Category: Life Is A Spell

When we lived in the city, Carrol’s was our corner bar. We’d walk up there just before noon on the 17th. Shamrock Jack’s is the closet Irish place to us now but that has gotten crazy. I think already had a huge tent set up in their parking lot last when everything shut down. You can’t beat crowds there so we looked for greener pastures.

Google Maps estimated it would take us an hour and seven minutes to walk to the Bayside in Webster. We called before leaving home and ordered two corned beef sandwiches to go. I put two beers in my pocket and Peggi and I celebrated Saint Patty’s at a picnic table overlooking the lake across the street from the restaurant. The McKeil Spirit was just pulling out of the Port of Rochester after dropping a load cement at Turning Point terminal. The sun came out while we we eating and turned the water turquoise.

We looked in on the premature post-pandemic scene at Shamrock Jack’s on our way back. The picnic tables in the parking lot looked safe but the bar was crowded and loud. A good place to test our vaccine but we moved on.

We learned yesterday that the last of the Tierneys has passed, my mom’s cousin, from the Maloney/Tierney side. We will toast her with some cherry water tonight.

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We nit meeting around. We’ve picked some forsythia clipping at different stages and their yellow blossoms are popping in our living room. We brought home a few clippings of fragrant witch hazel and our house smells like butterscotch. We have our seed packets out and the little plastic pots. The garden season has begun. The red wing blackbirds are our official bird and they are back, the early arrivals anyway, atop the tall grasses and dead trees that surround the marsh. Their call stops us dead in our tracks.

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We had a 3 o’clock appointment at Kathy’s house today to sit by the bay and watch the birds. Mostly gulls fishing at the edge of what’s left of the ice cover, but a few Junior Bald Eagles floated overhead. Kathy haunts estate sales, the tail end of them that is, when prices have been slashed, so she had a box of binoculars. Mine were made by Bushnell and Peggi found a Sears pair that worked for her. We spent most of our time looking at the houses on the other side in Webster. Some had staircases built into the hillside that descended five or six stories at least. The temperature was seventy when we left at five and the two hours felt like a mini vacation.

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I feel like the ground hog in Punxsutawney at the beginning of February wondering if it is really safe to come out now that we have had the second dose of the Moderna vaccine. We are one step closer to feeling comfortable hanging out with vaccinated friends inside sans mask, playing with the band, visiting NYC or even traveling to Europe.

A handmade sign at Aman’s read “Face Masks 25% Off.” We walked home with another $2.99 bushel of apples and will make more apple sauce in the next few days. Peggi and I each got red peppers. Didn’t realize that til we got to the cash register. I was in the cooler picking out some Guinness for the upcoming holiday.

As I mentioned earlier we couldn’t decide who to root for when Real Madrid met Atlético Madrid. It turned out to be really easy. Atlético was on fire in the first half and they scored an early goal. Two star players were back in the line up, the Belgian Yannick Carrasco (injury) and Englishman Kieran Trippier (gambling suspension). The second half got tighter. I think Atlético was tired. Carlos Casemiro, the Brazilian, set up the Frenchman, Karim Benzema in the final minutes and tied it for Real. Final score as it should be Madrid 1, Madrid 1.

The ice formations on the lake are starting to recede and will go pretty fast with the 60 degree weather. I will miss it. It was the best winter ever.

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Maybe this is what old people do. Without a job you are left to fill your days as you please. And there are many rabbit holes out there. I recently posted a video of our old band performing “Heartbeat” at a concert at RIT in 1984 and the audio was a bit rough so I looked for a cassette recording the show. I had one but we had filled the cassette by the time we got to the second encore and Heartbeat was not on it. I found a cassette in that box from a show we did with Pylon at the Ritz but there wasn’t a date on it so I googled “Pylon Ritz NYC” and found a Stephen Holden review of the show from May 29, 1983. The review was not live text but a scan of the actual newspaper. I’m guessing we have access to this by subscribing to nyt.com.

It’s Peggi’s father’s birthday today so I looked up the front page of the paper for the day he was born. WW1 was still raging and there were no photographs in the paper at that time. The Committee for Democratic Control took out a half page ad that asks, “Do the People Want War?” It advances the notion that only Wall Street does.

I looked up Peggi’s birthdate next and found a Macy’s ad for Modern furniture. By the time of our birthdays the papers were full of photos and on my birthdate I found one of the Yankee’s manager, Casey Stengel, and catcher, Yogi Berra, arguing with the umpire in a game the Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox. And next to that photo a capsulized version of another New York team’s (the Giants) loss to the other Boston team (the Braves). Pitcher Warren Spahn, a favorite of mine when the team moved to Milwaukee, went nine innings and scored the game winning run after successfully bunting the tying run in.

Across from the sports page was a full page ad for Collier’s Magazine whose new issue featured an article about movie censorship. Westerns were being censured in some towns for too much violence, a comedy was banned because the star had divorced and a negro singing star’s scene was cut from a film because “there are plenty of good white singers.” A not so idyllic past.

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Peggi once told me that winter is her favorite season. She was born in February and she suspected that might have something to do it. I love winter too especially when it is what hearty people call “a real winter,” long periods of below freezing temperatures with plenty of snow. I feel especially fortunate that we are able to share our enthusiasm for the season with each other.

I like shoveling snow and when they are calling for a significant amount I get out there a few times to reduce the load and just because it is fun. I shovel in my slippers when I grab the papers. We had a neighbor, last name “Painting” (which I thought was pretty cool), who would keep his driveway spotless in winter and we assumed he was obsessive. The neighbors surely think that of me now.

Winter naturally is a time to hunker down. We go out to ski in the woods and then come back to hunker (I assmue hunkering includes projects). Winter during a pandemic has been deep and rewarding. We miss going to to galleries but have found a bounty of beauty in the woods. The art pieces there are all three dimensional. Photos do not do them justice. The form of each tree is unique especially in decay.

This morning we found this big snow roll at the bottom of a hill near our ski path.

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I don’t usually plan these these posts until I sit down but the lake was so dramatic this morning I knew I would use a photo of the beach. And if a person was in that photo it surely would have been Peggi, my valentine. But I didn’t take a photo of Peggi this morning, she took this one of me and it captures the wonder.

We skied through the woods, across the golf course (where there were so many people out it looked like a ski resort) and then out onto Eastman Lake. We spotted ski tracks out there and followed them, past a dozen or so ice fishing holes, all the way up to the big lake, the Great Lake, Ontario.

I am out on the big lake here, skiing between the two sand bars closest to shore. This was the twenty-fourth day in a row skiing. We are counting! The days are getting longer. It is 5:30 EST as I type this and it is still light out. I am already missing winter.

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We skied along the lake and on the lake this morning. We traveled east to west between the small mound in the center of this photo and the line of bigger mounds nearer the open water. I’m guessing the ice mounds form where the sand bars are and if this winter continues, we’ll soon have bigger mounds on the next sand bar. Tomorrow will make twenty days in a row of perfect conditions.

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This is the earliest picture of Steve that I have. He was my assigned roommate in the dorm my freshman year at Indiana University. This was our crew. I’m thinking the photo was by Rich or Kim since both them were missing. Steve was from New Castle, a small town outside of Indianapolis. His father owned a jewelry store on the town square and there was a Chrysler factory outside of town. Steve was already a junior and he drove a white Baracuda with Led Zeppelin’s first album in the 8-track player.

Steve called us yesterday to report in. He was excited to have an appointment this Wednesday for the first dose of the vaccine. He had bought GameStop stock, sold some, made fifty bucks a share and he was hanging on to some options. He works part time at a car dealer in Charleston and had to drive a new vehicle to the other side of Atlanta, a 600 mile round trip. He was upset because he missed his grandson’s basketball game that day where he scored five points.

Steve asked if he had told us that he was being sued. He hadn’t. He was driving a company car, about to make a left hand turn and And the bicyclist ran into each other. The guy (Steve called him a wino) was riding the wrong way down a one way street. He fell off his bike and he is claiming he has headaches and soft tissue damage.

Steve owns some rental property and the tenant says the water pressure is too weak. She is threatening to move out. Steve says he can’t work on the place because the woman is a hoarder and she has stuff all over the place.

Steve said his next door neighbor told him that Biden would not be inaugurated. Steve bet him one hundred dollars that he would be inaugurated. The neighbor has not paid.

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There is a glimpse of the lake in the center of the photo above. We were on what we call the “Ridge Trail.” We predate the color-coded trails though the park.

I shoveled the driveway and Peggi cleaned off the fire-pit seating and then we strapped on our skis. Avoiding the horseshoe stakes the horseshoe stakes we go downhill to Jared’s and around his pond, then across the street and into the woods. We zig zag down the big hill, skiing into the bank from side to side to slow our descent. Ten years ago we would take that thing head-on.

We’ve skied five days in a row now and last night’s snowfall freshened the trails for us. The log bridge over the creek is tricky. Sometimes we take our skis off to cross. Today we walked it on our skis. The woods to the park is often prettier than the park and today with the sun and snow it was gorgeous. After a mile we come out at the golf course. Today we went to the left and up the steep hill where we picked another trail, one that leads to the top of Marilyn’s Hill so called because we watched her ski straight down it. And there we picked up the Ridge Trail (above) that takes us all the way to the lake.

We took a few pictures of the turquoise water and followed the trail on the western side of Eastman Lake back. This is a birder’s haven and sure enough we saw birds along the shore. Eastman Lake ends with a marsh and there are usually a couple of swans in here but the lake has frozen over. We skied across the golf course again and around to the left where we picked up the trail back through the woods to house.

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One of my biggest worries is that this pandemic will end before I have finished all the projects I’ve lined up around the house. I recently checked off one though, sorting my holy card collection. I already had them in glassine envelopes, alphabetically with seperate categories for Virgin and Child, Black Virgin and Child, Virgen Del Pilar, Virgen Dolorosa, Vergen Del Rocio ( all big in Spain) and Christ Crucified. But I still hadn’t filed away the ones I brought back from our last trip.

We have gotten pretty good at sniffing out estampas (holy cards) in “Artículos Religiosos” shops in big cities but they are a dwindling phenomena. Sometimes we’ll strike gold in a priests’ supply store but the best experiences are in small towns where the cards are kept in wooden drawers and the shopkeeper shares details about the saints.

I hung on to some cards from childhood. They were given to us on special occasions and stuffed in our missiles as bookmarks. I bought some at Trant’s Catholic Supply Store on Clinton Avenue South. Most of them were printed in Italy. Every town in Spain has a patron saint and holy cards are pinned to the wall behind the counter in coffee shops and bars. You can still find them in the vestibule of churches, old women sell them out front but everything is changing. Gift shops sell cards on rotating spindles. They’re sealed in plastic, often with a medal attached and they’re expensive. I like the paper cards. You used to be able to buy four or five of them for a Euro. The very best ones were made by C. Mariana in Barcelona.

I found a Mary Magdalene card in Madrid on our last trip, my first one, and I got intrigued with her legend. A prostitute, possessed by seven demons, rumored to have been Jesus’s wife, she was there at the the crucifixion and then the resurrection. She is typically pictured with a skull. I did search on eBay and found an “antigua estampa religiosa” listing for Mary Magdalene for a couple Euros. I went for it and it arrived today from Granada in an envelope with two beautiful stamps.

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Well into January and we’re still walking the beach in the morning. Not complaining but Peggi and I both felt like we had a political hangover from yesterday. We started by checking in on the Georgia results and then the certification of the damned electoral college votes and you know the rest. This experiment with a reality tv star as president could only have ended this way.

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What a gift! This is the way the lake looked this morning on New Year’s Day. We managed to cross the outlet from Durand Lake, something we were unable to do just yesterday when the lake was rough and the water flowing out of Durand had cut a wide swath out of the beach.

We watched a Real Madrid match and finished installment number 7 of the Queen’s Gambit. We were in bed before midnight. Don’t remember ever missing the midnight hour before. I did miss hearing the records I usually play at our New Years party. Stooges “1969,” Hot Chocolate “Don’t Turn It Off,” Prince “When Doves Cry,” James Brown “Payback,” Donna Summer, “I Feel Love’” and Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

Our neighbor across the street has Covid, probably from a Christmas Day contact and our next door neighbors were with them recently so they are isolating. There is a plus side to staying holed up. We are vaccine hungry but certainly not essential so we’re being patient.

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If ever there was a year to send and receive holiday cards this would be the one. And yet I tied myself up in knots just thinking about it. With so much suffering out there and at the same time so much mistrust, even a peaceful message feels like a cop-out. And sharing the news that Peggi and I are finding it really easy to hunker down would be best kept to ourselves.

Years past we nodded to the solstice, the religious significance of the holiday, winter, the new year and our cats. I drew the frames on one card on our Atari 1040, we did snow angels in the backyard and we dressed up like Spanish royalty. The year we dunked old floppy discs in red and green paint presented a shipping postal meltdown.

My father was never afraid to say what was on his mind in his holiday card. Each featured one of his drawings or paintings, maybe a quote from Chesterton and a message like “The war must stop!” One year, late in his life, he said “Mary and I fill our days recounting memories.” And when he died just days after Christmas he left a layout on his computer for that year’s card, an old photo of us kids and this verse –

“What if you couldn’t remember
Yep!………Return to an event
Where some time was spent
When surrounded by people
Some of the people you bore
But the image you recognize no more
What if you couldn’t remember”

My mother went out with vascular dementia and my father went out like a light.

Maybe we’ll do a Three Kings card this year. El Día de los Reyes Magos.

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Peggi was making an Adobo recipe that called for fresh cilantro. We didn’t have any in the refrigerator but . . . Was there any under the snow down in the garden? It was dark already so I took a flashlight with me. Luckily we left an upside down seed packet on a stake near where our patch was. I found that and dragged my boot across the plants to remove the snow. The leaves were not wilted or fazed by the snow. I brought back a handful.

For dessert, Peggi is thinking about this Mid-Century Modern gingerbread recipe.

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I was up before dawn for some reason and the temperature was hovering around freezing but the wind had died down. There was hardly anyone out in the neighborhood, park and along the beach. We did see a woman we’ve seen before picking up pieces of worn beach glass. She was wearing a “Satanic Feminist‘ shirt if I read it right. I was trying not to stare and the lettering was one of those German gothic fonts. The lake was too beautiful to photograph, a barely discernible horizon and a subtle rainbow of colors in the sky and water. The water was as calm as it gets.

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There was a temporary open air tent set up for Sunday service in front of the Church of the Transformation all summer. And someone in the congregation found creative (i.e. cornball/clever) ways to freshen up the sign each week. This morning the plastic letters read “WORSHIP ON FACEBOOK ONLY.” I have to get back to my Funky Signs project.

We got some junk mail from AAA today that read “DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY DISCARD.” Still trying to figure that out.

We pulled the last of our beets out of the garden yesterday, just before the snow. The arugula, Swiss chard, kale and late spinach still seem happy down there.

“Isn’t art something that occurs to man facing himself, his work an unsparing witness?”
– Eduardo Chillida

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We met Jan Marshall in Kathy’s backyard last night to watch the Beaver moon come up over the bay. Kathy had a fire going in the commercial dryer bin that she had repurposed and Peggi took this photo with her new iPhone.

It was raining when we got up but we got out there anyway. We stayed on the road and walked down to the end of Hoffman where we watched someone with “Donuts 1” license plates turn around in front of the house where the guy with “Golf 1” plates lives. They happen overlook the golf course.

With three favorite teams there is a lot of soccer to watch. We’ve been recording La Liga matches for Real, Atletico and Barca and watching one a day but we can’t seem to get caught up to the present so we can look at the standings.

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We tucked the final row of firewood away this afternoon and stapled the black tarp down. I plan to make five 2020 markers for the ends of the new rows. Our rows are stacked taller and longer than a face cord and we have twelve of them. I’m starting a fire as I write this.

The defensive moves we took here to avoid Covid revealed an offense that had been waiting in the wings. Turns out we are pretty good at hunkering down and I think we have lived more fully, in the moment, close to home, as we fill our days with a mundane but surprisingly rewarding domestic agenda. Walking, reading, gardening, cooking and working in the yard. It is all consuming.

Somehow I finished my 20th volume of “Brief History of the World” yesterday. I will eventually scan it and create an eBook to add to the five I have available for download now.

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