potatoes and carrots and raspberries. Leo could fix anything. He was not only a craftsman but and an equally inventive creator, an inspiration. He was non-stop until yesterday when he passed away at 94.
Our neighbors on the other side lost their grandchild yesterday. The sweetest little girl in the world developed a brain tumor that eventually got the best of her just short of her second birthday.
Bob Martin setting up at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY
Margaret Explosion played last night at Visual Studies Workshop, the first of our four art gigs. We played up on the stage in the auditorium in front of a fifty minute propaganda movie that Rochester Gas & Electric made about the city back in the early sixties. We did the the gig as a trio, just Bob (above), Peggi and me – no bass. Ken was rehearsing with his other band, SLT. They’re opening for Hugh Cornwell from the Stranglers in a few weeks and Blondie’s Clem Burke is playing drums.
The auditorium had some big sound and we took it to some new places but we forgot to turn the recorder on so it will have to live on in our memories.
Here’s Margaret Explosion – Turntable recorded last week at the Little Theatre Cafe.
Early morning view across Little Eagle Lake in Algonquin Park
We mentioned our camping trip to a few friends and neighbors and they offered to let us borrow all sorts of gear. It is amazing that an old fashioned activity like camping would have so many new products. We really hadn’t done any backwoods camping since our honeymoon when we were chased out of a Smokey Mountains virgin forest by a bear. We have a tent and some sleeping bags but none of the modern camping paraphernalia our friend’s offered.
Rubberized dry bags, like duffle bags but they keep your stuff dry.
Pots and pans without handles, sort of a backwards invention. They all share a detachable handle so the pots are easier to stack in your pack.
A tiny propane stove for making coffee.
Polar fleece outerwear that is incredibly light when portaging.
Battery operated headlamps so convenient you forget that the lamp you are wearing is shining in your partners’ eyes.
Slim sleeping pads that self inflate (sort of) and cushion and warm the space between you and the ground.
We had so much stuff I felt like we were packing to go away to college.
Deer wander in the Canadian woods looking for food just like they do here but up there they have moose too and they are a bit taller than deer. You can see how they’ve trimmed these trees along the shoreline in Algonquin with branches eaten as high as the animals can reach. They look like manicured shrubs in an Italian garden. Philip Guston painted trees like this in his “Roma” series.
We were camping with Jeff and Mary Kaye and they’ve have been up here many times. Jeff was calling this the “browse line” and I kept thinking, “That can’t be right.” I think of animals as “right down to business”. Of course Jeff was right. This has opened my eyes to the possibility of a wide range of motives in the animal kingdom.
This detail from a Carrie Levy photo is part of the “The Unseen Eye” at the George Eastman House. Margaret Explosion is playing the opening party Friday, October 21. We have four art gigs this month. Pete LaBonne joins us on piano for Eastman House and Memorial Art Gallery opening. Dreamland Faces will be at the MAG that night as well. We’re at the Little Theater tonight and the first of the four art tour stops is tomorrow night at Visual Studies Workshop where director, Rick Hock, has us performing in the darkened auditorium while a movie about Rochester is projected on their big screen.
I can’t think of a better place to spend Indian Summer than Algonquin Provincial Park up north of Toronto. We spent the last four days there, backcountry camping and living in the moment which makes it all sort of hard to describe.
There were highlights that transcended the moment like the shooting star, the beaver we followed for a half hour or so and the midnight canoe ride to the dark side of the island where the shoreline reflected on the still lake like a wild hallucination with Rorschach attributes.
The 3000 square mile park is astoundingly beautiful and pretty much the same as it was one during the first Indian Summer.
Art on the wall in painting class at the Creative Worksop in Rochester, New York
This white wooden block was screwed to the wall near the light switches in our painting class and someone stuck some blue tape on it. It looks like a Richard Tuttle piece.
Our class, with many regulars and a handful of newcomers, is so full that the moments of engagement with our teacher are compacted and all the more intense. There is no time to fart around and Fred Lipp rises to the challenge. The class description emphasizes honesty and he cuts right to the chase. He pointed to the way I laid in a neck on a pencil drawing and said, “You’re boring me.”
I didn’t say anything at first but when he left I thought, “thank you.”
Fall wildflowers in marsh in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
I can’t remember the last time the 5 day forecast, on the back page of the sports section, had five solid, full sun icons. So gorgeous this time of year, incredible colors and such low humidity you can see for miles. Even the deer were stunned. We came across a family in the woods and they checked us out but didn’t run. Peggi says they’re thinking, “Oh, them”.
We heard the news that Steve Jobs died while we were on break last night at the Little and we read so many obits and tributes today that it cast a melancholy spell on the day. We certainly had a soft spot for the guy that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life and then pretty much designed our lifestyle.
Webster Park pier on Lake Ontario outside of Rochester, New York
John Gilmore sends us oddball emails at odd hours. Thankfully they’re the type that don’t require any action on our part. We can ignore, delete or read and we don’t have to respond. They are never stock, forwarded crap and are often tailored directly for us.
In the last few weeks he’s sent us links to a site that sells the striped shirts that Picasso favored, a link to the Velvet Underground’s “Venus In Furs” inclusion in a list of “Ten Best Songs Based On Books”, and this link to Wikipedia’s page on “Ostinato.” John’s email was entitled “Shek It Tout.”
Lake Ontario from Webster Park outside of Rochester, NY
Interesting that the shoreline at Charlotte beach and Durand beach in Rochester is sandy while what used to be the beach at Webster Park is all rocks. I guess the bay that forms the Rochester harbor is more protected from the rough seas. I feel a lot better now.
Ray Tierney Senior, far left, in front of his store on North Avenue in Rochester, NY
There was some sort rift that developed in my family years ago. Drinking was involved. Pa beat Ma. People took sides and today all is forgiven or forgotten, or most of it anyway. We had reunion in Webster Park over the weekend and Peggi I threw our tofu dogs on the grill along side of our cousins’ hot dogs. The daughter of my grandfathers’ brother showed us a scrapbook full of old family photos and I popped a photo of the one above. It shows my grandfather and his fellow workers in front of his grocery store on North Avenue. “Of course you’ve heard all these stories,” she said. But we really hadn’t and the time flew by as the stories unfolded.
Red vine on tree in Hoffman Road marsh in Rochester, New York
Brad Fox told me he used to get depressed every year at this time when the days get cooler, shorter and grayer. He moved to California to remedy that situation. My good friend and neighbor is also affected by light deprivation. And Anne Havens goes south in the winter but thankfully always returns for productive art-making, something that she is sharing by appointment only before she hightails it out of here. You can contact her through her site.
Me, I get overwhelmed in the summer and look forward to hunkering down in the winter months.
Coffee/Bead signage on Java Joes’ building at the Rochester Public Market
I love the new signage above Java Joe’s and the bakery at the Public Market. Looks like it has been there forever.
I’ve always felt that I have some sort of knack for spotting hit songs. I mean I’ll hear a song for the first time somewhere and think. “damn, that’s catchy” and sure enough it becomes some sort of hit. Maybe everybody feels this way but it is not all a good thing. I get stuff stuck in my head all the time, stuff that I don’t want there. We were out somewhere when we heard “Lady” by the Little River Band. Maybe it was dinner at JoJo’s. They had a satellite station on paying Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Matt & Kim, Elton John and maybe “Lady.” Have you ever called your girlfriend or wife “Lady?” This thing is a relic but it lodged itself in my brain for two or three days.
So lady, let me take a look at you now You’re there on the dance floor, making me want you somehow Oh lady, I think it’s only fair I should say to you Don’t be thinkin’ that I don’t want you, ’cause maybe I do
Yesterday we stopped in to Home Depot to pick up a bag of cement. 80 pounds for $3.75! What do you think came on their sound system?
Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café tonight at 7;30. If I’m lucky I’ll get something else lodged upstairs.
Listen to Margaret Explosion “Juggler” with Jack Schaefer on bass clarinet
Margaret Explosion 45 RPM “Juggler/Purple Heart” (EAR 16) on Earring Records, released 2011 on black vinyl.
Last night in painting class my father showed me a picture of the spy satellites that Kodak developed cameras for. I remember at some point he couldn’t tell us exactly what he did at work because it was top secret but these “Corona” and “Big Bird” projects have been declassified now there is quite a bit of information online about them. My father drew me a little diagram of how the satellites captured shots of Russia and then dropped the film package as they orbited so that a plane flying below could snag it and bring it in for processing. Pretty hi-tech stuff for a company who’s stock is now selling for a dollar a share.
While walking out the Charlotte pier on Labor Day weekend I kept looking over at the funkier, slightly shorter Summerville Pier on the other side of the Genesee River. On Sunday we rode our bikes over to the east pier and walked out past the warning signs, “No Hand Rails, Uneven Surfaces, Deep Water.” There were a handful of fishermen and woman out there, plenty of trash and really uneven surfaces. It was a mini vacation.
We stopped in O’Laughlins to go to the bathroom and the Bills were down 21-0. We heard cheers coming from the homes along Rock Beach so assumed they were catching up but we were really surprised to hear they won by the time we got back home.
We expected a slightly more irreverent send off for Barbara Stewart but her funeral service was quite beautiful. She had more sides than we knew. We first met her when we did a website for her government consulting consortium, SWI. And then we found out about her kazoo side and lifelong efforts to make the kazoo the national instrument. Along the way we learned she had won an Olympic gold medal for pole vaulting, appeared on Conan O’Brien, worked with Tony Randall, held a violinist chair in the Philharmonic and Dave Ripton was her handyman.
At first we found it hard to shut her up and get down to the work at hand but she had so many fantastic stories to tell and she was so much fun that she won us over and we’d look forward to her visits no matter how much time they ate up. She planned her final service and it was an eclectic mixture of classical and camp with an operatic closing number, “Climb Every Mountain.”
Kenny Garrett Quartet with Benito Gonzalez on piano, Charnett Moffett on bass and Marcus Baylor on drums at the 2011 Exodus to Jazz Series in Rochester, New York.
We were pretty excited about seeing Kenny Garrett’s quartet again. He was sensational at the 2006 Jazz Fest and we hadn’t yet seen any of the Exodus to Jazz shows so we bought general admission tickets at Wegmans and showed up at the Hochstein School of Music about a half hour early to grab a seat in the balcony.
Benito Gonzalez was on piano again but this time he was wearing a sharkskin suit and long pointed shoes. Charnett Moffett was on bass and Marcus Baylor was on drums, all four of them individual powerhouses. Together they tore the roof off the church. Too bad my camera is still in the shop. This was music on a very high level but I took a low res video of their encore with my old NIkon.
Detroit’s Johnny O’Neil opened the show and brought he house down with a beautiful version of Eubie Blake’s “Dollar For A Dime.” They do not write songs like that any more.
Dead tree in marsh off Hoffman Road in Rochester, NY
Took our last dip in the street pool on the last day of summer and finally set aside time to watch the Western New York Flash beat the Philadelphia Freedom. Our neighbors had taped the championship game and kept it on their Tivo for us. We had our first and last (while we’re living anyway) garage sale the day they played. If this Women’s Professional soccer league survives and Marta comes back we’ll get season tickets next year. It was a sensational game.
White flower weeds lining the path in Spring Valley
As a long time one movie at a time Netflix customer I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about when they jacked up their rates to cover the Instant Play movies that weren’t part of the package when I signed on but the announcement of the two separate companies seems plain crazy. At least they didn’t bring Meg Whitman on board.
On Tuesday we watched the Alice Neel movie from our Instant Queue. She is one my favorite painters so all they had to do was fill the screen with her paintings and I was happy. The movie was made by her grandson and he tried to come to terms with how Alice put her painting in front of family as if it follows that great artists should also have stellar parenting skills. Alice put her all into her work and her paintings testify to this. She was mostly ignored by the art world until well into her seventies. The story of how her sensational paintings could ever have been overlooked would have made a better movie.
The same art world embraced Mark Kostabi, the subject of Wednesday night’s movie, “Con Artist.” This one came in the mail in a red envelope. Kostabi did some really cute little line drawings early on and then decided to stop getting his hands dirty. He out flanked Warhol and hired a staff to not only churn out the work but come up with the concepts, mostly ugly, noisy paintings. They were snapped up as fast as he could sign them. Kostabi reminded us of Bob Ament, the muckraking candidate for our town supervisor. He rubbed his fakeness in the faces of the art establishment and demand continued to soar. So this really is the movie about how the art world ignored Alice Neel and it really isn’t all that good a movie.
