Rick and I were in the decisive third round of our horseshoe match. Duane was in town and he and Peggi were talking and watching from the yellow and blue chairs. And three “gals” (one of my cousin’s favorite words) came walking down our dead-end street. Marilyn, who had moved to the mountains years ago, Olga and Kathy walked over from Kathy’s sweet spot on the bay. We toasted the Summer Solstice by splitting a tall Genny in small glasses.
A sunset walk on the pier was in order. Jumbo Shrimp was playing on the beach at Marge’s. They were doing J Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’ “Last Kiss”” when we got to the end and they sounded fuller than the the guitar/drums duo we had heard a few years ago. The night was still young. We had to see Ronaldo score again and then cheer Spain on as they barely bested Iran in the World Cup. All this and Jazz Fest starts rudely starts tomorrow.
Adam and Eve sculpture, Eve from Adam’s Rib, Santo Domingo De La Calzada Cathedral
Peggi’s sister sent us a link to an article in the LA Times about “Strangers on the Earth,” a documentary on the Camino de Santiago. We’ve already seen three movies about the Camino and we were in the middle of watching “The Milky Way,” Buñuel’s 1969 masterpiece. It is surely the wildest movie about religion and the Camino (which is sometimes referred to as “The Milky Way”). I say “in the middle of watching” because the Netflix dvd locked up on us about halfway through because of scratches on the disc. Don’t you just wish everything was streamable?
While we were walking the actual Camino, from one small town church to the next, my cousin told us she felt like she missed out by not going to a Catholic school. I found myself making an argument for how she lucked out. She was never in a class in the middle of math when the teacher rounded us up to go next door to a mass in the church. She never had a nun veer off topic in the middle of an English lesson so we could hear a religious parable. And she probably had a gym in her school building and a phys-ed teacher.
In truth, Religion class, part of our daily curriculum, was sometimes as thought provoking as Buñuel’s movie. In fact, that is what I remember most from Catholic school. And it was the questioning that stuck with me, the same questions that are bantered about in “The Milky Way.” How can it be said that we have a free will when God knows exactly what we will do before we do it? All the things that can only be settled by accepting them as articles of faith, they just don’t make logical sense. The mysteries are meant to be confounding.
A friend of my parents requested a Mass for my parents today on what would have been their sixty-ninth anniversary. The priest had a beard and the altar boy role was played by a woman with grey hair and an ankle length skirt. The church, Saint Thomas More, was rather plain, lots of brick and a simple modern crucifix. I feel as though there is an effort underway to remove the mystery.
We don’t walk in the woods as much as we used to. We are afraid of the ticks. We still go there, once we’ve suited up, and it is a special treat when we do. And its hard to put on any kind of milage in the woods so we walk in different directions each day. Today we parked a the CoOp and walked along the river to Elmwood Avenue where we crossed the river and came back on the other side. Its beautiful over there and not as well traveled.
The path is paved and shared by bikes. Some bikers are better than others when they shout “On your left.” About half the time it scares the shit out of me as they come up on us from behind. It is possible to approach that phrase gently but it usually comes out like an alarm.
We were walking along the lake over Memorial Day and a bike rider who was coming toward us on our right shouted, “On your left.” We just froze in our tracks thinking someone else was coming up on us from behind but it was only him. He scared us and made no sense at all.
Saint Mary’s tower being repaired in downtown Rochester, New York
We took Pete and Shelley up to see the Leo Dodd painting show at Geisel Gallery. It closes on Wednesday so, sadly, this will probably be our last visit. We spent some time studying the four that are in B&L’s permanent collection. They were painted in 1994 and 1995 when the building was being constructed. Jean Geisel bought them then and they will be returned to B&L’s Goodman Street plant when the show is over.
These paintings are very interesting to me because they were executed rather quickly, like big sketches. Parts of the paintings are what you might call “unfinished” but those sections work especially well to convey the construction and action going on. Not only that, the expressively drawn, mostly white areas are the real subject and the reason he was standing out in Washington Square Park. They are alive today and what more could you hope for from a painting left behind.
Men were working on the steeple of Saint Mary’s when we stopped by. The church, just across the street from the park, played a big part in our family history and my father would have loved seeing this. Our cousin, Ray Tierney, bought one of the Saint Mary’s paintings from this show. His wife liked the painting because of the political activity it depicted (protesters with Occupy signs) and Ray like it because, as he told me, he was an alter boy at Saint Mary’s. In fact he was paid to serve mass (I never was) because Saint Mary’s had no grade school and they needed boys to serve. He took the bus downtown from Saint Boniface’s and loved getting out of school to serve at funerals.
We are really excited about the Champion’s League final on Saturday. We have been follwing Real Madrid all year but have a soft spot from Liverpool and Salem so we’ll be happy whoever wins. I just hope it will be a good match. We walked up to Wegmans and came back with some corn, vegetables and fish to grill after the game.
Mark, Ann with Amy, Paul, Fran, John and Tim Dodd in early sixties.
My sister, Amy, is the family historian. She remembers dates and places, when and where minor and significant events took place and we rely on her to keep track of things. The boxes of 35mm slides that our parents left behind are in good hands with her. She recently culled a few hundred and we sent them to a place in Utah to be scanned.
Our brother, Mark, was in town this weekend to see the Leo Dodd show at the Geisel Galley so we rounded up five of the seven Dodds, pictured above, and took a look at the photos on our tv. The family is a little spread out so there were very few pictures of the seven of us together. I like the coon hats on Fran and Tim, the smiles on our faces and the Rouault prints that my dad had on the wall behind us.
Our brother-in-law, Howie, brought olives and beer, Genesee’s Ruby Red Kolsch, a picture-perfect combo.
We played Margaret Explosion music from the past month at low volume. I had never seen many of the photos. I thought I identified a young Brad Fox in one one of them, rough housing at the pool with my brother, Fran, but my sister thinks it is someone else. She is probably right. Memory is far from factual and I prefer it that way.
We stopped by the closing party of Zanne Brunner’s art show. She took us over to a stack of her work, looking for a drawing of Peggi and me playing at the Little. She wanted to give us the drawing but someone had already bought it.
Peggi, suited in tick gear, clearing Garlic Mustard from hillside out back.
I can’t imagine how thick the garlic mustard would be if we didn’t pick it each year. We wait until the white flowers come up out. The plants are up around a foot by then, they are easy to spot and they haven’t gone to seed. Unlike the tooth swallow wort they are really easy to get out of the ground, roots and all. Our friends Pete and Shelley eat them but they don’t have them in anywhere near the quantity we do. Our undergrowth is stressed by the deer and the invasives are opportunistic as hell.
Isn’t the local first movement just a scaled down version of nationalism? I think we are still a long ways off from having too many breweries or coffee shops. And I like the idea Fifth Frame has for combining the two. It’s not an original idea. Coffee shops in Spain have seamlessly shifted gears from coffee to brew for centuries.
We have a friend who’s been talking about opening a coffee shop downtown. Before he does I think he should go to Spain and walk out the door of his hotel and stop at the first café he sees. Have a cup, café con leche or solo, two choices, none of the fancy flavored stuff. A few simple food items will be within eyeshot. Tortilla Espanola and fresh bread. Tostada con aceite de oliva would hit the spot. A bin of fresh oranges would be on the counter. The proprietor could toss a few in the machine and squeeze some zomo de naranja fresco for you. A copy of three or four different newspapers will be on the counter for patrons to chew over and prompt conversation.
Walk out the door and stop at the next café you see. Repeat and steal this intellectual property. Continental substitutions will be allowed when you bring the basics home.
We’ve been back from Spain for weeks but our walking partner, my cousin Maureen, kept going and just finished today. She arrived in Santiago, got her certificate stamped and continued on to the first alternate ending, Finistere (end of earth), and then to the hardcore final stop, Muxia, in the northwestern corner of Spain. We have kept in touch each morning as she is finishing her day’s walk and I couldn’t count the number of times we have said we wish we were on the trail with her.
We walked up to the high school today to vote on the town’s budget and it became clear to me what one of the best features of the Camino de Santiago is that each day is an entirely different walk from all the rest. A new starting point, new route and a brand new destination. It made the five mile round trip to the high school kind of ho hum.
I finally got my photos sorted, If I used a smartphone or if my camera had GPS it would have been done for me but before I put a name on the file I try try to figure out where we were. We were in and out of so many small town and so many churches. I have a picture of a crucified woman and I couldn’t remember her name so a little research was in order before labeling it “Santa Librada” and throwing the Camino Photos up on Flckr.
I discovered there is a trans-fronted rock band in Baltimore called Santa Librida. In the Middle Ages Santa Librada was the patron saint of prostitutes and over time she became the patron saint of women in labour. Apparently pregnant women visit her tomb and recite the following:
Santa Librada,
May the way out
Be as sweet
As the way in!
Mermaid statues in garden store outside Leon Spain
In Spain for the month of April we got to experience an early Spring and because it was so cold here in April we are enjoying it all over again in May. We put lettuce, spinach and cilantro in today, all from seed. I realize we’re late with those but we’ll see what happens. We picked a batch of kale from last year’s plants. They try to start up again and only get so far. We plan to get over to Case’s on Norton pick the plants we intend to put in. We may be pushing it with those but we hear Mother’s Day is the new Memorial Day for clear of frost days.
My sister thought we were goin to Lourdes and she asked us to pick a rosary up for her. She got confused because we had told her our cousin was going Lourdes for Easter before meeting us in St. Jean Pied de Port. Lourdes would have been the place to buy one but we found a nice one in Pamplona at religious store connected to the Cathedral. We dropped that off tonight after yoga.
It was hot in the old Brighton School No. 1 gym. Jeffery had the doors open. Brighton High School had a lacrosse game going on and they cranked a recording of the national anthem through their P.A. system. Jeffery told us the longer you practice yoga the easier it is to block out distractions.
Brandon, from the Friendly Home, spotted us on the deck at O’Loughlin’s. He knew exactly why we were there, the anniversary of our first date, the Kentucky Derby. We must have shared that information with him during one of our visits. It has been almost a year since my mom passed but Mary Dixon is still there, along with Sandy, Nancy and June.
Last night’s art opening was a smashing success. If my father had been able to make it he would have been beaming. Everyone else was, while admiring his watercolors.
Our walking partner in Spain, my cousin, Maureen, made her triumphant entry into Santiago de Compostela this afternoon. We’ve been back well over a week and she has completed the Camino. We are so proud of her and eager to join the club.
You can always tell if someone in the neighborhood is playing horseshoes. All that metal on metal makes it a noisy sport. I don’t know if it is a sport really, more like a pastime. By the end of a good summer I have a hard time telling my shoes from my opponent’s. They get pretty beat up. And then over the winter the bare metal rusts so I have to take steel wool to them each spring before giving them a new coat of Rustoleum.
This afternoon my neighbor, Rick, asked if the shoes were dry yet. I checked and they were. We always play best out of three, three games to 21,and I managed to squeak out a victory in the third game. This will be a good summer.
My father gave me his old bike for my birthday and then he took this picture of me. The bike had the strangest kickstand I had ever seen. You picked the back wheel up and and swung this triangle stand down to the ground. I was big into baseball cards back then. It’s my birthday today and I spent it sorting out my holy cards. I brought back a bunch of new ones, many related to churches and saints connected to the Camino, and I wove them into my collection.
There was nothing to eat in our house so we walked up to Wegmans with our backpacks and took the long way home with about thirty five pounds of fresh food. Peggi is making a cake and we plan to have a few friends over.
My cousin, Maureen, is continuing on to Santiago without us and she emails each day with an update. She said a little Russian woman latched on to her today but she continued on when Maureen stopped. And each day we hear how beautiful the trail is and how great the food is. We’re counting the days until October when we can finish it.
I’m missing Spain already and we’re still in the air.
The first time I saw “Far From The Madding Crowd” was in the Ridge Theater in Webster, a Saturday afternoon matinee. I fell asleep but I remember liking Julie Christie. We watched the remake on the plane and I fell asleep again. The story was so predictable and I wasn’t buying the beautiful people doing farming thing at all. Just like on the way over, the person in front of us was watching the Billie Jean King movie and I found myself more attracted to that.
The new Bladerunner was the second part of our double feature. I couldn’t give a hoot about the story but it was beautiful to watch. The grey cities, the drones and space ships, the ruins, the artfully composed shots and camera movement and then an Elvis impersonator and Frank Sinatra under glass. I fell asleep again, a few times, and never got to the end of a really long movie.
Recreation of Dali’s Mae West in “Duchamp Magritte Dali” show at Palacio de Gaviria in Madrid
An accordion player in Plaza Santa Ana is working his way through “My Way” as I write this. I just finished jamming all the stuff we accumulated in Madrid, Torrons, holy cards, art books and dried fruit for the plane, into my backpack. The thing was just over ten pounds total when we left Rochester, maybe eleven with the last minute addition of a sketchbook. I’m pushing twenty now.
We’re waiting for the Real Madrid/Bayern München match to start and I’m thinking about all the things we accumulate. You become acutely aware of your belongings when you carry them on your back for twenty miles a day. You also get a real taste of the stress that is put on your feet, your knees and your back when you start carrying an ten extra pounds.
There is a satisfying purity to the minimal lifestyle. I already leaned that way but have gained a deeper appreciation of it now. And I am in awe of the beauty of this country after walking halfway across it. Entering towns through Roman walls, stopping at statues and monuments, you begin to feel the impact of history. Following this ancient pilgrimage route with others you get a fuller understanding of the power of legend and faith. Peggi and I need to be back in Rochester for a month of weekly MargaretExplosion gigs so we will continue our Camino in October.
Our friend, Jeff, texted us asking “are you wearing down or feeling stronger?” I texted back, “stronger.” I lucked out. I didn’t get any blisters but I think my feet have grown because the fronts of my toes hit the front of my shoes with every step. Peggi has blisters that she has been able to manage with Compeed and Maureen has a variety shin, feet and knee issues. You don’t complain on the Camino. Anyone who looks at you in your pilgrim gear can tell at a glance just how you’re doing. It isn’t supposed to be easy. Otherwise everyone would be doing it.
We check the headlines online and we’ve bought a few newspapers, mostly El País, but we’re finding it is pretty easy to let go of the news cycle. We see prostitutes are still dogging the president. And I haven’t been to Facebook since we left. I can’t even remember my password, but I don’t miss that format. It is surprisingly easy to live out of a knapsack.
Peggi and I have to be back in Rochester for the Wednesday’s in May Margaret Explosion gigs and the opening of Leo Dodd’s show on May 4th. So we have to push the “Pause ”button on our Camino. The band is off in October so we plan to return to Leon, walk out of town and continue on to Santiago then. Maureen, my cousin and our traveling partner, is continuing on without us. We didn’t know if we would like this Camino thing and we were prepared to bail and head back to Madrid. But I can’t wait to get back to Leon and pick up where we left off.
Total luck that we would be in León for Castilla y León Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Villalar, in which Castilian rebels called Comuneros were dealt a crushing defeat by the royalist forces of King Charles I in the Revolt of the Comuneros on April 23, 1521. It coincides with Saint George’s Day and this whole area celebrates with a day off, parades and feasting.
We ran into the couple from Tasmania the other night, the ones we met three weeks ago at the Spain/French border. They’re doing this portion (Burgos to Leon) of the Camino on bikes. It looks like cheating to us but we didn’t say as much. And we saw a few familiar pilgrams, fellow Camino travelers, here in León. This is a perfectly livable city. It is 75 degrees today and we just had the best salad of our lives. Of course it was augmented with Jamón Ibérico, atún, walnuts, raisins, white asparagus, anchovies and drenched in olive oil.
There is a Gaudí building here, something he built for a fabric merchant and there’s a church on every block in the city center where the Roman walls surround us. We had coffee in a café called “Converso” where the sugar packets had a quote from Juan Manuel Serrat that read: “De vez en cuando la vida Toma conmigo café Y es tan bonita que da gusto verla …”
Entering the city of Leon on the Camino de Santiago in Spain
A couple from Cairo, an oil guy and his wife, were leaving the hotel in Mansilla de Las Mulas at the same time we were, somewhere around seven. They were doing the Camino too, or at least part of it, and they wanted a cup of coffee before hitting the road, just like us. There was not much open on a Sunday morning but we found a place where it looked like the same scene had played out there everyday for the last century. Regulars at the bar and others stopping for a cup, tostada and conversation. A woman came in with the day’s papers and set the stack on the bar, one copy of four different newspapers (one devoted to sports), copies that patrons would share throughout the day.
The Cario couple had their coffee outside on the patio because the woman smoked. They left the same time as we did and the guy informed us that we had a 200 meter climb ahead of us before we reached Leon. That’s nothing really but he said we had been spoiled by the flat trail the last few days.
We walked through the old Roman wall, across the river, and out of town. We passed through Villamoros (village of the Moors) and climbed some hills that led into the woods before our dramatic decent into Leon. An outdoor mass was taking place in front of the Cathedral in front of a statue of Santiago. So why did Spain adapt Santiago as their patron Saint? There is another facet to this story, the Santiago Matamoros legend.
The apostle Jamesa appears as a miraculous figure at the legendary Battle of Clavijo, helping the Christians conquer the Muslim Moors. The story was invented centuries after the alleged battle took place but it provided one of the strongest ideological icons in the Spanish national identity.
Teresa of Ávila, the mystic, was a worthy contender for patron saint but the Santiaguistas won the debate. Santiago Matamoros or Saint James the Moor-slayer it is. Onward.
Fresh potatoes being harvested in countryside, Spain
This was our second day on the alternate Camino. We followed an original Roman road, the largest stretch of Roman road left in Spain, built in 100 BC to haul gold and other riches from Galicia back to Rome. It was incredibly quiet and rural with very few pilgrims.
We left at sunrise, too early for coffee, and walked eleven miles before stopping in the tiny town of Reliegos for our first cup. The place was called the Elvis Bar and reminded us of the Bug Jar. It was painted bright blue and they let customers write on the walls. They were playing early rock and roll.
We rejoined the mainstream Camino in Reliegos and walked on to Mansilla de Las Mulas where we stopped for a second cup, one served in a small glass with no handle, just as we like it. We found a hotel and had an early dinner before strolling around the town. Most of the original stone wall that surrounded the city is still intact. Tomorrow we reach Leon.
We walked right by the hotel we were looking for last night in Terradillos de los Templarios. It was at the very beginning of the town and we walked through it before realizing we had missed it. Leaving this morning was just as tricky. We got up earlier than we had before. We set the alarm at six and got on the road at 6:30 in total darkness. Peggi had the flashlight on her phone on. We were unable to get out of the hotel the way we came in. A big metal gate was closed and I coildn’t get it open. We finally found an exit and watched the sun come up behind us as we made some headway before the 70 degree sun set in. We have had a variety of weather. Snow, cold, wind, rain and now full sun.
As we approached our first town we saw a sign enocouraging us to stop at the 2nd bar because it was cooler. The tendency for Pilgram’s is to stop at the first place after the long haul. We took our chances and stopped at the second place. It was indeed an oasis with gypsy music and great coffee.
We came to a fork in the Camino after Sahagun, an alternate Camino option on an old Roman road, a few kilometers longer but prettier. No question, the road less traveled. Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos, the town where we stopped and Casa el Cura, the hotel we are staying in is paradise. A natural spring, the town’s water supply, is out back. The hotel is a former priest’s house. The proprietor told us the priest lived here with a woman and a little girl. She said “In Spain everyone calls the priest “father” except the sons and daughters. They call the priest “uncle.”
We are half way to Santiago, the city that is named after Saint James, the patron saint of Spain. He’s the patron saint of Portugal too but there they call him São Tiago, derived from the Hebrew name Jacob (Ya’akov). There are images of Santiago everywhere along the Camino. The church in Villalcazar de Sirga, where we stopped for lunch, had an alter devoted to him with a statue surrounded by a nine paintings depicting the legend of his life.
He was one of the 12 apostles. He came to the Iberian peninsula to preach the gospel and the Virgin Mary appeared to him here. When he returned to Jeruslahem he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa and his body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat back to Spain where a massive rock closed around his relics. The relics were discovered in the ninth century and moved to Santiago de Compostela.
We arrived early in Carrión de Los Condes with enough energy left to stroll around town. We walked by an Albergue where nuns were singing to a group of pilgrims. One of the nuns gave each of us a blessing while making a small sign of the cross on our foreheads. We are good to go.
Peggi recorded twenty seven point eight miles today on her “Move” app, walking from Honillas to Boadilla. It takes a while to do walk that far. We set the alarm for six thirty, had breakfast and got on the Camino at 7:45. We didn’t get here until seven tonight and we grabbed the last room at a hotel where the shower stall looks like the thing the bass player in Spinal Tap got stuck in. They served a Pilgram’s dinner in the dining room of bean soup, potato soup, pan fried Hake and flan with wine.
We had stopped a few times along the way for coffee, juice and apples. I had some aged sheep cheese in my backpack, all sweaty and stinky. It went great with the rest of the day old bread that was in there.
We’re now in the Meseta region, wide open, rolling hills and a few mountains to climb over, all in full sun. The snow covered Picos de Europa are visible to the right, the north, and we had no cell service for most of the day. That was kind of nice.
Along the way we stopped at an old Pilgram’s hospital called San Nicolás. An elderly man was tending the place and he told us it was run by the Knights of Malta, the old police force of the Camino. He asked where we were from (in Spanish) and we said, “Nuevo York.” He said, “Americanos.” And then added, “Troomp,” with a laugh. Peggi said, “Payaso,” (clown in Spanish) and the guy laughed heartily.
