Snow covered path around Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York
I’m guessing we had about eighteen inches here so, needless to say, the cross-country skiing has been fantastic. I can’t operate my camera with my mittens on or I would have come back with dozens of photos. The deep snow, clear blue skies, bright sunshine and low humidity, single digit temperatures make for perfect photos and, in my case, memories. This year I am planning to resist the urge to document or at least pause long enough to contemplate what part of the actual experience I will be missing when I do document. And it should be noted that often times the act of reviewing the document of an experience is better than the actual experience.
Three tree trunks in woods near Durand Eastman Park
We’re having a few friends over for New Year’s, last minute style, sort of a stragglers ball. We decided to serve lobster and we picked out seven that were still moving. They’re in our refrigerator now and I’m feeling kinda bad about their boiling water fate. But the quick method seems marginally more humane than baking them as the seafood manager at Wegman’s suggested.
Our friends, Maureen and Karl are getting married at the Justice of the Peace today and there is a reception for them at their house this afternoon so I’m afraid we won’t have time to walk. In lieu of that I looked for a recent photo of the woods and found this one. I love how the trunk of the central tree appears to get wider as you move your eyes up. And the root structure, visible at the base, looks especially animated as the tree bursts out of the pine needles. I wish I was there now.
Duck Dynasty suckers at Patti’s Pantry in Rochester, New York
You might feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven as you walk into Patti’s Pantry on Dewey Road. It is a complete throwback to days that never were. Plastic bottles of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup adorn every table and the dining room overlooks the CSX railroad station, in fact a train came through while we were eating. It’s sort of a truck stop without the truckers. There was a cool cow print on our coffee cups and my Ceaser’s Salad was weighted down with bacon. My father ordered the hot chocolate and considered the fried bologna and onion sandwich before ordering Philly Cheese steak quesadillas.
We had entered Holy Sepulcher on the Lake Ave. side, helped my parents pick out a location for their final rest in the cemetary’s new “green space” and then exited on the Dewey Avenue side just in time for lunch. Patti’s Pantry is connected with some outfit that makes candies from way back like Smith Brother’s cough drops and all chocolate Necco Wafers. My mom bought some of those but they didn’t taste like used to. We didn’t fall for the Duck Dynasty candy beards.
Are boys in the prime of life at fourteen or fifteen? We followed this pack of kids to the park the other day and judging by the way they were laughing and carrying on I would guess so.
Inside the park we hid behind a big tree as they tried to set off this small orange rocket. They failed to get launch so we moved on after a few minutes. We were at least a mile away when we heard a big boom.
This glorious color in this photo, heightened by the grey skies, was taken only a week ago. The high winds and cold snap have cleared the trees. Our palette has changed again. We have been dealt a new hand.
I’m bummed that Joan Jett got the boot from the South Dakota float in the Macy’s parade when the Cattleman’s Association raised a stink over her vegetarian diet.
Sign on piano in lobby of Monroe County Office building
I awake from a vivid dream last night about an infestation at my parent’s house. My dad had called an expert to analyze the large bugs that were slithering from the mortar joints of his field stone foundation. (My parents actually have a modern concrete block foundation.) The expert had dug down along a portion of the foundation near the front door and we watched as bugs as big as six inches long worked their way out of the motor joints and they then either crawled away or took flight. One was iridescent blue and my dad, a bird and nature enthusiast, identified it as “rare such and such.” He was delighted to have spotted one of these and the blue bug flew toward him and hovered like a hummingbird right in front of his face.
There was a stern woman with the expert, possibly from the health board, and she was taking notes on a clipboard. She used a three word name, derived from Latin, in her confirmation of the infestation. The expert told my dad there was no option other than digging up the entire house and treating the foundation. My dad was trying to digest this when I woke up.
I take one pill a day. I’ve been taking it for so long that I have trouble remembering if I actually took it. I pop it without thinking. My mom has a UTI and and another set of pills to take for it so we stopped by a drugstore today to buy her a “Pill Organizer.” I picked out one that didn’t look too obnoxious and we brought it over to their house.
I could tell as soon as we unwrapped it that it was the wrong one. The containers were colored so you couldn’t see in the chamber when it was closed and it was hard to open. It was laid out as you would expect, Sun. through Sat., but the type was too small and the type on the evening chambers was upside down so if you picked up the container the way my mom did the days of the week would read backwards.
So back to Walgreens where a young girl with blue nail polish cheerfully swapped it out for a large print version that reads up right from one side only, AM and PM laid out in separate chambers Sun. through Sat. in clear plastic with an easy snap latch. Enough of this, “Did I take my pill.”
We helped my dad take his trash out to the curb but before we did he wanted to know what he should do with a shoebox of floppy discs. I was trying to picture if any of our old computers still had a floppy drive. We decided to throw them away but we took one last look at history before we did. Canvas 1.0 from 1991, Hypercard from 1987, Mac Perspective, a program my dad used to design the mural at the UofR Laser Lab, Reunion 1.0. Mac3D, all marvels in their time.
Peggi and I walked in the rain yesterday. I was singing you know what in my head, trying to get “I’m Only Human” out after getting that damn song lodged during halftime of the Arsenal Liverpool game. I had the sound off but visual from the Liberty Mutual commercial got me.
Peter Presstone (he’s been in a few bands since those days but we still call him that) asked if we’d do a couple of songs for the Lou Reed night he’s hosting at the Skylark Lounge on the 22nd. We did “What Goes On” a few times back in the day so we agreed to give that another shot and Peggi picked “I’m Dreamin” from “Magic and Loss.”
It took me most of the day to get two drawing in frames for a show that opens at ISquare on Friday night. My drawings are equal parts charcoal and eraser marks so all sorts of particles cling to the glass and matt board. I spent more time tarting them up than doing them.
Eastman Lake Fall mirror through leaves, Rochester, New York
My dad threw out their phone books and my mom wanted to call her friend but she didn’t have the number. My father was out and mom is afraid of the computer so she called me. I told her my computer had just shut down when today’s wind knocked the power out. She told me she heard on the news that a few trees had come down and she was afraid a tree would fall on my father. I told her she already had enough things to worry about and a tree falling on my father was highly unlikely.
My neighbor had asked for help getting his winch back in his pickup truck. I just walked down there to help but he was eating lunch. On my way back up the hill a large branch fell right behind me.
We walked by this same tree yesterday and its leaves were still on the tree. The spotty frost we had here, up by the lake, brought down all these same-sized branches, all at once. The leaves are still green, the tree is bare. Fall is over for this tree, just like that. None of the mucky-muck.
I think this is one of those weed-like trees, some people call them “Brooklyn trees.” They grow up between the cracks in the sidewalks and they grow real fast but this one is so big I’m not sure. There was no metal tag on the tree like there is on so many of the trees in the park.
Bar at Tratta in Culver Road Armory, Rochester, New York
Peggi had the perfect route picked out for our multifaceted Friday night journey around the city. Our first stop was Rochester Picture Framing where I picked up a piece of glass for a drawing I’m putting in a show at I-Square Gallery. Next stop was dinner at Trata in the old Armory on Culver Road. Not only have they repurposed the building while letting the old skeleton show, they’ve repurposed the furniture and the even the water glasses which were made from sawed off wine bottles. They fit perfectly with the old timey water bottles and managed to make tap water look elegant. (Our water did win first place at the State Fair this year.)
Three bars, three floors, this was a busy place on Friday night. Peggi read some not-so-good reviews online so we took our server’s recommendations. We split orders of sautéed calamari with corn and black beans, brussels sprout salad with a lemon vinaigrette and the fresh Gulf Coast scallops that were Fed-Exed in that day. Everything right on.
Onward to Bop Shop to pick up tickets for the Sunday Chandler Travis Philharmonic show then to the Art Store in Southtown Plaza where I picked up a frame and some archival mat board. And then down the road to the Dyer Gallery at RIT where Pete Monacelli and George Wegman were in a show of WildRoot artists, a collective from the early seventies. George had a fantastic abstract charcoal drawing in there that both Peggi and I took as an artist’s studio.
We drove back through downtown to the Axom Gallery for the opening of their new show of paintings by Jim DeLucia. The work is somewhere between painterly illustration and pop and looked great in this space but our conversation was centered on dancing and the lessons gallery owner Rick Muto and his wife have been taking. Rick told us he really loved the Samba and had since a Popeye cartoon he vividly remembered from childhood. I told him I would track it down and send him a link.
My blood donation at the Red Cross in Rochester, New York
We have a friend who donates her blood platelets on a regular basis. The process is a real time commitment. The least we can do is donate blood. I thought it was going to be an in/out kinda thing but there is all sorts of screening beforehand and you have your vitals checked out long before they stick the needle in.
Once we were cleared to donate and caught up on our CNN Headline news Peggi and I sat next to each other in big barbershop style chairs. We each had a nurse drawing blood and they made a contest out of it. I filled the vessels above in four minutes and thirteen seconds.
Margaret Explosion tonight – Little Theater Café.
Listen to Rocket Racer by Margaret Explosion, recorded live at the Little Theater Cafe.Leave a comment
I took this picture of my parents around 1970 or so. I think Kim developed the film for me. My parents were sitting at the table in our back yard where we often had dinner in the summer. I was looking for a photo from that time because my parents went to calling hours tonight for our old next door neighbor. Our neighbors had ten kids, more than anyone on the block and the house seemed perpetually out of control but they were very nice.
At dinner tonight my mom was explaining her discipline policy back in the day. When one or a handful of the neighborhood kids would act up around our house my mom would ask them to go ho home. When the kids got home their mom would sometimes come down to our house and ask what it was the kids did. My mom did not want to get into it. She just settled things that way.
There were seven kids in our family and if we all had friends over, there could be thirty kids in the back yard. I told my mom I remember her coming out of the house and telling everyone to go to their own home. It was dramatic and impressive. She could really clear the place.
Tierney gathering for breakfast at the Treadway Inn on the corner of Alexander and East Avenue in Rochester, New York 1959
You can’t reheat a soufflé and you can’t call it a reunion if it happens every year but the Tierney side of my family gave it a go again yesterday afternoon. The family was large in the photo above, taken on my grandparent’s anniversary, but we were just getting started. My youngest sister wasn’t even born yet. Many in the blowup of this photo are gone and yesterday we had to put name tags on to identify ourselves to all the new additions.
At one time or another most of the family worked either in my grandfather’s or my uncle’s grocery stores and I felt enough time had passed that I could tell my cousin, Ray III (in the center of the photo above), about the time his father, Ray Jr. the owner, found me in the milk cooler of his grocery store sitting up on the shelf eating a banana cream pie that I had swiped from the dairy case. Stockboys don’t have silverware so I was holding the whole pie up to my mouth when the cooler door flew open. Ray III said, “don’t worry, he probably saved the empty box and got credit for the pie.” I didn’t want to tell him it was a regular routine.
I’m getting a little worried about our late planting of spinach. It has been about ten days since we’ve seen any rain and the five day forecast in this morning’s paper was all sunny icons. May have to resort to the garden hose.
Drag queen MCs at Xerox Auditorium for the Fringe Fest
With 300 some odd events a good bit of the fun of the Fringe Fest is trying to figure out what is going on where. It was pretty obvious why the huge crowd was looking up at the HSBC building. Bandaloop is a sensation. We wandered by the Xerox Building and saw people filing into the Auditorium for TheaterRocs Showcase. Funny how mainstream drag queens are today. The MCs of this citywide theater group roundup were billed as two of Rochester’s most beloved personalities.
We missed “Ole,” the Blackfriars production of a Lorca/Dali play, because we hadn’t deciphered the Fringe handbook in time. Outside the packed Magic Chrystal Spiegeltent at Main and Gibbs we heard that a silent disco was going on inside but it sounded more like a circus. We might have to buy tickets to find out.
One of our neighbors made a pact with his daughter to get in the street pool every day until we we close it. It was easy the last few days with the temperatures in the nineties but it only got to sixty today. The water temperature is 73 so it probably feels warm by comparison. I’m living vicariously.
Shipping containers behind Jerome’s Ignition in Rochester, New York
I really like this Mediterranean Shipping Container logo. Ideally the “sc” would be floating on top of the “m” but I’m happy the international committee approved it.
The industrial lot behind Jerome’s on Atlantic Avenue is a pretty interesting place. I hung out there while Mike inspected our car. I grew up a few blocks away and used to walk to Elite Bakery, which was right next door, with my mom. And then in the eighties we recorded a few Personal Effects records with Dwight Glodell in the building that sits right in front of Jeromes. Used to be called “PCI” which stood for some kind of chemical. The place is is full of memories and dreamy junk (see blow-up).
Listen to Margaret Explosion – “In Walks Jack” from “Live at the Little Theater Café”
Weeds in marsh off Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
My mom has been unleashing a flood of memories from her youth, some stories we’ve heard before but many surprises. My father, who is the webmaster of the family tree was talking about some new information he had dug up on Paul Dodd, his father’s brother. Paul was professional baseball player before Rochester had a professional team. That is he would play for money and even took ads out in the paper challenging other teams to a game with a purse attached. He was also a bootlegger, as was my grandfather, so when my father started courting my mom her father (my maternal grandfather) told her she should “stay away from the Dodd’s.” Of course, at some point kids stop listening to their parents and move on with their life.
Even with just a few plants zucchini comes in so fast it is impossible to keep up with and of course all your friends are overloaded with the stuff at the same time so you can’t give it away. If you just let them lay there they’ll get bigger and tougher and full of seeds. We piled ours up in a corner of the garden and I was thinking of offering them to the military to drop on Syria.
