Author: Paul

What do six deer in the woods near our house have to do with the tragic breaking news of a private plane going down in Jamaica? Developer, Larry Glazer, and his wife were on board. By some reports he was the biggest real estate developer in New York Sate and pioneered Rochester’s downtown re-development. He owns the formerly iconic Midtown Tower, Xerox corporate headquarters building. Bausch & Lomb headquarters along with large swath of downtown Rochester’s booming loft space.

Were headed downtown for First Friday tonight. The nearby woods and the downtown scene are all part of our local quality of life package. Forget about how Rochester lost it’s industrial mojo. Larry was bringing it back and I hope someone is on board to carry on as a tribute to his optimism.

At first I thought this was a new branch, popping out the side of a tree. I’ve rotated the photo above. Cicadas spend most of their life underground living off roots. They crawl out of the ground when they’re mature and emerge from their shells as adults. The Cicadas song is loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss in humans should it sing in your ear. I love the sound and I love coming across the exoskeletons but this is the first time we’ve witnessed the molting.

Margaret Explosion returns to the Little Theater Café tonight 7:30 – 9:30.

We worked our asses off on Labor Day. I found an email at around eight informing us that a large branch had fallen on the fence between two neighbor’s yards. We were welcome to wood if we helped clean-up. I hesitated for a half hour or so on this one. We burn wood to supplement our heat in the winter but we have a huge pile now. It only seemed neighborly to show up.

The branch was over two foot in diameter and it had fallen on a hillside. I cut it into sixteen inch lengths and we hauled it up the hillside in arms, heart attack style. We loaded up the back of our Element and dumped the wood near the our pile in order to split. We finished the job around three and spent the rest of the afternoon soaking in the pool.

Bobby Henrie and the Goners were playing on the beach at Marges so we headed down there after dinner. They cordoned off the area between the bar and the lake and it looked like the backyard in “Easy Money.” It was packed.

We spotted Frank DeBlase out in the lake in kayak so we hopped the ropes and hung out with him and Alanya from Record Archive at a nearby party. We had a great earshot of the band, two George Jones songs in the set, and a giant bonfire to watch watch as sunset came. Alanya’s husband had built a Burning Man figure out of driftwood and he was having a hard time getting it going. We got out of there when he asked how you throw gasoline on a fire that was already burning.

A long time ago I worked as a commercial artist for Hart Conway in the Triangle Building downtown on East Avenue. My boss smoked pot every morning and she was the most organized person I have ever met. We had some cash cow clients like RTS, the local bus service, and a bunch of car dealers who placed daily ad spreads in the paper and we had this organization that coordinated efforts to get local utilities approval before a backhoe digs in to a construction site and hits a water main or worse, an underground cable. The mascots for this campaign were two furry little animals that we had to draw in different poses for each ad, the two color pieces were always green and brown and the slogan was always the same, “Call Before You Dig.”

There are nine houses on our street and we pitch in on road repairs. One neighbor, though, can’t help but contribute more than others. Jared is our leader and a joy to work with. We’re preparing to put a drainage ditch in near our mailboxes because the mail lady (Jared thinks “she is as cute as a button”) drives in exactly the same spot every day and she has worn a ditch that fills up with water and freezes in the winter making getting the papers or mail a life threatening experience. He artfully outlined the drain (I’m not sure what the extension shown in the enlargement is all about) and then two of the utilities have signed off on it.