Peggi on trail around Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York
We visited our garden this afternoon and brought back a couple of eggplants, some lettuce and cilantro, a big bag of kale and one small tomato which we cut in half and had with our dinner. Not bad for a mid November harvest. Seventy five degrees tomorrow and then the snow will fly.
Our friends, Pete and Shelley, wrote us that they spotted an American Eagle up in the mountains. It was off to the side of the road picking at a bag of McDonalds trash. We sold an Invisible Idiot cd this week. I just put it in the mail. Pete played bass in that band with Peggi and me and Jack Schaefer played guitar. We recorded it about twenty years ago. It may be time for a follow-up.
Nick Masa behind the service bar at Club 86 in Geneva, New York 1953
Next time we go to Nick’s Seabreeze Inn I plan to record Nick as tells a few stories. His high school class at Geneva High School easily fit in one 8×10 and it included the great Scott LaFaro and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s father. In high school Nick was already working at Club 86 where Duke Ellington and Louie Armstrong did one week stands. Admission was $2.50 with a two dollar and fifty cent minimum per person at the table. Nick wound up with the photos from the bar and has them displayed on the walls of his restaurant in Sea Breeze. I knew there must be a good story behind the upside down promo photos in this picture of Nick from 1953 so I called him over. “Why are the pictures of Eileen Barton and Sammy Kaye used down?” “The house took a bath with them.” I asked if the performers were paid and he said,”Oh yeah. They got paid they didn’t draw enough for the house to make any money so we hung their pictures upside down.” Of course Nick then sang a few lines of Barton’s 1950 novelty hit, “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake.”
Most of my family was having dinner at Nick’s after we accepted the Paul Malo award for outstanding work in the field of historic preservation on behalf of my father from the Landmark Society. At the event Chris Brandt told me they had almost given the award to Leo last year which would have been nice considering he died in December. Brighton’s town supervisor was there and he told us he had just dropped his iPhone on the Brickyard Trail. He lives across from the newly opened trail, whose name my father championed, and the supervisor told us he sees people reading the sign at the trail’s head all the time. He said Leo would be so happy to have reached so many people with the history of Brighton’s brickyards. I agree. He would be thrilled. I gave a short rambling thank you speech and tried to make the point that my father’s enthusiasm and pure joy of discovery as he worked on these projects were infectious and inspiring. We told my mom about the award when we visited her today and she cried.
I pointed to a spot at the end of Hoffman Road where I have found quite a few drug bags. We were out walking with Pete and Shelley and there were none to be found here that day. I have made it a practice to round up the inorganic material that I find on our hikes. Golf balls, pink, blue and orange plastic tied to branches to mark trails in the woods, Budweiser cans and now drug bags. We continued down the road and turned at Jared and Sue’s to cut through their property and return home. Right there, near the edge of the road, Pete spotted a drug bag. That makes about fifty in the last few months. I keep them in my Elvis Presley ash tray and I brought them outside to take this photo.
They are usually right next to plastic packages for flavored cigars so I have always thought kids were hollowing out the cigars and filling them with this tiny amount of weed but I really have no idea what was in the bags. Some of them are so tiny they could only hold one capsule of something. I’m beginning to wonder if they might have something to do with the recent burglaries in our neighborhood.
We walked down Hoffman to a neighbor’s place this afternoon. It was Danelle’s 60th birthday and coincidentally Damnika’s, another neighbor, 65th birthday. The Bills were on the tube. The sound was off so we didn’t hear any of the crowds’ USA protest against San Francisco’s quarterback, Kapernick. It was in the seventies so we spent the whole party out on the back porch. When Olga came I went in to say hello and I put some Brie cheese on a cracker while we talked. I was thinking, “this is is some funky Brie cheese.” And it dawned on me. I blurted, “These crackers are bad.” Turned out they were Olga’s crackers, organic with no preservatives, and they had gone rancid. She was embarrassed but I can still taste the damn things.
There have been five burglaries in our neighborhood in the last three weeks and, needless to say, the neighbors are all on the lookout. Each car carefully checks us out when we’re out walking. We saw two Doyle Security trucks come out of the street next to us, so someone has a new alarm system. I was laying in bed in the dark last night and a cop car drove by with its searchlight shining in our windows. And when I woke up another cop, this one in a fluorescent green trench coat, came down our street on an ATV. I am happy the police are responding.
Peggi and I have been acting like amateur sleuths and I’ve reached back to my experience in the Crime Analysis Unit of the Rochester Police Department to look for patterns in the locations and possible getaway routes. A neighbor behind us told us a Sergeant had stopped by her house and told her they think the guy is traveling on foot and coming from the golf course on Kings Highway. He is apparently interested in jewelry.
We chatted with a middle aged man who was also out walking and asked if he lived nearby. He was wearing a Dunkin’ Donuts t-shirt and couldn’t possibly have been the suspect. He said he lived on the other side of the park and he told us he had seen something very strange a few days back. A scruffy man came out of Conifer Lane and turned right toward the golf course. He was carrying a suitcase and the the guy said he tried to say hello to the man but the guy looked away. We told him that a house on Conifer was broken into that day in daylight and he probably saw the the suspect. On our way back I waved down a cop car and we told him what the Dunkin Donuts guy had told us. The cop immediately called it in while we were relaying the story and when it became clear that this had all happened a few days ago he cancelled the call and the cop got pissed at us. “You have to call it in immediately,” he scolded us.
We took a walk with Pete and Shelley yesterday and at the end of Hoffman Road, near the golf course, we saw a black windbreaker hanging on a tree. It had white block lettering on he back that read “POLICE.” I looked at the size and it was extra large so I hung it back up. I looked for it today and it was gone. I’m wishing now that I had at least tried it on and had a photo taken in it.
The dogwood tree by our bedroom window had a rough summer. It hardly ever rained and we didn’t water it. It is already losing its leaves and instead of turning a beautiful red it just went brown. This tree on Dewberry Street must have an arborist as a caretaker or maybe it’s all the sunshine.
We took my mom down to the lobby of the Friendly Home where we had a cup of black coffee and clinked our plastic cups to National Coffee Day. We looked at old family pictures on my iPad. I have to skip over some because my mom starts to cry. Shirley Zimmer, a high school classmate of mine and a member of the Pittsford Art Group, was hanging her pictures in the gallery so we chatted with her for a while. She has a series of paintings there of funky motels, many from the Adirondack Mountains.
One of the residents in my mom’s place has a way of weaving me into her life. I start by just saying hello to her and then she has me responsible for not letting her go to her room or today, she had me in charge of the next bell choir performance. Earlier this week I looked up one of her relatives, someone she was referring to in a free ranging conversation. His name was Henry Ward Morgan and I showed her the entry I found. She said he was her grandfather and she read every word on the page. Before I could get my iPad back I had become one of his descendants, a member of her family on a part of the tree that has long since departed this world.
There was a frog in the pool with us this afternoon, a young energetic frog. I tried catching him with the skimmer but he would see me coming and dive deep. He was doing a perfect frog kick, propelling himself out of my reach with a couple strokes. I did manage to trap him under the skimmer and I slid it up along the side of the pool onto the deck where Peggi trapped him with a bucket. We took the frog down to our neighbor’s pond and let him loose in there.
My father got a summons for jury duty in yesterday’s mail. We sent it back and noted that he is deceased. I remember him telling a story of a jury he was on for many weeks where someone was suing a doctor. I can’t remember now whether the doctor was found guilty. He told the story a few times and it was one of those where I would find myself thinking, “Why does he find this story so interesting?” That thought overwhelmed his story so I don’t really know how it came out.
Jared’s cat, Didrick, above, is a lover not a fighter. At this point, he is the oldest cat in the neighborhood and we have never seen him fight, not even with the stray barn cats that slink around. He started out living in a different house but he spent most of his time at Jared’s so when those people moved they gave the cat to Jared. He doesn’t even bother the goldfish in Jared’s pond. Sammy, Louise and Matthew’s cat, who lived next door until a few years ago, could not quite figure Didrick out. We used to watch those two confront each other in our yard. We are feeding Sammy while her owners are away. She is exactly one mile away, pretty much as the crow flies, through the woods. Today’s walk.
Abandoned Crescent Beach Hotel on Edgemere Drive in Rochester, New York
It is our turn again for pool duty. Someone on the street needs to be in charge so we rotate two week long stints. Duties include; skimming the surface if leaves or bugs are prevalent, making sure the bottom is free of fallen particulates, back washing if the pump filter is full, adding water if the level is low, watering the flowers if they need it and making sure the cover is on at night. Nothing overwhelming. Most days Reggie nothing more than a glance.
One of the ancillary duties could be weeding the cracks between the sidewalk panels but I usually keep an eye out even if we’re not on duty and especially now that I have discovered the delicacy that is purslane.
We first had it as an appetizer at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. We were there to celebrate our nephew’s graduation from Columbia Law School. His brother, a celebrated chef in his own rite, had picked the place partly because he wanted to check it out and also because his mom was picking up the tab. That was a few years ago and purslane is now everywhere. I found some in a bunch of parsley that I bought at Wegmans. It is a succulent of sorts. It likes moisture and heat and the tiny leaves have volume as they hold water. We still weed it. but instead of tossing it over the fence we eat it.
It is our turn again for pool duty. Someone on the street needs to be in charge so we rotate two week long stints. Duties include; skimming the surface if leaves or bugs are prevalent, making sure the bottom is free of fallen particulates, back washing if the pump filter is full, adding water if the level is low, watering the flowers if they need it and making sure the cover is on at night. Nothing overwhelming. Most days Reggie nothing more than a glance.
One of the ancillary duties could be weeding the cracks between the sidewalk panels but I usually keep an eye out even if we’re not on duty and especially now that I have discovered the delicacy that is purslane.
We first had it as an appetizer at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. We were there to celebrate our nephew’s graduation from Columbia Law School. His brother, a celebrated chef in his own rite, had picked the place partly because he wanted to check it out and also because his mom was picking up the tab. That was a few years ago and purslane is now everywhere. I found some in a bunch of parsley that I bought at Wegmans. It is a succulent of sorts. It likes moisture and heat and the tiny leaves have volume as they hold water. We still weed it but instead of tossing it over the fence we eat it.
It as too hot for our tick gear this morning so we did a street walk in shorts and found ourselves at Kathy Krupp’s house. We were ringing her front door bell to say hi when a woman on the sidewalk, who was walking her dog, said, “I think she is out back mowing her lawn.” Sure enough. Her electric mower was so quiet we never would have guessed. Kathy has a gorgeous view of the bay out back and we took that in as we made plans to meet for lunch at Atlas Eats. But first we had to check in on my mom.
We found her in the tv room but the staff are the only ones who watch the tube. We asked if she wanted to take a walk and she did so we wheeled her out to the front of the building where there was all sorts of activity going on. We watched Phil Marshall sign in. He is a music therapist and he was visiting a client. He offered to play a song for my mom but she couldn’t remember any. Peggi remembered her liking Judy Collin’s “Both Sides Now” and I was thinking of the “West Side Story,” “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtracks she used to play around the house. I remember coming home once and finding her in my room playing my copy of “Ladies of the Canyon.” Phil told us about an upcoming gig his band has, an opening set for Rochester’s Lydia Lunch on September 10th so we put that on our calander. Same day as we help John Gilmore move out of his house.
I ordered the Kimchee with tofu at Atlas Eats, the same thing I order every time we go there. They change their dinner menu every two weeks, darting around the globe as befits their name and this weekend it is Mediterranean. We might have to round up some friends and stop by for that.
We knew this was coming but it still seemed to sneak up on us. Our neighbors switched houses. Rick and Monica bought the place next door to us four years ago when the original owner died and they have been renting it out since. They decided they liked the rental property better than their own house so they sold their house to the renters. Peggi and I helped carry boxes across the street for most of the day. One was labeled “dog calendars.” We were the only ones carrying stuff in both directions. The other parties had their people. We quit somewhere before exhaustion, saving just enough energy for our Margaret Explosion gig.
Once the switch was mostly complete Rick told us they realized they didn’t have room for about a third of their stuff. This morning he revised that to one half.
Our bass player, Ken Frank, had a gig with his other band, Big Ditch, at the Firehouse on Clinton Avenue so we played last night’s gig with Matthew who coincidentally used to live next door to us in the rental property. The party we played at was a fundraiser for Paulie, who is trying to market his film. The party was in the backyard of a house on Cedarwood Terrace near where we used to live and we set up in the open, double car garage. We were the first of three acts and the party was expected to go until 4AM. Needless to say we couldn’t stay up the late.
WNY Flash sign on back of bus in Rochester, New York with Jaelene Hinkle and Abby Dahlkemper
The Flash won last night’s match at Frontier field in front of 4,000 or so fans. Kind of a sloppy game but they pulled it off and Lynn Williams scored on a sensational shot. They are in second place, one point behind the Portland Thorns who drew 17,000 to their match last night with Kansas City. The national players are off with the US team so it makes for some interesting lineups. The Flash moved Abby Erceg up into Sam Mewis’ center midfield spot and she scored two goals. This afternoon we met Matthew down on the bay at MacGregor’s where were watched Portugal beat the heavily favored France in the Euro Cup final. Ronaldo went out early with an injury and his team played better without him. Enough soccer for a few days.
We are between our first and second crops of cilantro so I bought some at Wegmans so we could make this Adobo marinade for a Cuban recipe. I grabbed a bag from the organic section and as I did a woman told me that they also had non-organic cilantro down further and it was cheaper. She told me she heard a program on the radio where someone said arsenic is organic and she followed that up with, “and Coca Cola is not.” I made a point to look at the other cilantro and I went home with the organic.
Instead of putting our tick gear on we took a long walk on the road. Came across a plastic Super Big Gulp cup from 7 Eleven and the cardboard box and wax paper wrapping for some meat product from McDonalds. Tomorrow we do the woods.
Cell tower and water tower in Irondequoit, New York
When we were young my mom would put us all in the car on days like this and drive us from our home in the city out to the lake. We would go one of two ways, out Culver Road to Durand Eastman Beach or out Lake Avenue to Charlotte Beach. Both routes had markers along the way, things we would look for and then shout about when we saw them. The trip down Lake Avenue was longer so when we spotted the flag flying above the CSX railroad crossing in Charlotte it was really dramatic. The water tower in Sea Breeze would come a little quicker when the destination was Durand. Peggi and I rode our bikes up to Wegmans yesterday and we spotted these guys installing a new cellphone receptor. I’m guessing the town makes more money leasing the space on the water tower to cell phone companies than they do from the sale of water to its residents.
I was reading an article in the morning paper about the custom of chaining a used bike to a light post near where a bicyclist has been killed. The bike is called a “Ghost Bike” and it becomes a shrine to the bicyclist. The one they pictured in the article was for a guy who was run over yesterday by a Black Camaro. The car was driving in the bike lane and the accident was caught on a store’s security camera. The car drove off as if nothing had happened. I was prepared for a car that pulled up to the stop sign on a side street off the road we were on. I had my eye on the woman as she pulled out right in front of me. I was prepared to stop if she did that and sure enough she did. Her radio was turned up loud. Maybe her favorite song.
“When We Were Young” “Contemplation” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.20.13. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Bob Martin – guitar, Jack Schaefer – bass clarinet, Paul Dodd – drums.
Listen to Margaret Explosion – When We Were Young2 Comments
Lobby in the Fundacion Telephonica in Madrid, Spain
Last night we had a drink in a bar/restaurant where Cervantes sat and wrote. The place has half a millennia of history. This morning we walked around the convent where they recently discovered Cervantes’ remains. There is so much to see in Madrid, we like to just get out there and wander. It helps that the Spanish government continues to fund first class art shows. We picked up a Fundación Cultura guide on our first day here and we tracked down shows with that.
A Vivian Meyer show opens tomorrow but we won’t be here. Yesterday we saw the same Joaquín Torres García show we had seen at MoMA a year ago. Today we walked to the Museo Del Romanticismo where the great Czech photographer, Viroslav Tichy, has a show that opens on June 3. We were two days early for that so I’ll have to satisfy myself with with Google image searches.
We found a funky, relaxed part of the city near the Museo, maybe due to the nearby colleges, and we asked the museum workers for a recommendation for dinner. We got with the program from the onset here and have been enjoying our main meal at midday. We sat on a park bench in Plaza de España in front of the central statue of Cervantes with Sancho Panza and Don Quijote and Peggi pointed out that we were right across from the sight of Goya’s “3rd of May,” the masterpiece we had seen a few days before.
We bought fruit last night for the room and we started with that this morning, bananas, a mystery fruit (cross between a peach and an apricot?) and some dried figs and prunes. We were able to get up a little earlier and we were on the streets at eleven. We stopped for coffee on Geronimo in the Plaza de Canalejas across from the brand new Four Seasons hotel (the building they are gutting after leaving the centuries old facade standing). Cafe Del Príncipe had a desayuno especial that included a small glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and Tortilla Española with pan and coffee. We bought a postcard for my mom and walked into Peurta del Sol by the Apple Store to Vodaphone where we got SIM cards for the phone and iPad. The guard in the store suggested we go to the basement of Corte Inglés to mail the postcard so we did that and then stumbled on the “Uno de 50” section in the store. Peggi took some photos for my sister, Ann, who sells this funky Spanish line of handmade jewelry at Parkleigh in Rochester.
We walked by a Fundación art exhibition co-sponsored by MoMA but it was closed Monday. Peggi read about a nice place to eat up there and we happened to walk by it so had their Menu del Día. “Red de Pescado,” catch of the day with shrimp with the heads on. I had a Country Salad and Peggi had Gazpacho.
We walked over to Calle de Alcalá 13 where a Fundación show with Goya in it was but they were closed too. So we decided to go back there tomorrow. We put six point three miles on our Moves app and I did it all on crutches. I have a new found comradery with other handicapped people on the street. We check out each other’s gear.
It doesn’t get dark here until ten. We could set the clocks this way in the US. We walked through the Plaza Mayor and over to the Mercado de San Miguel where we had some olives, some cheese and dry Vermouth from a tap. We split the Vermouth, it was served over ice and cost one and one half Euros. We walked around some more, found a street with some religious shops on it, Calle de la Paz. We plan to go over there tomorrow to look for holy cards. We stopped in Plaza de Angel at the place that has live jazz and we had drink at an outdoor table. We have finally adjusted to the time zone change.
A crown of thorns made with pencils by Bernardi Roig, an artist from Palma de Mallorca
We flew through cotton candy-like clouds before landing in Madrid at 8 AM. The guy in front of us on the plane was reading “The Promise of a Pencil.” I made a note to look that up. We had forgotten that Peggi requested a wheelchair at the airport gate and then we heard a man say my name the way a Spaniard would say my name. I was wheeled to a small bus that cruised around the back of the airport and dropped us off on the street where we waited for a bus (5 E) that took us to Cibeles in the center of the old city.
From there we walked to our hotel near Plaza Santa Ana and they let us in early. We slept for a few hours and headed back out for some café con leche and Tortilla Española. They served the coffee in small glasses, almost too hot hang onto. We had seen signs for an art show, one of those Fundación government sponsored things, when we got off the bus so we hobbled back down to Cibeles. On the any we found another, free, government sponsored, art show by Bernardi Roig, an artist from Palma de Mallorca. The show near Cibeles was a real slice of Spanish culture by José Suarez, a Spanish photographer who went into exile during the Spanish Civil War.
We kept looking up at the Círculo de Bellas Artes building and wondering why no one was up there. When we got up there it was actually more crowded than we had ever seen it and we quickly realized why it didn’t look crowded from the street. They had installed a stainless steel railing around the entire perimeter so you could not possibly get out to the edge. Although only six stories up you can see right out beyond the city, to the mountains and into the country and hillsides where Madrileños celebrated the feast of San Isidro, the scene Goya painted so vividly. And you get a great view of the black domed Metropolis building that is featured in the Grand Vía production credits of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
Our planned trip was in doubt for a bit with my injury but I have decided to move forward with what is now a pilgrimage to Madrid. I will hobble into the city and leave my crutches there just as the faithful do across the border in Lourdes, France.
Fallen Magnolia flower petals in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, New York
When Josef Albers left the Weimer Bauhaus in Germany to teach at the Black Mountain School in North Carolina he was asked what he planned to teach. He responded, “To make open the eyes.” My limited mobility issues had me thinking about this and I can’t think of a better time to work on it. Instead of walks in the woods I’ve been sitting on the couch with an endless stream of my photos on the tv. A few big doors are closed but others are opening.
It is a toss-up as to whether the dictation tool on my iPad is any better than my typing skills. Of course, I don’t really know if it is the tool’s listening skills or my poor diction that causes so many errors. In my down time I’ve been transcribing the handwritten journals from our previous nine trips to Spain. Peggi and I take turns at the end of each day recording what we did that day. We’ll take short notes during the day with the name of a menu item or a painting we saw but we collect our thoughts at the end of the day in the form a short journal entry. The last few trips were entered on an iPad. I’m transcribing a handwritten entry now from 1998, the year we spent a week in Granada following Semana Santa processions, and I just spoke “down the street to the Monestario de San Geronimo.” My iPad heard “down the street to the monastery all day sun hey Ronnie mall.”
Once each year we try to rid our property of the the invasive galic mustard plant. We try to get it just before it flowers when it is big enough to identify. It would cover the hillside out back if we let it go. I spent a lot of time standing on that hillside and I overextended my calf muscles.
We took a walk in the woods yesterday and on the way back I decided to run up the last hill the way my friend in San Francisco does. I felt like someone shot me in my calf and I crumpled to the ground.
I borrowed my neighbor’s walker and hopped into Urgent Care where I was diagnosed with either a strained or torn muscle. Only time will tell. They wrapped my leg with an ace bandage, gave me some anti-inflamatory medicine and a pair of $35 aluminum crutches. They are still in the shrink-wrap. My leg is too sore to stand on so I’ve been crawling around the house on my knees and getting along fine.
Cherry tree in bloom on Log Cabin Road in Rochester, New York
One of the residents at my mom’s place was hunched over a book, intently adding yellow crayon to a geometric pattern. I told her it looked really nice and she thanked me. She said, “I’m not really an artist. I’m a colorist.” Matisse was a colorist. Bonnard, Josef Albers and Wolf Kahn were all colonists. They use color as a tool. Their work speaks with color. A very small percentage of artists are colorists.
We did a lot of balance work at yoga this morning. Standing dancer to tree to eagle. We were inside because rain was forecast and we were downstairs because some sort of event was happening upstairs. The students were spread out in front of the bar and our teacher was standing in front of a big window that looked out over the lake. About halfway through the class the bartender started setting up for the evening. We were on our backs in some sort of triangular position and I noticed the yacht club had some local, micro-brews on tap. And I spotted a pennant behind the bar with the Rochester Yacht Club logo on it and the years “1877-1977.” This place has some history.
After class I was making small talk with the bartender and I said, “I see you have eight beers on tap.” He said “Yeah. Would you like one?” I looked at the choices and said, “I’ll have a Guinness.”
Paul Bunyan statue on the corner of Portlad Avenue and North Street in Rochester, New York
Does anybody else miss the Paul Bunyan statue that used to hover over the intersection of Portland Avenue and North Street? Ah, but that is what black and white photos are for.
The local gas and electric monopoly came down our street a few years ago laying new gas lines and moving every house’s gas meter outside. Easier for the meter reader to keep to see[ track of your usage. Fr some reason thy were unable to move ours so the guy rings the bell every couple of months and goes down in our basement with a flashlight. Today when he got here I was outside playing horseshoes with Tom Burke. The meter reader, with dreadlocks, was dressed in day-glow and Tom asked him if he wanted to throw a few. He did, two down and two back, but he never hit the pit. I thought about taking a photo but I wouldn’t want to get the guy in trouble.
Steve Greive planing even foot long rough cut Red Oak boardaklg
Before our friend, Julio, moved to Maine, he helped us rebuild the railing around our basement stairs. We don’t have a door to the basement, we just have an opening in the floor and it is right next to our front door so the railing is not only decorative, but it is functional. When the original owner of our house built the place he cut down a few red oak trees on our property and had them milled for the hardwood floors that he laid throughout the house. We wanted to use red oak too to build the railing so Peggi and I bought some rough cut lumber from a sawmill in Hilton and had my brother plane the wood in his shop.
To complete the job according to Julio’s plans we still needed to construct a matching handrail for the descent into our basement (where all the magic happens). We hired Steve Greive, the neighborhood tradesman/handyman. He did the tile in our kitchen and we had him help us with the ceiling in our basement. Steve found a lumberyard with an eleven foot long piece of of rough-cut red oak and Peggi and I walked over to his house this afternoon and helped him plane the wood in his garage.
