We needed to do some banking yesterday but it was too hot to think about riding uphill to the plaza so we rolled downhill to the lake and cruised along Lakeshore. The non-working class was out and the beach scene was happening. My camera is in the shop so I committed the Arcadia snapshots to memory. In Greek mythology “Arcadia” is the home of Pan. In poetic fantasy it represents a pastoral paradise. I spent quite few nights on the porch this summer with “Visions of Arcadia.”
At the other end the beach we turned into the road that leads to Johnson’s Pond, one of my father’s haunts. The town was celebrating October Fest in September in giant big tent and an um-pah band was playing. Grown men were walking around in lederhose and couples were sitting at picnic tables with pictures of beer. There was quite a bit of dancing going on for the afternoon. We had smoked sausage, sauerkraut and German potato salad with a Genesee Scotch Ale. We got back on our bikes and spotted my father at the pond sneaking up on a couple of wood ducks.
Chuck Prophet is doing a house concert across the street at 8 o’clock tonight. It’s after six and no sign of him over there. We heard him open for Sharon Jones a few years back. Both were kinda bombastic that night. Of Chuck UNCUT says, “Sounds for all the world like Bruce Springsteen doing ‘Diamond Dogs.'”
Was this really the opening night of Fringe Fest? We were downtown for an opening at the gallery in the main library. My basketball players were on display. Janet Williams, who works there and was on duty, stopped down to take a look. She is one of my favorite painters so I hung on her every word. She told me, “I feel like I know these people.”
We parked stategicly so we could check out the festival after the art. There was a play or something going on in the Xerox auditorium. It was too nice a nice for that. We walked over to Manhattan Square Park and watched some young kids climb the dangerously steep concrete steps. They were setting up lights on the giant erector set. Across the street the group that dances down the side of the twenty story bank building was rehearsing for tomorrow night’s performance. A band was playing inside a small red bus on Gibbs Street. A crowd was gathered around a clear plastic tent in the parking lot. People inside were in a hot tub and more people were gathered around the tub and a band was playing in there as well. I know I read about this one but I can’t remember if the performers were in the tub or outside of the tub. We talked to Marc Hamilton, Jeff Spingut and Peter Monacelli and were home in time to watch “Gimme Shelter” before bed.
MP3 files from “Margaret Explosion 200,” a dvd with two hundred Margaret Explosion songs. 2015
Aren’t the titles themselves enough lyrics for a song? And these titles are afterthoughts at that. We are an instrumental band. We leave as much to the imagination as we can get away with. Next Wednesday during the Fringe Fest we will be giving away DVDs with 200 Margaret Explosion songs on them. They are all available for free on our website but that would involve too much clicking. All but two of the songs (“Fever” and “God Rest,” which were written by someone else) were created live, mostly at the Little Theater but also at the George Eastman House, Bug Jar, outdoors at the Village Gate and at a private party on Canandaigua Lake. Only a handful of these songs have we ever performed again. It is alway better the first time. Here are some of the 200 “first times.”
Here is song number 200, Stop Time, recorded last week at the Little Theater Café.Leave a comment
Sycamore tree at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York
Before the Sycamore tree drops its leaves it sheds its bark. Seneca Street is lined with these trees and a homeowner was raking up the bark as we rode by.
Getting exercise while doing errands feels especially satisfactory. My cymbals have cut a hole through the bottom of my cymbal bag so it was time for a new case. We rode over to the House of Guitars and on the way we stopped at the new library and found a few dvds to take home. Turns out we had already seen Neil Young’s “Journeys,” the Jonathan Demme movie of his 2010 solo show in Toronto, but it was even better the second time. Young puts it all on the line, insuring great performances of old song while risking it all by performing brand new ones. I love the incredible close-ups, the mundane backstage footage and the banter with his brother in their home town. Tonight we watch “Gimme Shelter.”
Bruce cut me a deal on an Ultimate Support bag. It comes with straps so you can wear it on your back and I did that on the way home. Of course we had stop and pick up some sweet corn at Vercruysse’s, just down the road on Titus. They have the best corn we have ever had. No salt, no butter, just the ears!
Station 7 from “Passion Play” by Paul Dodd, 24″ x 30″ inkjet print 1998
The Spiritus Christi community rose from temporal Corpus Christi (body of Christ) church, the place I was baptized in. My parents had a second floor apartment around the corner on Alexander Street, a place so small, I have heard, that my crib was out in the hall. In Jim Callan’s 2001 book, “Studentbakker Corporation” Jim tells the now familiar story of his early priesthood.
He was assigned to Saint Ambrose’ parish. They had just spent a fortune on new facilities and Jim had taken a vow of poverty. He refused the opulence and for his obstinance he was reassigned to Corpus Christi, a parish long past its glory days with a dying congregation. With ideals borrowed from Jesus he turned the place around with little regard to t the church orthodoxy. He shared communion with non Catholics, he welcomed gays and he allowed women to take their rightful place at the alter. He filled the pews and after twenty two years the church hierarchy, god’s rottweiler himself, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI gave him the boot. They renamed their community, Spiritus Christi, and under the direction of Mary Braverman have made it the largest breakaway Catholic group in the country.
Matthew Spaull, an RIT graduate, made a short film of the story and screened it for a sold old crowd tonight at the Little Theater. The director spoke after the film and said “I made this film, not for the people in this theater, I made it for Pope Francis.” He tried to speak to the Catholic Church for six months but they would not talk to him on the record.
Kueka Lake is one of the coolest Finger Lakes because it breaks with the motif and looks more like a “y.” The prime lakeside real estate, naturally, is on the peninsula that runs down the middle. We never made it out there. Instead we drove around the entire mass taking East Lake Road from Hammondsport up to Penn Yan. Whenever possible we hugged the shore on the old lake road. We stopped about halfway up at the Switzerland Inn (above). We sat out on the deck and the waitress gave a menu. We couldn’t find anything we wanted to eat on the menu and we weren’t really hungry so after the third time she asked if she could get us something we ordered a beer.
We continued on, writing down phone numbers for rental properties when the cottage looked particularly funky. Up in Penn Yan we rented a plastic kayak, something made by Hobie and called the “Mirage Oasis,” a whole new category of watercraft. It took us a bit to get the hang of it but pretty soon were picking targets on the shore and aiming the boat directly at them. We swam near the water treatment plant.
Back on the road we pointed the car toward Clifton Springs, another well preserved town that time didn’t so much forget but managed to keep the mucky-muck out. We walked the covered sidewalks and visited the “Wildroot Show” at Main Street Arts. We were the first customers at the Warfield restaurant, across the street, and we sat on the patio in the garden. We hardly left home and it was all like dream.
Cynthia Howke from the Landmark Society contacted Peggi about a possible Don Hershey home in Medina, a really large house “designed for entertaining,” one she described as the first “first mid-century, McMansion in the Monroe County.” The house was being considered for landmark status and all indications pointed to it being designed by Hershey but confirmation was needed. Peggi found an entry in Hershey’s notes about a house in this location and we decided to drive out and take a look.
We really had no idea where Medina was but we planned to get away for a few days, maybe one of the Finger Lakes, and we decided to combine the trips. We made sandwiches with our leftover salmon and packed an overnight bag and got in the car. I was hoping Medina was to the east, thinking maybe we could stop there on the way down to Keuka Lake. We were on the Expressway when Peggi found Medina on the map. It was in the opposite direction of Keuka Lake so we nixed that stop and drove through the country and down along the east shore until we reached Hammondsport at the bottom of the lake. We found a room at the Lakeside Inn, the last room in fact, one that was only available because of a cancellation.
We walked around the entire town, stopped at a cemetery with grave stones a couple of hundred years old and got to where the town ends and the vegetation takes over. We worked up an appetite for dinner at Timber Stone Grill, locally sourced restaurant. We sat outside while maybe thirty local women gathered for their annual dinner inside.
Back at the motel we sat by the outdoor gas fire pit and watched the sun go down. We were joined by a couple from Queens who come up here every year and heard their delicious take on the stuff in our own backyard. Hammondsport really is like something out of an old movie, a town much older that movies themselves. Two other couples came out of their rooms later with drinks in their hands and they formed a semi-circle around the fire, across from us. They were from Baltimore but somehow it felt like we knew these people. It was like we were at either Peggi’s or my high school reunion. We were the first ones to head back to our room.
Instead of the artisianal breakfast spot that the motel manager recommended we went to a diner that was advertising “Belgium Waffles.” We sat outside at a sidewalk table and asked the waitress what Belgium Waffles were. She said. “Big.” We ordered scrambled eggs and toast.
Pulling out of a plan to go to NYC this weekend opens all sorts of doors. Cleaning out the garage, fixing the hose with the part I bought at Home Depot, a marathon painting session are all possibilities. I’d be lost without the change of seasons. They are so radically different around here, they almost dictate your schedule. Take a beer down to the pool now, walk in the woods now, paint in the basement now, X-country ski with the fresh snowfall and read by the fire. Summer has still got a grip on us but there is an itchy anxiousness in the air.
People on the beach at Durand Eastman in Rochester, New York
Our niece went into labor on Labor Day weekend. She was planning on doing it all at home but the midwife didn’t make it in time so our nephew delivered the baby.
Brian Williams turned seventy over the weekend and threw a party for himself at Abilene. Since he plays with about everyone in town the band on the outdoor stage was never the same from one song to the next.
The parking lot at Nick’s Sea Breeze Inn was empty today. No holiday for the amusement park though. Kids of all ages were in long lines for the water slide. Someone must have run into the street sign that we locked our bikes to because it was at a 45 degree angle. We walked out the pier and it seemed like half the world was out on one of the boats we saw coming and going. The other half was down at the beach as the temperature was somewhere in the nineties.
On the way back we stopped by Matthew and Louise‘s to invite them back for a swim. They brought beer and told us how great the “Narcos” Netflix series is. We told Louise we had seen her brother in the new Baumbach movie and how happy we were that he put a Sucicide track in the score. She told us she had just seen Dean in person at a reading she did in LA.
It was the perfect weekend for midnight dips in the pool. Probably the last time we’ll get to do that this year but who knows. Maybe everything is different now.
We got to know Rick Hock a little at a time. Steve the mailman would talk about him as “another music nut,” someone we should know. Rick lived the next block over, on Barry Street. My cousin lived on that street too and we never saw her. Steve used our bathroom because we worked out of the house. He’d bring us cookies that the ladies at Elite Bakery would give him when he delivered their mail and he always had the new Neil Young record on the day it came out because he friends with Kim at the House of Guitars. Steve kept telling us “we had to meet this guy.”
We met Rick’s wife first and she offered us a kitten, one born to a scraggily white cat that lived under their house. Stella, who is solid white like her mother, is seventeen now and a real sweetheart. Every time we saw Rick we’d tell him, “we still have that cat.”
Rick was someone you wanted to get to know. He was intriguing and opened himself slowly so that each encounter was an adventure. He played guitar and jammed with Peggi and me in our neighbors’ (Willie and Ethylene’s) driveway while they were having a garage sale. Rick was an artist and he converted the attic in his house into his studio. He worked at the Eastman House and curated some of our favorite shows there.
Rick was dark and sweet at the same time. He was very bitter about the Vietnam Nam war and it didn’t take much to get him going on politics. He was frustrated about a lot of things but always looking for an opening or a way to express the madness. The last few times we saw him were heartbreaking as we learned he had cancer. He died when he was on a roll.
His drawings, on display now in the small gallery at RoCo, are explosive. I hear these are some of the last things he did so the show was put together without Rick’s guidance. The large drawings portray pairs of artists locked in battles. Joseph Bueys beating up on Warhol etc. RoCo has made these pairs out to be winners and losers, favorite artists putting posers in their place, but I like to think they just portray the struggle, to make art, to create, to be successful in the market or true to the creative gods. Artists vs. art.
There are ten of them here, even one that Rick didn’t title which RoCo has turned into a contest to identify. I cast my vote and am pretty sure I have the answer.
Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker, Anselm Kiefer, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Walton Ford, Claes Oldenburg, William Kentridge, Louise Bourgeois, Andres Serrano Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, Elizabeth Peyton, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Julian Schnabel, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman are all there. Don’t miss this show.
Here’s the Meredith Davenport’ statement that accompanies the show:
“Drawing was a fluid way for Rick McKee Hock to metabolize ideas and to connect with people, whether he was sketching his frustrations out in a meeting or sharing complex feelings through the loving marks on a birthday card, it was the process of drawing that was a primary connection to the world around him. His fascination with the mark and to visual language combined with his intellectual complexity would move him towards the photographic images he is so well respected for.
But the drawings are essential. They are artifacts of the conversations he was having with the world- sometimes profound, occasionally banal and most times they were very funny. A few times they were also terrifyingly prescient. He struggled with the limitations of his drawings. Were these “cartoons”, truncated one-liners that could not transcend into the deeper things he felt and observed and tried to express? How could he imbue these marks with more? It was a constant struggle for him because he loved the mark and the paper and the pen even more than the silver image.
Like many artists before him, Rick located himself in the creative cosmos through the artists he admired and he made reference to them in his work. Maybe it was a way for him to commune with their ideas or to pay homage to the impact they had on him? He made an early set of small engravings of photographers he respected and his polaroid works reference writers like Ezra Pound and William S. Burroughs. In these drawings, he was into deeper questions about contemporary art through narratives he created via the artists he admired and hated. The marks and humor were a way for him to think about and distill their work and their careers. They are a beautiful expression of his own labor to resolve the tensmn between his big brain and his skilled and intuitive hand.
For me these drawings are also a love letter. When he made them, I was in New York City taking two‐week drawing course at the Studio School. Each night, after eight hours of classical figure drawing, I would receive a photograph on my cell phone of one of these drawings that he made during the day. It was his way to be with me. He knew that I also battle with similar questions in the contemporary art dialog. He worked with artists I admired like Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman. In his drawings their authenticity always defeated the charlatans. We were somehow all in this fight together!”
– Meredith Davenport
German goalie, Angerer, at Sahlen Stadium in Rochester, New York
The Portland Thorns are a good match for the Flash. We saw these two teams play each other about a month ago. I took this picture of their goalie (and the German national team Goalie), Angerer, during the practice rounds for that game. Last night I got photos of Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath as they headed back to the locker rooms after the warmup. Portland’s star forward and one of my favorite players in the league, Christine Sinclair, was injured last night and that may have made all the difference.
The Flash are good even when they lose and about the only thing you say bad about them is, “they can’t finish.” It certainly would help if Sydney Leroux wasn’t out with an injury. Last night they scored three quick goals, all on solid runs, and they came away with 3-2 victory. A decent finish to a tough season. We’re going for season tickets next year, provided the league doesn’t fold.
My dad called and asked if we wanted to join them for dinner. He was driving and when he picked us up he suggested Charlie’s on Empire Boulevard. The place was packed, four or five deep at the counter. We ordered four fish fries and found a table near a window in the front. I can’t remember who it was, an ex-Rochester person, told us that they had a craving for a fish fry on Friday night and it was impossible to find in whatever city they were living in. Maybe it’s all the Catholics here, that “no meat on Friday” thing, but fish fries are definitely a Rochester (and English) thing.
My mom was telling us she didn’t remember this place. We had had only been here once or twice but I’m pretty sure this was one of my parent’s haunts. I turned to look out the window and there was Brad Fox. I knew he was coming into town for a Mahoney wedding but I certainly never expected o run into him by chance. He was with his brother and just off the plane. Apparently he used to come here with his mom.
We invited him over to our place for a cookout and told him we’d invite a few high school pals, like Steve and John, so we could all catch up. We planned to cook sausage and rode our bikes over to Rubino’s, the citidal, to score. Well, Brad tells us Steve is upset with John for some damn reason so John was exuded and Brad says he “is more of a hamburger kind of a guy.” So we bought some pre-made, ground beef patties, lean, 90/10 and some garlic fennel links. It was a mini meat fest for four. Steve and Brad both had burgers and Peggi I got the good stuff.
It wasn’t more than a few weeks back that our neighbor, Sue, showed us some tiny black eggs that Monarch butterflies had laid on the underside of some milkweeds that we intentionally let grow near the pool on our street. The nearby milkweed leaves had been nibbled on by the butterflies. The weeds are their primary food source.
She took the eggs home on the leaf that she found them on and she put it in a clear plastic tube that was maybe a foot in diameter and 16 inches tall. The eggs turned into caterpillars and the caterpillars created a jewel-like pod, a chrysalis. Over time the green chrysalis with the tiny gold necklass turns clear a folded-up butterfly becomes visible, one with the same colors as the caterpillar. It shakes off it shell, unfolds its wings, dries them for a few hours and is ready to hit the skies for Mexico. Every stage happens before your eyes and it’s all quite remarkable.
Margaret Explosion comes out of its summer cocoon tonight with a late summer appearance at the Little Theater Café.
Everyone knows I am a Philip Guston nut. It is a mystery to me why everyone else is not. I have a lot of Guston books, monographs and art books from shows and retrospectives, Guston’s “Collected Writings,” his daughter’s book, “Night Studio, Ross Feld’s book about his relationship with Guston. They are all good but seeing Guston’s images in person is a sensation, a three dimensional, physical sensation. He is quoted as saying he would like to draw like the cavemen, the first people to ever attempt to draw something, when nothing is known and there are no clichés. He says his own paintings “baffle me, too. That’s all I’m painting for.” The following is from a lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1978. It really knocks me out.
“Regarding the general situation in art today, which I suppose is the subject of this conference, I haven’t really too much to say. It has become official, obviously; it is so insured against failure, against bad painting, against risking. But something must be wrong somewhere, because there is this overwhelming success and at the same time such an overwhelming apathy. Everyone knows about art, except the artist. He, it seems, must find out not about art, but how to stay on the treadmill. Each time he paints he must discover how to trust himself, his instincts without knowing how it will turn out. It sounds easy until you try it.
I think it was Picasso who was interviewed and who was asked “What has been the most important thing in your life, master?” and he replied, “self‐trust.” He said that it had taken him a life time to learn how to trust his inchoate urges and instincts. And it’s not easy to achieve because we don’t even recognize the extent to which we are victims of the institutionalized art which is all around us. Nor how often we check ourselves. You have a feeling or thought‐check, check, check. Of the two writers that I’ve admired the most for years, Franz Kafka and Isaac Babel, Isaac Babel gave a lovely, ironic speech to the Soviet Writers’ Union. It was 1934. He ended his talk with the following remark: “The party and the government have given us everything, but have deprived us of one privilege. A very important privilege, comrades, has been taken away from you. That of writing badly.” Isn’t that beautiful? Where am I? Doesn’t anyone want to paint badly?”
My brother has had some Corvette’s over the years but he hasn’t had one in about twenty years. He was waiting until he had his daughter through college. She made it. I remember going into his garage and he’d have the entire car taken apart. He found this one outside of Buffalo. The previous owner drove it to his place and they made the deal. Once he gets plates I’m hoping he will stop by. I’d love to see this thing in our driveway.
I never thought we’d find another mechanic as good Ted was over at Jerome’s on Atlantic Boulevard but the guys over at B&B Auto on Saint Paul Boulevard are great. We rode our bikes over there to pickup our car and then continued downtown to the main library with the bikes in the back. We checked out art space in the lower level of the library, my basketball players are going up there next week, and we hopped on the bike trail that runs south along the river.
They’ve cleaned up the homeless area under the Freddy-Sue bridge, mostly by fencing it off, but there was still a row of tents. The multi-colored apartments that line the river looked pretty cozy and the UofR campus with the carloads of freshmen unpacking looked absolutely dreamy. Those long skinny crew boats were racing up and down the river and large gatherings of people, some looked like church groups, were cooking out in Genesee Valley Park. We rolled on to the intersection of the Erie Canal and the Genesee and hung out on one of those old arched concrete bridges that appear in so many of my father’s paintings.
We crossed the river there on a pedestrian bridge and rolled back in to town along the West Bank of the river. The area along Exchange has really come back and it was easy to see the synergy that Patrick Burke, a business columnist for the local paper was talking about in his recent piece “Copenhagen’s Lessons for Rochester“
Twenty years ago Chuck Cuminale was chanting, “Death to the Inner Loop” at his Colorblind James shows and that is now a reality. Let’s rewater the Erie Canal downtown!
Sidney Laroux autographs ball before WNY Flash game vs. Chicago Red Stars
We got to the game especially early tonight. We are usually there early enough to see the practice rounds but tonight Sidney Laroux was signing autographs so we got there before six. The scene was something akin to the English invasion with all the high pitched screaming. Sidney opted to have surgery on her foot after the World Cup and is out for the season so the Flash put her to work with the pen. The nuns in my grade school would not have tolerated her grip but penmanship is so over.
The Flash lost again. Peggi says, “They fought valently.” They played really well, quick passes and great ball movement but they can not put that final piece together.
Christen Press, center forward for the Chicago Red Stars and the national team’s scoring hope for the near future got a well deserved unassisted goal and then assisted on their second. I cheered for both goals. It was a great game. Their last game of the season is On Friday night. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Beauford Delaney’s “Charlie Parker” 1968 at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York
My mother was always rearranging the furniture in our house, sometimes even swapping the functions of the rooms. I remember her taking the dining room table out of the dining room. She has a great eye and her rearrangements often invigorated our home. Sometimes they just didn’t work but they still managed to liven up the place.
The MAG, under the direction of its new steward, Jonathan Binstock, has rearranged its collection while calling attention to some great new acquisitions. I especially like the Beaufort Delaney “Charlie Parker” portrait shown above. And the new Mickalene Thomas portrait, “Qusuquzah” almost steals the show in the new portrait gallery (just beyond the admission desk). Her spacial, almost cubist play with the figure’s head is sensational. Walt Kuhn’s “Clown” is still more compelling. Robert Lee MacCameron “New Orleans Man” looks great and it is nice to see the Pieter Jansz Pourbus’ “Portraits of a Husband and Wife” out again. They were missing in action for a few years
The cluster of portraits doesn’t really work for me though. I’d rather engage with them one on one. They would be better in that long hallway on the side of the auditorium where that flowery mural over the fake fireplace is. It’s a good thing they don’t let me loose in that place. The 1935 Calder “Standing Mobile” looks great. Can’t imagine where that has been hiding. And they have a little trove of Gaston LaChaise statuettes. I wish they had one of his more expressive pieces. “Ouch” to the Condo and the polka dot lady!
Jacob Lawrence’s “The Legend of John Brown” portfolio of silkscreen prints looks fantastic in the newly painted Lockhart Gallery. And they have removed the center island in that room so can really take in the graphic intensity. You have to get over there to see that.
Bob Martin, Peggi Fournier and Bernie Heveron backstage at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC 1983
My computer time for the last two days has been devoted to feeding the beast of Facebook. I went to the Personal Effects Facebook page for some reason and discovered a broken link to the real Personal Effects website, not a broken one but one that never would have worked. And I had just come across about a hundred scans of Polaroids from the eighties, ones that I originally submitted to the Scorgie’s web site when we did that reunion. That site went down so I posted the Polaroids to Facebook, the perfect depository for such artifacts.
I took the one at top just as we were about to take the stage at the Peppermint Lounge in 1983. We played that place a few times but this was the first time, in their old location, and it was on Bernie’s birthday. Bernie had Tony Levin’s number in New York and he invited him to the gig. He was right down front when we played. He told us he “liked the act.” Bernie is wearing my shirt in this photo. We used to trade clothing because we were the same “build” as they say.
Once my grandfather retired, well into his eighties, he would hold court from a green chair in my grandparents’s living room. Near the end of his life he was pretty much living in the living room. I remember helping him to the bathroom and then helping him get up off the toilet. At the very the end he was just lying in a bed in the middle of the living room, groaning in pain. I asked my mother, “Isn’t there anything they can do to help him?” She said, “He’s dying” and she said it a way that struck me as “He’s dying, you idiot.” My mom was hard core. And she made it clear that dying at home was the way to go. She said she hoped she would be able to do the same thing.
Well, you are hardly ever as lucid as my mom was when you get to the late stage. Today, she asked point blank. “Paul, what is going to happen to me?” I laughed and said “No one knows what’s going to happen to anyone. We could leave here on our bikes and get run over. No one knows what’s going to happen to them.” Sort of a cop-out on my part and not exactly what she wanted to hear but the best I could do on the spot.
She is not happy now. Her legs bother her. She sleeps to escape her uncomfortableness and she told me she feels as though this is happening because of something that she did. She says “I feel as though I did something wrong.”
I told her she did nothing wrong. “This is what happens in old age. People don’t live forever.” There was a picture of my grandparents, her parents, near where we were sitting and I handed it to her. She studied it for a bit and I said, “Your mom and dad are gone. They died. No one lives forever. That’s life.”
She worries about everything and the best I can do is to. say, “Just don’t worry about it.” I wish I was as hard core as my mom.
