Category: Dear Diary

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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My father put their Time magazine subscription in my mother’s name and their mail comes to our house now the he is gone. This week’s issue came with over two million different covers. Each subscriber had their name imprinted into a headline that reads, “Mary Dodd (subscriber name) You Owe $42,998.12,” her share of the national debt. We have been bringing her Women’s Day magazines up to her but I think she might find this one a little troubling. We found her down in PT this morning where Julie had her walking the length of the halls. Julie has a simple but effective technique. She talks fast and distracts her clients, getting them do things they could never do if they thought about it.

We cut through the woods this afternoon and came out near our polling place, the Point Pleasant Fire Station. In New York State you have to be registered with a party in order to vote in the primary. A women behind the table asked what my name was and I told her. She couldn’t find it and asked again. My last name is simple but not easy to enunciate. She still couldn’t find it so I spelled it out. She thought I said “E” instead of “D” and confessed that she forgot her hearing aides. Peggi had already voted for a full slate of delegates before I was done registering.

On the way back we stopped up at the park to check on the progress of the magnolias. They were blooming easy and then we had a cold snap so they are a little confused.

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We started spinach, lettuce and beets from seed about five weeks go. We bought a bag of sterilized potting soil on our neighbor’s recommendation and put that in some shallow plastic trays. Other years we’d just get some dirt out of the yard but our neighbor said this is much better for some reason. In fact he said we could sterilize our dirt by putting it in the oven. He grew up on a farm and he was a chemist at Kodak so he knows these things.

Each year he tells us how his grandmother would just scatter spinach seed on the snow in early March. Even when we think we are getting the jump on things, Jared is one step ahead of us. He has some spinach up that wintered over and he has started seeds in their glass porch.

They were headed out of town for a few weeks so they asked if we’d do the usual, take in their paper (so he can catch up when he gets home), feed the cat and water his plants. We brought our trays of sprouts down to their solerium and they loved it. Every seed sprouted and the lettuce was three inches high by the time they got back in town.

We turned over the garden and put the plants in the ground. If the groundhogs don’t get it we’ll be swimming in greens in the next month.

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If we left these chairs out all winter they would rust. They are made of metal and two of them came from my grandparents after they gave up their house. The chairs were white then and I’ve painted them many times since. Can’t remember all the Rustoleum colors we’ve used but I bought a gallon of the blue stuff so that will be around for a while. And I love the Sunburst Yellow. We took the chairs out of the garage after the winter and just minutes before Rick and I played our first there horseshoe game of the season.

Louise sent me a message today that reminded me it had been four days since my last post. Those days flew by and what space they had I filled with painting, an activity that respects no time frame. You dive in and don’t stop until it is right. And even when it is, it is only right for then, the best you can do for now.

I finally finished a batch of paintings, twelve or so, a series that was started last year when my painting teacher, Fred Lipp, was still alive. And then my father got sick and passed and we had some family business to settle so I feel we are just now crawling out of a big hole just in time for Spring and this art show at Little Café. We do a promo radio spot with Evan Dawson, on WXXI’s Connections Friday afternoon and the drop the work off on Saturday. Art vs. music.

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The twins, who were feeding their mom, Philomena, overheard Peggi and me telling my mom that we were going to walk Clarabella, my sister’s dog. On the way out they asked us if the dog was named after the clown on Howdy Doody. We told her we assumed so but I could barely remember the character so, of course, I goggled the show.

Clarabella the dog is a sensation. She ain’t nothin’ but a hound dogs but she makes all other breeds look mean. She pretends to use all her senses but is ruled by her nose. She would follow it anywhere. And that’s what leashes are for.

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We celebrated Peggi’s birthday by driving to East Aurora to visit the Roycroft artist community, something Peggi has always wanted to do. We had brunch in the Inn there, one of the original buildings in the complex and we walked around the grounds soaking in the vibe of the community of printers, furniture makers, metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders.

The Arts and Crafts movement started in England in the late 1800s as a reaction against the the excessive ornamentation of the Victorian Age. It was also part of a backlash to the Industrial Revolution. William Morris, the movement’s artistic figurehead tried to unite all the arts within the decoration of the home emphasizing nature and simplicity of form. He inspired the Roycroft artist colony to form in East Aurora, New York, just outside of Buffalo. Morris’s motto was, “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

We asked to see a room in the inn and they showed us suite appointed with classic arts and crafts furniture. We wanted to move in and go back in time.

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