Photo of “Subterranean Surrogates” photo installation by Paul Dodd at Rochester Contemporary August 5 through September 25
I skipped the Patron’s Preview last night for the “State Of The City” show at Rochester Contemporary. Gallery director, Bleu said they would be serving “the good wine” but I nixed it. Can’t remember exactly what I did instead but we’ve been weeding out junk around the house and I keep getting sidetracked. We’re planning to have a garage sale in September and we have some stuff on Craig’s list. A guy just called because he wants to buy the golf balls. He’s on the way over here with the cash.
My show, a photo installation entitled “Subterranean Surrogates,” is in conjunction with the “State of the City” show and I will probably be at the opening.
Ducks crossing country road in Finger Lakes region of New York State
Some people like putting things on the calendar and getting all planned out. The only things I put on the calendar are things I would like to forget but can’t like dentist appointments and work related phone meetings.
Peggi and I planned to take a day trip to celebrate our anniversary and we never put a date on the calendar, we just waited for an opening and today was it. The New York Times didn’t show up so we got an early start. We glanced at a map of the Finger Lakes and picked Kueka. We drove down the west side to Hammondsport and and then back up along the east side. We took back roads the whole way and even passed a dirt road called “Back Road.” It’s fun to drive slow, so slow we kept pulling over to let anxious cars go by. We stopped the car in the middle of the road to let these geese pass.
Hammondsport is a well preserved old town with cute little shops full of tourists. We parked near the town square and walked in the opposite direction of the cute little shops. In fact we walked out of town and spent some time in an old cemetery. On the way back to Rochester we drove through Palmyra where Joseph Smith claims to have found his wacky book of Mormon.
It has been hot and sticky for many weeks in western New York, all sun most days and very little rain. And when it did rain the other day these orange mushrooms popped out on a fallen tree in the creek. If they are edible, there’s a few meals down there.
Hot weather takes the life out me. I can’t seem to get anything done and maybe that’s the whole idea.
The people up on the hill had a party over the weekend. We heard the band and we live about a mile away, classic rock sort of stuff, old people music. Their sign looked kind of odd the next morning.
Gallery director, Bleu Cease called yesterday from Rochester Contemporary to arrange time to set up “Subterranean Surrogates,” my upcoming photo installation. I did RoCo’s logo a while back and I had a show there long before Bleu took over so I didn’t realize what a dynamic force Bleu is. He does everything over there and what he doesn’t do he arranges to have done right. He climbed off the ladder and on to the top of one of the walls in his flip flops while helping me block out the ambient light that was creeping into my allotted space.
I was there all day hanging the projector upside down from strings attached to the ceiling in the back room so the photos would drop into this space and fill one of the walls. Peggi was originally going to drop me off downtown but she made a run to JoAnne Fabrics to buy some black felt for the ceiling and she picked up a peanut butter and banana sandwich and pitched in on the ceiling effort while I balanced the projector. You would think four white walls with photos projected on one would be a pretty simple install but we were there until eight. Art is not as easy as it looks.
I hope no one bought this goat at the Public Market. We were hitting it off pretty good while Peggi went to the bathroom n Saturday.
We finished our last of seven rugs yesterday. Rick and Monica’s driveway has never been cleaner. We dried most of them on our roof during this heat wave but the last one was too heavy to get up there so it is up on blocks in our front yard.
I’ve been baiting and arming the Have-A-Heart trap all week with no luck at capturing the raccoons that terrorize our cat. The first few nights I found the trap closed with no bait left in it so I adjusted the sensitivity thinking a light footed animal like a chipmunk ate the bait and then slipped out through the bars of the cage. It was so sensitive that it closed during the night, trapping nothing and leaving bait. I put some watermelon out there last night and this morning I found a robin in the trap so I set it free.
The sign out in front of Walgreens flashed “The Walgreens iPad app is here! I can’t imagine.
Why doesn’t Walgreens have an apostrophe in it? I’m not the one who should be nick-picking grammar so I won’t go there. I’m just asking. I think Wegmans dropped the apostrophe to. They got in to some sort of a scuffle with Walgreens over the use of the “W’ as a logo. Seems like Walgreen’s won but I’m not sure.
I stopped in to pick up a new battery for my watch. It kept losing time and then working fine for days and I got so I just din’t trust it so I bought a new. They have their own microclimate over there at Culver and East Ridge Road. When the wind is blowing in and it’s cold out and you’re on a bike it can be brutal. And today it felt hotter than hell. I asked the clerk if the temperature display was accurate and she said it was.
How did this whole do-it-yourself thing get going so strong? Is it the bad economy or just the availability of cheap tools? Anyone who’s shopped for a house knows how bad a home remodeling job can be. Didn’t it used to be that you’d hire a craftsman for those sorts of things or a rug cleaning service to clean your rugs?
We bought this rug many years ago at Jacobsen’s on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse. We have a few Oriental rugs in our house and they all need washing. It’s our own fault. We don’t take our shoes off when we come in from outdoors, only when we’ve been hiking. We used to call Asian people “Orientals” and I’m glad we swapped that word out. We need a better one for these rugs. I think this one came from the former Soviet Union and “Oriental” just doesn’t seem right.
We decided to clean the rugs ourselves so we’ve borrowed Rick and Monica’s paved driveway (ours is stone) for the last few days and we’ve set up shop over there. I wear my bathing suit We found a page on Jacobsen’s site about cleaning rugs and I watched a few YouTube videos. A lot of people don’t recommend doing it yourself, mostly because it is so much work but we’ve just skipped our daily walk and we work out over there.
We bought a 12″ squeegee, a natural bristle brush and a wooden pole/handle at Black’s Hardware. I put the squeegee on one end of the pole and the brush on the other. We’re using Ivory dishwashing soap and cold water from the faucet and there is a long line of water running down our steamy road.
Bobby Henrie’s Shoes at Bop Fest in Rochester, New York
Bob Henrie’s left foot is blurry because southpaws tap their left foot. The photo is blurry because the sun was going down when The Goners took the stage at Saturday’s Bop Fest. You don’t have to reinvent rock ‘n roll, you just have to be good and Bob Henie and the Goners are still the best band in the city.
The US Japan World Cup Final was another roller coaster ride, going into overtime where the US took the lead on another Abby Wambach header and then lost the lead to force the dreaded penalty kick round. Someone had to lose. It was a beautiful game.
Columbian coffee bags at Canaltown Coffee in Rochester New York
It feels really good to look at something and decide you could live without it and then throw it in the trash. I had this old rusty wheel barrel that I found in someone else’s trash a long time ago. Sparky put a new wheel on it for me. I filled with other junk last night and took it out to the curb. I usually have a moment of remorse but don’t look back.
Still getting rid of junk is not as easy as it sounds. Where do go with stuff that might be worth some money like old records. eBay is not as easy it seems either. I brought a pile up from the basement and let Rick Simpson take his pick from them. He found ten that that liked and built his weekly “Gumbo Variations” radio show on WRUR around the scratchy old vinyl. Each set started with one of our old records (Paul Butterfield, Ginger Baker, Charlie Hayden, Chuck Berry, Crazy World of Arthur Brown) and Rick built on those for a pretty cool but sort of out-of-body show.
We order our coffee ten pounds at time, whole bean from Canaltown. The owner, Pete, roasts in the back room and provides an incredible aroma for the whole neighborhood.
Womens Cup 2011 – US beats France 3-1 in semifinals
How are you supposed to get anything done during the World Cup? You just can’t. Peggi and I watched the US beat France this morning while sitting in my parent’s living room (you can see some of my dad’s paintings in the shot above). My mom even made lunch for us.
And on the way home Peggi said we ought to go down to our neighbor’s house to watch Sweden play Japan in the second semifinal game. We barely had time to check email before kickoff. Japan was even more stylish than France in the way they played the short ball and passed around opponents with finesse. They hardly broke a sweat. Sweden beat the US in the opening round, just one week ago today, and Japan beat Sweden today so what are the US’s chances on in the final on Sunday? Everything rests on Abby’s shoulders.
Winning is not everything but I do wish I could beat my neighbor, Rick, in horseshoes. Not so much for the sake of winning but just to be able to see him with his tail between his legs for a while. Maybe that is the same thing. It felt real good to see the US beat Brazil in the 122’nd minute on a beautiful cross that Rochester’s Abby Wambach nailed with her head. And it was especially nice to watch the game with my mom while sitting in my parent’s living room, a few blocks from Mercy High School, where both Abby and my mom went.
It has become impossible to keep up with the wild raspberries in Leo’s garden although many of the neighbors on our street have been trying. Peggi and Monica both made pies over the weekend. I have seeds stuck between my teeth around the clock. And with this heat the berries will soon shrivel up.
Andy and Karen from Dreamland Faces were in town last week. They dropped off a few of their new 45s at the Bop Shop and our neighbor Rick grabbed one for us. Both sides are in Chinese. Here’s hoping they’ll be here long enough for a gig next month when they return. This is a folk song about pretty girls with long braids. “If you want to marry, don’t wed any other – I want you to marry me. Bring all your money and your little sister, get in the wagon, come with me”
Pale Swallow-Wort, invasive species plant in New York State
I hate this stinking weed, an invasive species, called Pale Swallow-Wort, that pops up everywhere. It’s really tough to pull out because in most cases you don’t get the roots when it snaps off just above the ground level but the dry conditions we have now make it the perfect time to rid your yard of this sucker. You can see in the photo above that I was able to get most of the roots. I use two the hand technique and pull straight up with focused concentration.
We have a recording of Hildegard Von Bingen’s music that we play quite a bit but we didn’t realize she was such a polymath. The movie we watched last night about her life, a thousand years ago, hardly touched on her monophonic vocal works. Instead it portrayed her as a dark ages religious mystic struggling with a Catholic church hierarchy that unfortunately still exists today.
Polymath would have been a better name than “New Math”, which was already retro when we called ourselves that back in the late seventies, but anything with the word “math” in there sounds too progressive or soulless which isn’t quite fair too mathematics but . . . I played in the band when we recorded the first single with Howard Thompson behind the glass wall of PCI Studios.
Ralphie The Gopher in our neighbor’s garden, Rochester, NY
Kevin was in town and he stopped by with his family just after we had had heard from neighbor that there was a gopher loose in the garden that we share. Our neighbor said if we wanted any spinach we better pick it before dark because there might be any left in the morning so we all headed down there to pick a few bags.
This morning we checked email before heading out for a walk and our neighbor sent one telling us he had captured the varmint. We stopped down there and found Ralphie, just as we pictured him, in a cage with a few slices of apples. It looked like he had worn a hole in his nose trying to get out this trap. It will will be a long hot weekend for hi him before the town picks him up on Tuesday and transports him over by the bay.
Coincidentally Peggi was wearing her Ralphie The Gopher hat so I took this picture with the hat on the cage. We ripped our Ralphie cds a while back and gave the whole Tall Tales library to our niece and her husband. They’ve told us many times how Ralphie is their family’s favorite.
So Wegmans grows this stuff and charges a premium for it while we can grow the same stuff for free? We haven’t even watered our garden yet this year and it’s doing fine. We’ve had fresh lettuce and spinach for weeks.
We went over to my parents to watch the US beat North Korea in the Women’s World Cup. A real clash of civilizations, the Koreans were about half the size of the Americans and young with a sixteen year in starting lineup. Rochester’s Abby Wambach had a beautiful cross and assist on the first goal. We may stop down at our neighbors for the next game since we don’t have cable. We had a big old branch come down in the last heavy rain so I’m firing up the chain saw this afternoon to take of it. I’m planning on using my new noise canceling headphones so I won’t hear you shouting at me.
Beer Lady at Durand EastmanGolf Course in Rochester, NY
I had always heard there was a “beer lady” at Durand Eastman and we walk that way a few times each week but I’d never seen her until now. The cans of beer she sells are on ice in the bucket attached to her cart. I reached for my camera and she said “Are you going to photograph me?” and then turned away for this shot. I told her it wasn’t a closeup but I’m sure she gets hassled by guys all day. As far as I can tell beer is big part of golf. We find cans in the woods all the time near the holes we cross and I chuck them right back out on the course.
I were asked to fill out a survey card at the Jazz Fest last night. It’s an opportunity to suggest artists you’d like to see at upcoming festivals but it’s also an opportunity for the promoters to ask how much you earn per year and how much you plan to spend at the festival. I lie about everything but the musicians I’d like to hear, Ornette Coleman, Mostly Other People Do The Killing, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee. Logic would tell you the information is used to give the people who have the most to spend the kind of entertainment they want. This might explain why the six venues we visited last night were packed with festival goers and such mediocre bands.
We came home and watched Monte Hellman’s 1971 cult classic, “Two Lane Blacktop” with Dennis Wilson, James Taylor and Warren Oates. I remember seeing this with Dave Mahoney back in our Bloomington Days and remember not much happened but that is the whole point.So beautiful to see the movie unfold in what feels like real time with no manipulation or plot twists and the dead pan, non actors with the masterful Warren Oates. Laurie Bird is “the girl.” Monte Hellman deliberately holds back from giving us what we want. I loved every bit bit of it.
View of Madrid from atop El Círculo de Bellas Artes Building
It’s going to be tough pretending we are still in Madrid. We spent our last day there following the yellow PhotoEspana route of top shelf photo shows. We spent quite a while at at the “Ron Galella – Paparazzo Extroaordinaire” show at El Círculo de Bellas Artes and then took the elevator to the top floor terrace where we had a sensational view of the city.
A friend sent me a link to a story Jeff Spevak did on me as a curator of the Jazz Fest. Before we left I told Jeff to help himself to the photos I had on my site from past years festivals but I never expected this. My neighbor stopped me this morning to say “I saw the music critic dis you in the paper.” Some curator, I missed the first day while we were gone.
I have a small box of holy cards at home. I’ve collected them for many years so some are from my youth. I even have a relic of my patron saint in there that a priest friend of our family bought for me when he traveled to Italy. I was born on the feast day of Saint Paul and that’s how I got my name but it’s not the Saul/Saint Paul of the Letters, it’s Saint Paul of the Cross We used to book mark our missals with holy cards and they gave some when we made our first communion and confirmation and I fell in love with them. They were every bit as cool as baseball cards. I have some from relatives funerals and the Katarii shrine in Auriesville, New York
but most of my cards are from previous trips to Spain when we used to stop in almost every church we saw. We sort of have that under control now.
There used to be a cluster of religious shops around the Plaza Mayor in Madrid and there still are a few but the Catholics are dying and commerce has a new face. We stopped in the full blown priest supply store above and asked if they had any holy cards, they’re called estampas in Spanish, and the clerk recommended another shop where I found ten or so interesting ones for two euros.
El flamenco es filosofía pura,anõs de filosofía condensada. It is the heart of Andulasia in Southern Spain. We had to see some flamenco on our last night in Sevilla so we asked a number of people what they recommended and decided our best bet was the Museo de Flamenco founded by the famous flamenco singer Cristina Hoyos. They have a nightly show and this one included a man and woman who sang and danced, a man who sat and sang while clapping and a virtuoso guitar player. An earthy art form that came from the gypsy streets, flamenco is culturally rich. Antonia Mercé, “La Argentina,” Lorca’s muse, said “There are no schools to create flamenco just as there are no schools to create poets.”
Bull and matador in Madrid
And of course we had to take in a bullfight before leaving Spain, there is so much pomp and ceremony and rich color palette in this ritualized life and death spectacle. It’s pretty certain who is going to die here and it is sometimes messy. As a Taurus I feel sorry for the bull and almost want to root for el toro
Finding a good spot to eat in Spain is easy. Restaurants and cafés are everywhere. Picking a really good spot requires some astute attention to details. A lot of places have tables out on the street but do they have an active bar/tapa scene as well and a dining room inside? Do they serve their coffee in small glasses rather than cups? And most importantly, How many hams do they have hanging from the ceiling? Spaniards are crazy about ham. They have a chain of delicatessens called “Museo de Jamon.”
They like to have their main meal midday and la siesta is not some quaint old custom. Most places other than restaurants close down in the middle of the work day. We trade off between a big meal in the afternoon and grazing on tapas, pinchos and rationes at multiple establishments and made a point to visit Restaurante Modesto in Sevilla for the Pimentos del Padrón we spotted.
I hadn’t thought about “Kiss and Darling” in a long time. They were full color, Italian, photo novellas with young people posed perfectly in ordinary European situations along with thought bubbles or conversation that dealt mostly with romance. Nothing steamy, just dreamy. They sold them everywhere in the eighties. We used to pick them up at Bertha’s on East Main and sometimes we’d by the Spanish versions at World Wide News.
I keep flashing on them as we walk the streets of Sevilla. We’re lost most of the time but it doesn’t matter. Every street we turn on is full of people strolling, shopping or window shopping, eating and just plain living their lives out on the street. It’s like a Fellini movie and I love it.
