Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
It Better Be
Any day is a good for a walk on the beach. Not just a walk but taking the time to look out to sea. What do you see? Hardly anything but that is so nice. It is art, therapy, massage and religion all rolled into one. This sounds like one of my nephew‘s motivational tweets.
I wish my camera didn’t distort the horizon so much but that is small potatoes.
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Our neighbor down the hill grew some giant pumpkins this year. They kind of took over the garden, grabbing a few of our pepper plants and tackling them stakes and all. But we can’t complain. Our garden space is in his garden, a former clay tennis court and he gave us one of his pumpkins. We hauled it up here in our wheelbarrow.
We walked through the woods and into our former next door neighbor’s new neighborhood today. We hooked up with her and walked over to the voting hall in the Point Pleasant Firehouse. We showed her the funky party/social club/party room that is behind the room dividers in the voting hall and we hatched plans to rent the space for a party. On the way home she told us about a Lou Reed encounter that took place in the hot tub of her Manhattan health club.
The wagon wheel above made me wonder if maybe Banksy is doing a piece a day in Rochester for the month of November like he did in NYC during October.
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I grew up about a half block from this little man-made island and I was lost in the past as we drove up Humboldt Street. I spotted this little crab apple tree that had dropped its load and I asked Peggi to stop the car. The fruit on the ground was an entirely different color from the leaves on its branches, a startling sight. The apples were all in good condition, sort of surprising an animal had not taken care of that, and the bright green spray paint on the curb was nice accent. It wasn’t until we got home and looked at the photo that I saw the sign.
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We had a gig last Wednesday when Jeff Munson got together with some old friends of ours from high school. I asked him how everybody was and he said there were a lot of pot bellies but it was great to see them all. They got around to talking about a classmate who died in Viet Nam. Jeff told us he went downtown with Rex when Rex reported for duty, trying to talk him out of it all the way there. I wish he had been successful.
CASUALTY DATA:
Start Tour: 01/15/1971
Incident Date: 04/16/1971
Casualty Date: 04/16/1971
Age at Loss: 20
Location: Thua Thien Province, South Vietnam
Remains: Body recovered
Casualty Type: Hostile, died outright
Casualty Reason: Ground casualty
Casualty Detail: Misadventure (Friendly Fire)
I guess we missed the opening for the new show at Rochester Contemporary. They have it on Thursday now to avoid the First Friday crowd. I don’t think we missed much. We tried tweeting MoMa with the telegraph prompter that someone rigged to an iPad but I could only get gibberish out. I got a kick out of Kristen Lucas’s piece in the Lab Space. She documented an effort in the state of California to legally change her name to exactly what it was in the first place. She likened it to “refreshing” a webpage.
We showed up at Visual Studies just as they announced Scott McCarney as an award winner for his Gilbert & George piece, “Married.” That’s Scott on the right. He had one of his marvelous books in “I Do” show as well.
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Peggi is downtown learning about the the Affordable Health Care Act. We buy our health insurance through the Arts & Cultural Council. I still call them “Arts for Greater Rochester.” The only reason we belong to this group is to purchase insurance coverage at the rates offered to groups. We chose a high deductible plan. Maybe the Republicans will get their way and shut the whole thing down but I doubt it. I don’t understand why we didn’t go for the Single-payer option. I know health care is big business and therefore it is all very political but it is impossible to stay out of this one.
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Sometimes simply reversing the direction you travel on a familiar path makes it all new and exciting.
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Women’s Professional Soccer in the U.S. is the best in the world but the leagues are still struggling. The Flash just finished its fourth season in as many leagues and lost the championship game on Saturday night in front of a crowd of nine thousand. They lost to Portland who has averaged thirteen thousand a game in their home town. There was a surprisingly large Portland contingent in town for Saturday’s game.
We followed the national team during the Olympics and World Cup and got hooked on the local team when Marta played alongside of Alex Morgan a few years ago. They played better soccer than the Rhinos, exhibited better control with more finesse and less loose balls. The last game was a nail biter. The Flash lost but it was great soccer and a great game. We’re looking forward to next season.
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This spider web was glistening in the sunlight. That’s what caught my attention and when looked down I saw the spider who was responsible for the web hanging out near the center of his creation. He had another bug caught in the web and while I tried to frame a shot of them and the flower that was behind the web the spider pounced on the bug. There was a tussle, the spider got a few bites in and the bug fell off the web. I was having a hard time getting my camera to focus on the spider, the autofocus kept zooming in on the flower so I don’t have the drama in his shot.
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Sunday was just like it sounds, a day of sun, a perfect day for a bike ride along Lakeshore Boulevard. Culver Road would take you directly to the lake but we turn at Parkside Diner and get on the new bike trail that cuts through the park and travels along the lake all the way to Charlotte. This whole stretch is so dreamy I don’t want it to end so we ride real slow. I love the long sections of beach where almost anything goes. No lifeguards, no cops, no rules about boats being too close to the shore and of course no one telling you that swimming is prohibited.
We turned down Rock Beach Road and rode up and down Rochester’s “Gold Coast” before continuing west on Rock Beach past Saint Paul and over to O’Laughlin’s where we pulled up a chair on the river and watched the sailboats, speedboats and yachts pass by. This is a perfect spot for people watching with its mix of bikers, muscle cars, partiers pulling up to the dock on their boats and old people like us just hanging out.
On the way back we cruised through the picnic section of Durand Eastman where we used to hold the annual Earring Picnic. A large group in one of the shelters was cranking Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin On.”
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I know wedding photographers don’t like it when they set up a shot and you glom on but if you’re gonna get married in Central Park on a Saturday afternoon there really are no rules.
We met Steve Black at the bus station this morning at 7AM. His bus got in at 4:30 or so but he insisted we let him roam around downtown Rochester for a few hours before picking him up. Still felt like we were getting up in the middle of the night. Steve splits his time between Bali and Singapore and hadn’t been in Rochester since he shot the video for “Trophy Bowler.” Back at the house we ate a lumberjack’s breakfast and hopped in the back of Jared’s pickup to finish picking up the locust tree that fell in our neighbor’s yard. That has to be the heaviest wood we have ever come across. I don’t think it would even float.
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We rode down to Naples with with my parents and stopped in to see my brother, hard at work on some furniture for a church in Fairport. He showed us this maquette that he proposed for the church’s tabernacle. That’s the little house where they keep the consecrated hosts and the blessed wine in the gold chalice. It is one of the high points of mass when the priest reaches in there but our group of lapsed catholics couldn’t remember if they keep things in there over night or just during the service. We speculated that the priest blesses a certain number of hosts and they pass out so many at communion and then he might store the leftover consecrated hosts in there. I’m pretty sure the priest finishes the wine at the service.
I’m making a distinction between the consecrated (“body of Christ”) hosts and the unblessed ones. We used to eat the unblessed ones out of the bag before serving mass in the priest’s dressing room. I know they have another name for that room and I don’t think it’s the sacristy but all those details are fuzzy now. Back in the day the nuns made the hosts and packaged them in clear plastic bags. One at a time they were incredibly dry. They had the ability to suck every bit of moisture from your mouth making it difficult to even swallow but in a handful they were sort of tasty. The “consecrated” hosts were something only the priest could touch and even he could only touch them with certain fingers.
We used to make our own hosts at home when we played mass. We rolled white bread with a glass until it was flat as can be and then we’d stamp out the hosts with the rim of the glass. Our family ate Bond bread, not Wonder, and that made a good host.
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I’m pretty familiar with brush cuts. My father used to line the five boys in our family up and buzz the lot of us in one session when we were growing up. My father had a brush cut too but I think he went to a barber. I have an electric clipper from Sears and I do my own buzz cut today.
So I was taken by this sign on Culver Road and stopped to take a photo of it. The homemade sandwich sign was on the City owned sidewalk in front of the shop and I was standing on the same sidewalk. (I’m trying to be clear on the details because I know my legal counsel will ask.) Well, the owner happened to be outside and he told me I couldn’t take a photo of his sign. He came right up to me like a bouncer in night club and he took my camera before I knew what happened. He asked me how you delete photos and I told him he couldn’t do that. But he found the function and deleted my carefully composed shot. I took the camera back and turned quickly to take this shot before jumping in the car and taking off. The guy threw something at our car as we drove off. You thought my Funky Signs site was all fun and games!
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Abby Wambach was sitting out last night’s game with a possible concussion and Carly Lloyd, the other US national team member playing for the Flash, was sidelined with a knee injury. If you wonder how much of a difference a few great players make to a team’s performance I’m hear to tell you it must mean a lot. The Flash could not move the ball from one end of the field to the other. They continually booted it and hoped for he best. Boston’s two national team members, Sydney Larraux and Heather O’Reilly were clearly playing on another level but their team was supportive and able to continually move the ball in small steps toward the goal.
Here’s my old man analysis. Lereaux seems too shapely to play the game but she’s deceptively quick and can out finesse the best. O’Reilly’s a tomboy with more energy and enthusiasm then anyone on the field but she is also a strategic player who feels the flow of the game and positions herself accordingly at all times. It was delight cheering for her as she scored two goals to defeat the home team.
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I’ve been interviewing trees lately as potential prospects for tree trunk portraits. This is the perfect time of year to catch them, before all the green obscures their sculptural majesty.
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It’s been raining for three days now, on and off. I had to wear my raincoat out to get the paper. When it finally stopped we walked through the woods and across the park and then up Hoffman Road where we stopped at an estate sale. The house has been empty of people for five or six years but it was full of stuff. There were paintings all through the house by the same woman, some were really nice, and the bookshelves in the big front room were filled with reel to reel tapes of classical music. I looked at a paperback of interviews with famous people on the subject of creativity. I skimmed a section from Einstein and one with Picasso. If you copped somebody’s ideas on creativity that wouldn’t be very creative would it?
We did come home with eight dollars worth of stuff. A nice wicker basket, six small cylindrical glasses, four empty Bering cigar boxes and a package of all black construction paper that was purchased at Dans Crafts & Things for $2.39.
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There are at least two good reasons to go to Jackson’s Bakery on Stone Road near Dewey Avenue. One is they are one of the only old world bakeries left in the the city. They make everything from scratch. And two is that the place is now run by the drummer in the Goners. My mom says she used to walk me over to this place in a baby buggy when we lived in a nearby apartment but I don’t remember it.
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Back in the 70’s Mugs Up was a pretty cool spot to hang around in the afternoon. You could sit at a booth right near the window and look out at the street as Eastman students scurried by with their musical instruments in tow. They tore the place down to build the Sibley Library which is today the largest academic music library in the US. I’ve never been in the music library but I miss Mugs Up.
The thing that caught my eye in this old photo is the little guy in the hat waiting for the bus. The worst bike accident I ever had was when I ran into a guy that looked a lot like this when he stepped off the curb in front of the old Music Lovers Shop about a block down the street. I was whizzing by and he stepped out right in front of me. He didn’t look and probably didn’t hear me coming. I slammed into my handle bars and then rolled over them and onto the street. I broke a few ribs and was all scraped up. He was crumpled in a ball on the street. I remember asking, “Are you alright” Are you alright?” over and over because the guy was not saying a word. I guess he was in shock. After a few minutes he got up slowly with my help and worked his way back to the curb. I asked again, “Are you alright?” and he said, “Jesus Christ.”
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My dad bought me one of those square format, plastic Kodak cameras after I quit school and just before I traveled to Europe with the rest of my student loan. And I took this photo when I returned. It was my first camera and I must have been 19 or so. My sister and her boyfriend were hanging out in his car and John Sparagano, a friend of my younger brothers, was hanging out in the driveway. We all did a lot of hanging out in those days. At times the seven of us all had friends over at the same time.
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My sister got us out of bed pretty early this morning. She had slipped on the ice last night while walking her dog and the throbbing pain in her wrist had kept her awake all night. She didn’t think she could drive herself to the doctor so we offered but first we had to “walk her dog”, a euphemism for taking the dog to a bathroom on the neighbor’s lawn. I inverted a Wegmans bag and cleaned up the mess and we headed off to Greater Rochester Orthopaedics (GRO) where the walls of the waiting room were lined with two foot square paintings of tree related art. I wanted to take a photo of one of them, a cross section of a big tree, but I did not want to confront the grumpy, gum chewing couple that was sitting in front of the painting.
My sister came out with a purple cast and I suggested going to Canaltown for a cup of coffee. We ran into my father over there, he was getting a to-go cup for my mom, so we had a small family reunion. The paintings there were not as intriguing but I liked the artist’s statement.
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