Category: Life Is A Spell

Olcott and Wolcott, are both about the same distance from our house, one in the direction of Buffalo and the other on the way to Syracuse. Both are idyllic little towns on the shore of Lake Ontario, surrounded by fruit orchards. We visited both this summer and pushed it yesterday by continuing on to Fair Haven, the town after Wolcott.

Matthew was our guide. I had not been here since I was a kid and I was anxious to see the diving boards along the channel that runs off the lake into the state park. The hardware is still there but the boards are gone.

We parked in the center of town near the library, next to a street person who was sitting on the lawn. He was barefoot and wearing cut-offs, that’s it. Matthew introduced him to us and he stood up to say, “We’re going to touch” and he gave me a polite hug.

The town is charming. It swells in size over the summer and has three art galleries. We visited them all before heading to Little Sodus Inn, a dark funky bar right at the bottom of the bay. We passed a sign that read, “Curfew in Effect 10PM to 5AM Under 18 years of age.” The bartender’s top was cut really low yet it never ran out of tattoo covered breasts. We took our beers out in the sun but I could see spending some time in there.

Walking toward the lake by some dreamy cottages we stopped at the “Fly by Night Cookie Shop and Miniature Museum,” a fairytale like place run by a large German woman who looked like she stepped out of a Bruegal painting. We picked out cookies from glass jars, chocolate rum balls, “Hee Hee” cookies shaped like marijuana leaves and coconut almond macaroons.

Our next stop was a general store on Main Street with a “No Skateboarding or Loitering” sign out front. First thing that caught my eye was a shelf of gag items, a lollipop that will turn your tongue blue, birthday candles that you can’t blow out, and a bloody bandaid with a nail through it that you can wrap around your finger. A table near the door was stocked with local produce. We bought peaches, apples and eggs. The counter near the cash register was surrounded with tiers of Bic lighters, Bill’s Beef Sticks and five short stacks of “Big Slab” Beef Jerky in a big transparent case. Your choice of “Original, Black Pepper, Teriyaki, Sweet n’ Spicy and Cajun.”

Back at our car the shirtless guy was still on the lawn and a young couple, maybe eighteen years old or so, was sitting on a bench. The woman was was clearly strung out and she jumped up to pace with her phone. She walked around the building and returned holding the phone out to the guy and asking the person on the other end if they wanted to talk to daddy.

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I went to two high schools. This one, above, is Bishop Kearney. We walked by there yesterday on our way to Starbucks. I like how the Virgin Mary, flag and cross on top of the building line up. I went here for two years and couldn’t wait to get out. Back in the day the whole left side of the building was for girls and we were on the right. The nuns and Irish Christian brothers lived on the top floor. The gymnasium was straight ahead and there was a little closet-like room between the gym doors where the brothers would take you and apply corporal punishment if you misbehaved. It was a Catholic thing. We had dinner with Martha O’Connor the other night and determined that her brother, Kevin, was in my class. I think I remember him. It was a long time ago. RL Thomas, where I went for my second two years, was a lot more memorable.

Margaret Explosion plays the Little Theatre Café every Wednesday in September. Here’s Homeward from our last gig.

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Peggi’s phone read 93 degrees when we lost our cellular coverage so it stayed that way for two days while we were off the grid. It was too hot to do anything but sit and talk. And when dinnertime came Pete had some Tabouli, tomatoes and freshly pickled cucumbers ready to serve.

Out on the road the next morning we walked two and half miles toward Crown Point and before turning around. Long before the Revolutionary War the British fought the French at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. This is a dirt road and the only vehicle we saw was a logging truck.

The temperature dropped about forty degrees the next day. I dumped the rain water out of the rowboat and the four of us went out on the marsh. The sticker on the side of the boat said it held 400 pounds so it road pretty low. The boat didn’t have any oars so Pete worked a canoe paddle from the rear and Shelley sat up front with another paddle. Peggi and I sat in the middle and we floated through yellow pond lilies from one beaver dam to the next. It is incredibly beautiful up here.

We drank Gennys by candlelight and listen to tracks from the Gigunda vault.

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We couldn’t decide which way to walk. When we got to the corner we paused and then went the way didn’t go yesterday. We discussed coffee and the headed toward Starbucks. We heard someone on a P.A. in the distance, maybe at the town hall, so we headed that way. There was garage sale going on in the old farm house on Culver, the one set way back from the road. I was looking at a Snoopy Pez dispenser and Peggi was looking at some wine glasses when the homeowner came over to say they were closing up shop and they were just going to take everything out to the curb. He offered to get us a box that we could fill up for five bucks. That was easy.

We grabbed the glasses, a Blue Ray box set of the Godfather movies, dvd of Mystic River and Kill Bill. I chose three eps, Tom Jones Live, Ray Charles Crying Time ad the soundtrack to Dr. Zhivago which is primarily Lara’s Theme.We took a stack of books, As I lay Dying, Of Human Bondage, Main Street and the complete works of Shakespeare. And for good measure I through in a book called The Desire of Ages, the 1898 life of Christ by Ellen G. White. Each short chapter is illustrated. I might just cut the pictures out. We told the owner we would be back in a few hours to pick up the box.

A big band, comprised of old people and teens, was playing in the band stand behind Town Hall. That must have been what we heard earlier. They did “Happy” and then KC’s ”Boogie Shoes.” We had seen a sign for the Sea Breeze Fire Department Festival, something we had stumbled onto years ago while we were out biking, so we headed toward the lake on Kings Highway. We found a big cooler with a bag of ice and a five inch stack in individually wrapped American cheese slices in it. The festival was apparently the day before. We turned around and spotted a pair of Santa and Mrs. Claus gnomes, about ten inches high, sitting under a shrub in someone’s yard. So cute they must leave it up year round.

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Aman’s Farm Market picked up the slack when Abby Wambach’s parent’s place closed and they’ve been busier than ever. It’s family run as well but they have been around since 1867. They are great alternative to Wegman’s for fresh corn, strawberries and peaches. Their perennials are half price now so we put a few Vermillionaire plants in our backpacks and planted them out front by the four horseshoe chairs. Jim Mott painted the chairs and he was sitting in the fourth while he painted these three. They came from grandparents place on Gregory Hill Road but you can still get metal chairs just like them. We are delighted to find the small, orange, tubular flowers of the Vermillion plants are Hummingbird magnets.

We read this morning that the FBI was able to reconstruct shredded documents and use them to prosecute Trump’s lawyer, Micheal Cohen. I’m trying to imagine what that project must have been like.

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There was hardly anyone on the golf course when we cut through this afternoon. Maybe it was too wet. We saw the beer lady in her cart and she was just sitting under a tree studying her phone. We came across a dead skunk on one of the greens with a puncture wound in his stomach and surprisingly it didn’t stink.

At the lake we took Kings Highway up to the library. We walk on the shoulder going against traffic as cars act like its a drag strip in that isolated Stretch. The undeveloped part of the park was thick and lush, too thick to even walk through this time of year. We usually stop in the library, study the new releases, and use their bathrooms but we didn’t have any time for that today. We were headed over to Deborah Ronnen’s to check out some new prints. Our favorite was by Kiki Smith.

We passed a Harley up on the sidewalk and grey haired biker on his cell phone. It wasn’t until we were right on top of him that we were able to read his t-shirt. “Iron Cannibal Choppers.” At the end of street we spotted a big patch of orange Chanterelle mushrooms. While we were walking a I made a mental note to look up Genesee beer and BlackkKlansman when I got back. I thought someone would be talking about the Genesee neon signs in the bar scene. Either they carry the local beer in Colorado Springs or someone scored a strategic product placement. I didn’t find anything.

After our art preview we had the Sesame Tofu special at Lanai and talked to the chef, Rico, about Hawaii. Peggi complemented him on the soundtrack, most of which she first heard her mom play on weekends back in the first Polynesian wave.

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Jared’s grandkids broke his glass rain collector but he estimated we had almost two inches of rain the other night. Other parts of the county got up to nine. I expected to find some of our tomato plants laying on the ground but they were all still standing. Peggi brought home a bag of them and we plan on making gazpacho. We’ll use the cucumbers from next door. Maybe try this recipe. We were trying to estimate how tall these corn stalks are. Our best guess is fifteen feet.

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These are the kind chairs that you don’t sit at. They are in the front yard of house near us. We pass by often and we have never seen anyone sitting in them. They are nice looking and perhaps that is enough.

We started getting serious about putting away some money rather late. Our band was doing a Happy Hour gig at the Bug Jar and Steve Brown, one of the three original owners, was behind the bar those nights. He worked for Merrill in the day and he encouraged us stop by his office. He made it all fun, recommending a few things but mostly coaching us to buy what we like. Of course we bought some Apple. Steve moved on and these days we check in with Joe Marchese out at MCC every couple of years. He guides us toward a comfortable 60/40 balance of equities and fixed income. After a ten year bull market we had some shuffling to do. Our key strategy though is fairly simple. We just don’t spend that much.

It seems you can’t talk about anything these days with Trump coming up. I think we said said something about tariffs and Joe said, “I understand economics but we’re dealing with a nut case.”

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We had not been to a Red Wings game in years but we see Baldness.com still has the naming rights to the scoreboard. We parked off Alexander Street where there was free alternate side parking and we hoofed it over to State Street. The Wings were losing 2-1 to the Scrantom/Wilkes Barre Railriders at the top of the second when we walked in.

I caught a foul ball. Well, I didn’t actually catch it. It bounced off the seats next to us and I grabbed it. I gave it to some kids sitting behind us. 7,000 people were in the stands for a day game and I felt like I was back at the Norton Street stadium with my father on a Knot Hole Day. The Wings were wearing different uniforms and playing under the name of “Rochester Plates,” some sort of promotion marking the 100th anniversary of the Garbage Plate which originated at Nick Tahou Hots just around the corner from Frontier Field. Between innings the announcer said, “There is nothing more Rochester than a Garbage Plate.”

They still play ten second samples of the Ramones, “Hey Ho, Let’s Go!,” Gary Glitter’s “Rock n’ Roll” and “Welcome to the Jungle. Fred Costello’s live organ sounded better than any of that. He did snippets of “In A Gadda Da Vida” and Mungo Jerry’s “Summertime” and then a full, jazzed-up version of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman.” There are distractions galore, kids games between innings, conversations going on all around you, people on their cell phones and generally not watching the game.

I tried Louise’s sunglasses on when we were out at their place boating. I loved the color of the lenses and I bought my own pair at a local Rite Aid. I took this picture through the sunglasses. We went into the bathroom and they were playing the radio broadcast of the game over the speakers in there. Only there was I drawn into the nuances of America’s favorite pasttime.

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“Primordial Fleamarket: Sometimes the communist household object strikes you as having been made in geological times, rather than some manufacturing era. Glorified objects . . . rarefied.” Wendy Low echoed this quote from Janet Thayer Williams when she asked, “Who can look at a whisk broom and not think of the stitching in Janet’s painting?”

Friends of the William’s family gathered on Laburnum Crescent today to remember Janet. Someone made a convincing argument that Janet was still with us. Her paintings were were on display throughout the house and once I found this one, “Wite Out” from 2006, I stayed put beneath it. I first saw it in the tunnel between the new downtown library and the old building across the street. They often display art there and this painting stopped me dead on my tracks. The typewriter keys sang and leapt off the canvas as if some fantastic story was unfolding. It wasn’t on the page. It was somewhere between the mind, the keys and the page. I told Janet how much I loved it.

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Everyone is buying less, driving less, eating locally and reducing their footprint. If you’re thinking of downsizing, this small house on Coolidge Road is for sale. We’ve walked by it many times but have never seen anyone coming or going. We asked a neighbor if anyone lives in there and he said someone did for many years, a relative of someone else on the street, but he said it had been empty for a while. We noticed it had just come on the market and it comes with a full sized house right next door. It caught my eye because it is about the size a the small house Dave Mahoney and I lived in in Bloomington. Someone broke in there and stole our stereo. “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” was on the turntable and we were left with just the jacket.

Peggi and I did battle with some wasps today, a fairly big project for us. They were building a paper nest inside the umbrella by the pool. Bees kept coming and going and you couldn’t get near enough to open it so we really weren’t sure what was going on under there. We brought a candle down there, something Peggi had picked up to keep bugs away. We lit that for starters and set it on the table under the umbrella. My cousin had just paid us a visit a few days ago and she gave us a small box of essential oils. Peppermint and Lemongrass were in there, oils that are supposed repel bees. We put some of that on a cotton ball and taped it to the end of a long stick which I shoved up under the umbrella. They didn’t like it and flew out but stayed close. Others kept coming and there were twenty or so around the umbrella but they were more confused than anything.

We went home for some soap and water, something we had read they really don’t like. We put it in a spray bottle and misted them and the umbrella. Once we got the umbrella up we found two paper nests and no bees. Its supposed to rain tonight so that will clean up the mess.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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