Coke vs. Pepsi ~ that sort of thing.
It Better Be
We are between storms. The temperature was in the mid forties today, it supposed to start raining soon, the temps will drop overnight and then we’ll get some serious snow. So instead of skiing we walked up the the lake and then out onto it. Something like the surface of the moon.
Leave a commentTwo buck with large racks crossed our path as we cut through the woods across the street. We stopped skiing for a few minutes to just look around and witnessed a hawk swoop down to pick up a live animal and fly with it to a nearby tree. It looked like another bird in its clutches bit it was hard to tell.
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These soft delivery bags were sitting in the snow at the end of Hoffman Road about a week ago. The big hill across the street that leads down into the woods is getting a little slick so we drove down to the end of Hoffman Road and skied out onto the golf course from there. These bags were still sitting in a snow bank. I imagine someone stole the contents and dumped the bags.
Our UPS driver is back in action. He delivered a package of frozen fish from the Pacific Northwest and I had a chance to chat with him. He was anti vax and got hit hard with Covid. He was out of work for a few months and told me he was certain he was gonna die. His 70 year old mom got it too and she died. Holding back tears he told me he’s still mourning her.
At sixteen degrees the wind out on the golf course was a bit much so we ducked into the woods and followed the trails around the course. There a few hearty souls out there. We followed the western shore of Eastman Lake up the big lake and then up Horseshoe Road where we had a good view of the whitecaps out on Lake Ontario. With a few inches of fresh snow on the ground the conditions were excellent.
The rough water builds the most interesting formations along the lake. Maybe tomorrow we’ll cross Lakeshore Boulevard and ski along the lake.
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My father died six years ago today. I don’t make a point of remembering the the date of his death. I was reminded of the anniversary when my brother, John, emailed to thank me for passing my father’s ring along to him. It was a long time coming. When Peggi and I took my father to the hospital for the last time, they asked us to take his ring, watch and wallet. I still use the wallet. I put the ring and watch in a drawer and forgot about them.
My father wore the ring as a wedding ring but he bought it when he was almost sixty while he was working in New Mexico. I decided to have four rings made from a mold of the original ring. Our friend, Kathy, recommended the Gem Lab and they did a great job. When we picked up the four new ones we could not tell the original from the copies although the copies were actually a higher quality silver. The Gem Lab placed them in identical boxes and my sister Ann shuffled the five like a shell game and each picked one. My sister-in-law Char chose for John because he couldn’t make the drawing. John won and I gave it to him on Christmas Day.
Ironically, as a woodworker it would be dangerous for him to wear a ring. I remember getting my high school class ring stuck on a long string of shopping carts that I was pushing while working at my uncle’s supermarket. I nearly tore my finger off.
I think of my father all the time.
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I remember paddling into a cove where a beaver was working on a nest. Can’t remember where we were. We inadvertantly rattled the beaver and it chased our canoe for awhile. We’ve never seen beavers in Durand but we see plenty of evidence of their handiwork. Judging by the size of these wood chips they must have some serious teeth.
Our morning walk is my favorite part of the day. It clears the air and raises the bar for the day’s experience.
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We followed ski tracks into the park this morning. It may not be a white Christmas but it is a white Christmas Eve. You would never know that up at the lake.
Every ten years or so I get a chance to reconnect with Greg. An art major at IU when I was there, Greg was the real deal. I lived in the dorm, Greg saved on rent by living in his art studio in the Fine Arts building. In a sense he never left the studio. His apartment in NYC, all 185 square feet of it, is a rent controlled, fifth floor walkup.
Greg called this morning and we talked for an hour or so as if no time had passed at all. Many of our mutual friends have passed but we were able to engage and laugh in the present. Greg lamented how young artists can’t afford the city anymore and he missed batting around art notions over a cup of coffee. I offered that this observation may just be shaped by our age but he wouldn’t have it. He told me he limits his reverie. By doing so, the exercise is more satisfying and it leaves more time for him to work on his art journal/journey. I’m glad he made time to touch base today.
Everybody asks if our new metal roof is noisier in the rain and we haven’t noticed that. We got the roof hoping the snow would slide off instead of building ice ice dams as it melts. Our first snowfall is indeed sliding off. Very slowly. And it looks sensational behind our blue LED Christmas lights.
I was packing up my drums last night when Phil, the guitarist in Margaret Explosion, texted. “People all around me are testing positive. I think it is unwise to pursue the gig tonight.” We haven’t seen anyone except for Jedi who came over for a Christmas beer yesterday. The text took me back. Were we being reckless going out with Omicron in the air? Probably but we went for it. I texted Jack to see if he was available to sit in on his instrument of choice. He wasn’t so we performed as a trio. We had done so a few other times, at High Falls and then at a funeral but never at the little and the Wednesday before Christmas is traditionally a big night there.
I particularly like the minimal palette. I love it when there is air around Peggi’s sax and I can hear the full shape of Ken’s double bass notes. The café was almost full but not like holidays past and there were notable absences. Peggi and I had talked about doing “God Rest Ye . . .” but forgot. Someone called for an encore and we tore it up with the minor key holiday classic.
I may have mentioned that I found a dollar bill on a path up from Titus Avenue Extension. Today, walking long the western side of Durand Lake I spotted a twenty and a five curled up on the path. I quickly shoved it in my pocket.
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We couldn’t decide. Rake leaves yesterday when it was in the 60s or wait until after the wind storm and rake today. We chose yesterday and I’m glad we did. It took us three hours to gather all the branches and sticks that had snapped off our trees in last night’s wind.
While we worked I imagined us in Madrid for today’s derby between the crosstown rivals of Atlético and Real Madrid. Of course we will be pulling for last year’s league champion, Atlético, but they are underdogs this year. 70,000 people in a stadium would be too much but a good seat in a crowded bar would be ideal. But how would we scream or drink Mahou while wearing a mask?
We’re happy for our friend, Louise, who appears in this week’s New Yorker. Not an article by her but about her, attesting to how hardship can be a source of good things, up front on the letters to the editor page.
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Sometimes we walk to Kathy’s, sometimes she walks to our place. We walk early, she walks late so when she texted that she was stopping by we started a fire in our front yard fire pit. Originally conceived as a safe way to hang out during last year’s winter months it might be doing duty again. I had just bought some of Buffalo’s Hayburner so we each one of those and it was quite comfortable.
Titus Avenue doesn’t stop at Sea Breeze Drive, the former 590 North. It continues down to the bay as Titus Avenue Extension. We walked down there this morning. It is a wonderland as the road winds down to the water. The houses are built into the hillside like in Belair but in this case, they are funky. They look small from the road but when you get down to the bottom and look up at the backs of them they are three and four stories. The whole idyllic setting takes a dark turn when you get to the bottom. Their is an abundance of American flags, most with that blue stripe in them. The biggest house looks like a tacky country club with a giant Trump 2020 flag still flying in the front yard. The very last houses have dogs in the yard, on duty, barking their heads off at anything that moves. The guy in the very last house was in his driveway smoking while his dog barked at us. We were not more than twenty yards from him and I could tell he had seen us but he wouldn’t look at us or say hi. His big dog was at his side barking its head off at us while we looked across the inlet at the two gigantic new houses going up across the inlet at the bottom of Seneca Road. It’s much nicer over there. People are happy and friendly. We’ll stick closer to home next time.
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I don’t follow the stock market closely but I have been keeping an eye on Apple because we had made a decision to sell some more if it reached 170. I checked the price around noon yesterday and it was at 169. When I looked back later it had dropped to 164 on news that the long O variant had been found in the U.S. We bought the stock back when we were playing happy hours at the Bug Jar. Our cost basis is around 20 cents. Steve Brown, the Friday bartender and one of the three owners, was selling stock for Merrill during the day.
We had planned to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends but one of them was waiting for results from a Covid test. Turned out it was only a cold. Our nextdoor neighbors had family over for T-day and their nephew tested positive the following day. We stopped by Pete and Gloria’s house but they weren’t home which turned out to be a good thing because they too had been exposed to family members with Covid. Peggi bought a couple of Rapid tests at Wegman’s after we learned we were exposed before Thanksgiving. We showed no symptoms and we weren’t seeing anyone so we never used the tests. We gave them to Pete and Gloria this afternoon and we’re awaiting the results. The positivity rate in Monroe County is now 9.9%.
Leave a commentHoping to finish the Muhammad Ali PBS documentary tonight, just after our La Liga match of course. The “Thrilla in Manila” and Zaire are yet to come. Peggi and I saw the “When We Were Kings” movie with my father at the Little but I remember it being mostly about the music. Boxing should have been outlawed lifetimes ago but I’m glad there is an historical record of how cave men behaved.
“We’re so civilized” – MX-80 Sound
I’d like to photograph my “Los Immigrantes” piece. Three of the twenty can be seen on the wall to the left above. I need to shoot at night because the white wall carries a daylight colorcast from the big window to the left. The pieces are mounted a half inch off the wall to show relief. The colors in the wood pieces are subtle but important. They need plenty of soft light so the shadow doesn’t compete with pieces.
I left NYC with a lighting layout designed by Duane, something that shows a white, semi-transparent shower curtain between my lights and the work. I might try the portrait umbrellas Duane gave me with the Lowel lights before ordering a while shower curtain on Amazon.
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We piled up the furniture on our screened in porch and moved a row of firewood in. I guess we’re ready for the fourth season. This time of year is tinged with loss but then it provides relief with plenty of time for deep dives into projects.
Our neighbors, Jared and Sue are getting a new roof, a metal roof just like ours, but they have a different contractor. This one has a crew from Guatemala. Ours was mostly Puerto Rican. Both crews crank the tunes as they work. This time, instead of reggaeton it’s all Mexicali horns and squeeze boxes. And their roof is a lot cheaper.
Last night we watched the Sparks Brothers movie and loved it. It dawned on me that although they are the Gilbert and George of the music world. I woke up singing La Dolce Vita.” The only Sparks lp we own is 1979’s “No. 1 in Heaven” so we played it first thing this morning.
“This is the number one song in heaven
Why are you hearing it now, you ask
Maybe you’re closer to here than you imagine
Maybe you’re closer to here than you care to be”
Leaving for home Duane walked with us to the subway stop near his apartment in Brooklyn. We were talking right up to the turnstiles and we heard a train approaching. The woman ahead us us was having a hard time with her card. We stopped using the MetroCard once we learned we could just click our phone or watch. While Duane was telling us not to worry, that the train was on the other side, I clicked my watch and the woman scooted through on my dime. I clicked it another two times and we said goodbye to Duane.
We walked down to the bay on our first day back and into Webster on the swing bridge that will be in place until Spring. We stopped by Kathy’s on the way back planning on getting her advice for overwintering our lemongrass plants. We forgot all about that when we learned that she has new neighbors, a young couple who plan to grow vegetables and raise chickens. The previous neighbor turned out to be a two-faced religious type who had an affair with a minister who then started stalking her.
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November tomorrow and we’re still picking Pimientos de Padron and arugula from the garden. The kale will last til the snow flies and we still have carrots and beets below ground. We poked holes in the far corner and dropped fifty or so garlic bulbs in. We’ll cover them with mulch for the winter once the leaves decide to fall. And Peggi picked another batch of collard greens for Helena. She has no saturation point.
On our way back from the garden we ran into Jared who was trying to catch three of the biggest Koi in his pond. He had a big net resting on the bottom with some fish food in it and he was hoping to pull it up quickly if they went for the bait. He had already startled them and they were ignoring his net. The big guys were not only eating too much food they were pooping too much and dirtying the water.
While we were talking Miguel, a fellow walker who lives on the next street over, came up to us to ask if we had seen a young black lab. Apparently his neighbor’s dog had runaway. We told him we would keep an eye out and a few minutes later, the owner of the dog got out of her car and asked if we had seen her dog. She told us “Babe” was just a puppy and had never left home before. We told our neighbors to keep a look out.
We were curious if they ever found the dog so we came back from the lake via their street this morning. Miguel and his partner were out in front of their house. They were holding up their mailbox which had been run over last night. They pointed to the ground at all the shiny plastic car parts. They told us they had a party the night before and one of their guests ran into it.
We asked about the the black lab and they said lady across the street from them also has a black lab. Her mother is staying with them and she apparently let the missing black lab in to their house. Meanwhile their black lab was in the back yard.
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We were unable to cross the outflow from Eastman Lake this morning. Of course we could have taken our shoes off and waded across but we turned around and walked back along the beach. Someone had left a big round metal fire pit fixture on the beach with ashes and charred beer cans from the night before. We passed twice and considered taking it home both times but it was way too heavy.
We watched a virtual funeral mass yesterday for Joe O’Keefe, my mom’s cousin. He was a real sweetheart. At my mom’s funeral he told me a rather significant story about their common grandmother, a Kelly, who left Dublin on a ship bound for New York as a caretaker of an elderly man. She was supposed to return but she fell in love with a man named Walsh. They married as soon as they landed but only on the condition that Walsh drop his affiliation with the Church of England and get right with Catholicism.
He told me they used to hold these teen dances all over the city and kids would usually go without dates. He said he always made sure he danced with my mom and said he was determined to find a Mercy girl like my mom. And he did, my mom’s lifelong friend, Virginia, who he married.
Tomorrow we drive to Niagara Falls for the funeral of my aunt and Joe’s cousin, Ann Oliver, the last of that generation of Tierneys. She died during the pandemic and the family delayed the Mass and remembrance until now. She was my favorite aunt on that side. I painted a picture of her for “The City” show at Pyramid in 1990 where I depicted one member from each of my relatives’ families working somewhere in Rochester.
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You always think, “this will be the last nice day of the year” when we get a day like this (sunshine and somewhere in the seventies) in late October. I borrowed Jared’s chimney scrub brush yesterday and went up on the roof, our new metal roof. It is slippery and we decided not to get those bars that catch the snow before it slides off on top of you because they look ugly but they would provide something to hold onto if you’re sliding off. My Merrill walking shoes have a pretty good grip but I wasn’t prepared for the loose panel that slid out from under me when I stepped on it. I grabbed ahold of the sharp edge the next panel and cut my left hand. I was still able to play horseshoes.
I called the roofing company and they came right out to address it. I climbed up on top of the chimney, took the cap off and shoved the long pole down to the point where it reaches our flu. I was working it up and down, scraping the creosol off the inner walls, when I suddenly felt no resistance at all. The brush had come off the pole and it was stuck in our chimney. I was picturing what it would smell like if we started a fire and I looked toward my neighbors and saw Jared was doing something in his fish pond. I pulled the pole up and he got the picture. He suggested putting our pole saw down there and trying to grab on to it. An hour or so later I came up with the brush. Maybe we’ll have our first fire this weekend.
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Our neighbor down the street likes to obsess over things. We obsessively watch him obsess and we listen when he wants to talk. He is always doing something in his garage or in his yard, often deep in thought, standing in one place looking down at the ground. As we walked by yesterday he invited us in to look at his lawn. It had been dug up by an animal during the night and he was pretty sure it was raccoons digging for grubs. He doesn’t like to use chemicals on his lawn and in fact he said he never had much of a lawn until this year when the gypsy moths ate all the leaves on his trees allowing extra light in.
He asked if he could borrow our Have-a-heart trap so I brought the wheelbarrow down to the garden (in Jared’s yard) where we keep the trap. We use it to catch groundhogs in the spring before they mow down a row of our lettuce. We’ve inadvertently caught possums and raccoons but just let them go. Jared let us borrow his trap too and he offered that it may be a skunk that is feasting on the grubs. Peggi and I wheeled the two traps down the road and explained how they worked. When we walked by later that day our trap was closed and there was a squirrel inside. The next day our neighbor caught a couple of raccoons. The town Animal Control will transport them to a Black Site.
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I have some friends who are Yankees fans and I am sorry they lost last night, to their archival. We put our sports energy into watching LaLiga, three teams in particular, and last weekend’s matches went pretty quickly because two of those teams played each other, as they do two times every year. Atletico beat Barcelona, a very enjoyable match, and then it was fun in a twisted sort of way to see the first place team, Real Madrid, one of our favorites, lose to the new team in the league, Espanyol. That defeat moved Atletico (our No. 1) closer to the top. The league and we are on break now, the “International Break,” where players go back to play for their home countries in the World Cup qualifiers.
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The guy in the wheelchair was all alone, sitting in the middle of a grassy area off Log Cabin Road in the park. I was trying to picture how he was able to to roll up the path and out that far when we spotted a woman scooping up something under a tree. As we walked by her I asked, “What are you collecting?” She smiled but clearly did not understand what I had said. I asked again and she said “mushrooms,” pronouncing it like a Russian. She looked Russian as well.
She opened her hands and showed us a batch of little reddish mushrooms. Peggi showed her a picture that she had just taken of the egg or breast-like mushrooms that we had just seen. She shook her head no like they were not desirable. At that point I noticed the woman was wearing a Home Health Care t-shirt and realized she was out in the park with her client.
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In 1998 Sam used my camera to take a self portrait. I did the painting above based on his photo. It hangs near the front door in our home. Geri called us this morning to give us the bad news. Her son, Sam, died last night of an apparent heart attack. I can’t imagine her grief.
Eternally youthful, Sam was special in so many ways. He had his oxygen supply cut off during childbirth and he was later diagnosed with autism but his personality was fully developed. Like his late father, Bill, he was an early Macintosh enthusiast. He sent us a photo of his old Mac Plus which he kept in the basement. For years he would call us whenever a new Mac OS was available and he always kept all his gear up to date. We took him out to the Apple Store when he broke his iPad and we watched as the Apple representative explained that breakage was not covered and then he gave Sam a brand new iPad. He was that sweet.
We celebrated a few of Sam’s birthdays at Chuck E Cheese’s in Henrietta, Sam’s choice. The place was heaven to him. Sam and his family camped out at Pete and Shelley’s place in the mountains the same weekend we were up there. He formed an immediate bond with them.
For the last few years Sam was living in a group home in Elmira and then independently in an apartment with the same organization. We went down there to visit one weekend and Sam took us to Five Guys and Target. We will miss him.
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