My newest camera weighs a ton. David Pogue described this model as feeling like “a brick in your pocket.” I carry at least three pens, a Swiss Army knife, a small flashlight and a drum key attached on my key chain and a pocket full of change on the other side so I’m sort of balanced. In the rear my wallet is bloated with notes and membership and credit cards and an iPod on the other side. I don’t have room for a phone if I had one.
I did lighten my load a bit by weeding out my keys. I couldn’t find any match for half of them. I had keys to Sparky’s shed and I gave them back to him. I’m quite sure one of these keys goes to our old house. I ran into Elizabeth a while back and she told me she reads this blog so Elizabeth, if you need an extra key I might have one. I’m putting them all in a jar out in the garage for future archeologists to sort out.
Bottle Can Drive Sign on Culver Road in Rochester, New York
I love the chocolate color of this sign and the white type against the snow. The confident, rough and tumble lettering sits in the space perfectly. The way they tucked the two “t”s together in the word bottle and the mixed usage of upper and lower case is masterful. More like this on on Funky Signs.
Big willow tree near golf course in Durand Eastman Park
Golf courses are prettier in the winter. This big old willow tree straddles the property line of Durand Eastman Park and a private home. Willow trees are soft wood and they’re messy but I love them. The guy who lives in this house has three “No Trespassing signs stuck up there to keep golfers off his lawn. I stepped on his lawn last summer to retrieve a couple of balls that were sitting out there and he came out on his porch and yelled, “Get off the lawn.” It was like something out of a movie. If I see him again I’m prepared to yell, “You’re lawns is an eyesore.”
Speaking of golf. My friend Angel posted a print I did a long time ago in a printmaking class. And she has a cool photo up there of the Chinaboise. Peggi and I were in this band for a few months before we moved here and long before they recorded this beautiful song.
Nobody stacks wood like Pete and Shelley but we try. Firewood needs to sit and we’ll have enough for a couple of years but we’re about due for something to drop out of the sky. As long as it doesn’t drop on our house. We covered this new stack with the original “Wood Hood.”
This tree on Culver Road in front of the Church of the Transfiguration is older than the United States. It has it’s own plaque. And it reminds me that a lot of what I like about this place was here before the Revolutionary War.
We had dinner across the street last night and I started a dissing Christmas. We’ve only been celebrating this holiday for a hundred years or so. Why can’t we stop? Christ wasn’t born on Christmas. (Rick looked it up. He was born in September or July according to two different sources.) Jesus was Jew. He wasn’t a Christian! The Catholics gloomed on to the Solstice and picked the date for Christ’s birth just like they lifted lifted all their mysteries and miracles from pagan myths. Etc. I was just trying to liven up the conversation. I do like the holiday lights.
I only have one tom in my set and I haven’t liked the way this floor tom has sounded for a long time. I tuned it higher the other night and it sounded better but too loud. This afternoon I took the dampening ring that has been on my snare and tossed it on the tom. It sounds just amazing, almost melodic. And the snare sounds better without the ring. The tom is about to become a big part of my sound.
Snow with blue sky. View from valley in the commons.
We haven’t seen the sun in days, maybe weeks. When it comes out, it’s dramatic. You appreciate things like that if you live around here. The days are noticeably longer. Twenty eleven is beckoning. Margaret Explosion plays our last gig at the Little Theater until March tonight. We plan to cover the Stooges’ 1969.
Carol Acquilano landscape at Little Theater Café in Rochester, New York
We plan to celebrate the Solstice tonight at the Little Theatre Café with a healthy dose of pagan holiday cheer. Carol Aquilano has a exceptional show of Sumi ink drawings of local landscapes on full sheets of watercolor paper. Best art show I’ve seen in there in a while! Hope you can stop out and join us for a toast to the late Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) as we play one of his songs.
Here’s a track from a few weeks ago. James Nichols joins Margaret Explosion on piano.
Leaves on the ground in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
A few years ago Time Warner blocked free access to the newsgroups, the bulletin boards that were older than the internet. We were one of the first customers in this area when TW test marketed their Roadrunner service and I remember telling everyone how great their service was. Yesterday they sent us this little note.
Dear Road Runner Subscriber,
You are receiving this email because you have used the Personal Home Page service that Road Runner provides. Road Runner will no longer offer the Personal Home Page service, effective January 31, 2011.
Sincerely, Road Runner Corporate Customer Care
I don’t even remember how to access our personal homepage but for the last ten years my father has maintained a small site about Brighton’s brick industry on his personal home page so I called him to discuss moving the site. I’d move our internet access too if I had choice.
While I was on the phone with my father he described this recent Ann Telnaes’ cartoon and asked if I had read the article about the worm that got into the computer’s controlling Iran’s nuclear arsenal. I had sort of skimmed it so I went back to it. It reads like a real game changer. If only we had disarmed Iraq’s weapons that way. Wait, they never had any.
My father also asked if I had seen James McMullan’s newest entry to his blog on drawing. I had not. How does my fatrher keep up with all this? I just spent the last hour here and I plan to go back for more as soon as I get a little work done.
I used to see pheasants all the time in Webster but I hadn’t seen one in years until this guy waked out in front of us. He was chasing a drab looking mate and was completely oblivious to me. We moved into one of the first housing tracts in Webster back in the sixties. The place is overrun with them now but back then we were surrounded by farm land. We took hikes everyday and had our own names for the pockets of woods that separated the various farmer’s fields. Every time we’d cut through corn fields we’d scare up a batch of pheasants. They’d scare us too when they took off from under foot. I don’t remember them looking this colorful though.
Modesty, Courtesy, Integrity, Self Control, Perseverance, Indomitable Spirit all seem like worthwhile pursuits. These words were written on the wall surrounding an American flag at Gregory’s seventh birthday party. The festivities were held at the Martial Arts Center in Loehmann’s Plaza. I had my iPod Touch with me so I looked up “Indomitable Spirit”. In martial arts it is considered a refusal to be beaten, no matter how tough, talented or big your opponent may be. That will probably be the toughest challenge for these little guys.
Future Residents sign at the Highlands in Pittsford New York
This was the first time we used the “Future Residents” slot at the Highlands and we got caught. We were only going to drop off a few things at the Bistro Café and then drive around to Peggi’s mom’s old apartment but time got away. A number of people who came to the small gathering we had in her honor pointed out how much they liked our parking spot.
Peggi prepared a few words to say about her mom and I did the same but we never got around to it. Everyone who came shared thoughtful memories of her with us and at some point it seemed like we all turned some sort of corner and we’re moving on. We may have missed our envelope but I think Mary Alice would have loved the whole affair.
I was going talk about how she used to collect the remainders of bar soup and roll them into these multi-colored balls that she put in the guest bedroom. That is one of my earliest memories of her. She made a mean pecan pie, her Aunt Mabel’s recipe. And even though she travelled all over the world when Peggi’s father was transferred to Australia she was a small town girl at heart. She liked rides in the country and Vic & Irv’s. When she reminisced it seemed she was the happiest as a child in Evansville, Indiana.
I ran into the Springers in the hallway after Mary Alice had passed. They lived in the apartment next to her and coincidentally the Springers had introduced my parents to one another. Mrs. Springer said, “Mary Alice was a pistol.” We all laughed and Mr. Springer, pointing to his wife, said, “And she would know. She’s a real pistol too!” It’s an apt description. Mary Alice was opinionated and sharp, a worthy opponent in hot button discussions.
I was happy to have her her in Rochester for the last eight years of her life. I loved going to the operas with her and watching her have a good time at Margaret Explosion gigs. We genuinely had a good time together and I’ll miss her.
Renée Fleming in Le Nozze Di Figaro at Mary Alice’s apartment
We raced out to Peggi’s mom’s place for the last time on Saturday. It was pretty clear it was the end of the line this time so we did what we could to keep her comfortable. I hooked up the DVD player in her bedroom and Peggi put on one of her mom’s favorite operas, Mozart’s “Le Nozz Di Figaro” with Rochester’s Renée Fleming in the lead role. Peggi’s mom was gone before the opera finished, just before the applause for the fourth and final act, and I already miss her.
The three of us had seen many operas together in the eight years she spent here. She generally liked the lighter fare. My favorite was Coplands’s “Tender Years”. We had a similar divide when it came to art. She volunteered at the Detroit Institute of Arts and we went to many openings at the Memorial Art Gallery here. Peggi’s mom was troubled by abstract art and she was always asking me to explain pieces. I decide whether I like an art work in seconds. I don’t think about it so I was always at a loss to explain why I liked something. I tried many different approaches, many times, finally just saying things like, “You don’t have to like it.”
A few years back she spotted an review in the Wall Street Journal of a book by Kirk Varnedoe, the former chief curator of painting at the Museum of Modern Art, called “Pictures of Nothing.” She took the bus from her apartment to Pittsford Plaza and walked with her walker to the Barnes & Noble store at the other end of the plaza and picked up a copy. It is a gorgeous book of “Abstract Art Since Pollack” and the pictures are accompanied by the extremely inciteful text from a series of six lectures that Varnedoe gave as a Mellon lecturer at the National Gallery. If anyone really wants an explanation of modern art I can’t think of a better source so I often wondered why she gave the book to me instead of reading it herself. I didn’t think I needed it but I savored every bit of this book. I could do a much better job of explaining abstract art now.
The mail lady had off, the kids on our street had off, the neighbor who works for the UofR had off so we decided to take Columbus Day off as well. We drove out to Schutt’s Apple Mill in Webster and picked up a few bushels of apples along with fresh squeezed cider and two fried cakes made with indigestible oils. Since we were out this way we stopped by the 1000 Acre Swamp in Penfield. My father goes birding here and he hunts the skunk cabbage here in early Spring. I’ve heard him talk about it but found it kind of hard to get excited about a place called 1000 Acre Swamp.
I wasn’t sure where it was so I looked it up online and found out it is only 500 acres. It is a beautiful place, an oasis in suburbia. One hour in here made re-entry a jarring experience. There should be a law against huge lawns. They’re obscene. The MacMansions are silly but the lawns are an assault to the senses, all of them.
PBS started its “God In America” series last night and the whole show took a quick nose dive after the arrival of Columbus. A few Native Americans started the show by saying. “Our whole world around us is our religion. Our way of life is our religion. The way we behave toward one another and others is our religion.” This wasn’t good enough for the Spaniards and the sad parade that followed. I don’t think I can handle Part Two.
We took my sister out to dinner at Proietti’s in Webster last night. She has been living in Webster since our family moved out of the city in 1960 but she’s moving back to the city in November. Proietti’s has to be the best Italian restaurant in this area. I used to keep track of those things but this is one big moving target. I ordered the “all killer, no filler” Linguini Gabrielle (eggplant, hearts, portabella, tomato, vegetable broth, fresh mozzarella) and my sister had the homemade pumpkin raviolis. Every dish is distinctive so order and share. My sister keeps track of the whole family so not only did we catch up with her, we also got the lowdown on the rest. I had no idea that my other sister had broken her foot.
My father lost five years work on the family tree when his computer was stolen. Who knew that Reunion, the program that he uses, stores the database in the Applications folder? And who knew he wasn’t backing up his apps? I take full responsibility and I didn’t know. I think there was space problem when we set it up and I opted out on the App BU. We need a black sheep in this family.
Peter Sherman demonstrating the “Finding the Phone” feature at the Apple Store in Rochester, NY
Find Phone is my favorite feature on our wireless landline phone. It’s such a gas to hunt for the phone while it beeps. It works every time except when I left the phone on the hood of the car and Peggi drove off with it. I helped my father replace his computer after his house was broken into and when we were at the Apple Store my father asked the clerk if there was any way to track down his old computer. Peter demonstrated how he could locate his iPhone at secure.me.com/find. Turns out it was in his pocket.
Somehow we’ve managed to wear out three different Linksis and Netgear routers over the years. We replaced them with an Apple Extreme and then added an Express to extend our coverage. I’ve been playing with Apple’s new Remote for the iTouch and iPad and I connected our stereo to the Express. I used to have an old laptop out there running iTtunes and of course I needed an external drive to hold the music library. But that was so yesterday. I retired the laptop and the drive and I stream music to the stereo from my desktop. With Remote on my iPod I can control the playlist or just let it go and even control the volume in the two rooms. Oh, and they’ve added the ability to mark your favorites when something good comes along.
Electricity and water make strange bedfellows. Our neighbors were taking a midnight dip in the street pool and the underwater light went out. None of the current members remember ever having to replace it so we collectively stumbled through the whole process. There was an engineer involved so I could never catalog all of the methodical steps.
We waited til the end of the season and drained the pool enough to figure out how to get it out of its recessed home. We discovered a cord coiled up inside, long enough to permit changing the bulb while pool is full. The bulb itself is enclosed in the housing and the Pleasantville New York Pool Company that made the fixture warns you to only burn the bulb when the housing is submerged. We struggled to break the seal on the housing and almost destroyed the thing trying to get it open. Some members were already talking about getting rid of it and plugging up the recess when we managed to break it open. Peggi ordered a new bulb online and I stood on a ladder in the water and put the fixture back in its place.
Wetlands off Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York, September 2010
I take the same photo over and over, it seems. I have to come up with creative names so I don’t overwrite older files. How many times have I photographed this marsh? I paint the same painting over and over too. I came home with a new batch of crime faces tonight, mugshots from the morning paper.
Our painting teacher came in with three quotes printed on a small pieces of paper. He gave one to each student first thing. And as much as we would like to think we are all painters, we are “students” in Fred Lipp’s presence. The first quote was from Juan Gris. “You are lost the minute you know what the result will be.” The second from Degas. “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good work.” And the third one was from William Baziotes. “Each painting has its own way of evolving. . . when the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself.
No wonder I have to take this class over and over.
I haven’t been out enough to grab any new photos so I reached into my vault for this one. Sort of picked it at random. Steve was our mailman for about twenty years. We used to trade music and he used our bathroom most days. And we got an earful of the new post office regulations as they rolled them out, efficiency methods that took the life out of his job. You know how you see someone out of context and it’s like wow. Peggi must have been driving when I grabbed this.
Our current mail person is a woman. Our neighbor says she’s “cute as a button”. She delivers from her truck and turns around in our driveway. It’s not the same.
We don’t set the alarm and often wake up with a phone call. This morning it was my cousin’s wife calling to say she found my parent’s garage door open while she walking her dog. My parents asked us to keep an eye on their place while the were out of town and this didn’t seem right. We suggested she call 911 and we headed over there. The cops were already there by the time we got there and sure enough someone had broken in. They (one or two guys) tried the neighbor’s place first and they stepped in some fresh turned earth near their window and then they tracked these prints across my parent’s driveway.
They used a bar to bust open the back door and smashed a window to unlatch the dead bolt but we couldn’t find the glass pieces. Suction cups? Took the glass with them? And the glass that the cops did find was from a car window. They thought maybe the thief (thieves) had stolen another car to get to my parent’s house and pieces fell off their clothes. They took a couple of Cokes out of the refrigerator and left them in my father’s computer room and one of them took a big, loose shit in their toilet and he didn’t flush it. They went through every cupboard and took what they could get rid of in a hurry. So there was an empty tv stand and a pile of cords behind the desk where the computer was and to my surprise the backup drives were still there so I hope to do a full restore when my dad gets his next computer. Oh, and they put all the stuff in my parent’s car and drove off with the loot. Green Honda Accord with a peace sign on it.
