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.
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.
Sign at railroad tracks near Main and Goodman in Rochester, New York
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%.
Hoping 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
Shadows in basement studio
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.
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.
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.
Outlet from Eastman Lake flowing into Lake Ontario at Durand
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Sam” painting by Paul Dodd oil on canvas 68″ w x 44″h 1998
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.
Sam Jones camping at Pete and Shelley’s
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.
My doctor wanted me to get a Covid test before she did my colonoscopy. The closest testing facility to my house is Wilson (named after the founder of Xerox) on Carter Street. The test was a saliva test and the nurse coached me to think of favorite foods. I took the little tube (and the tiny plastic funnel) out to car and filled the tube to the red line in ten minutes. I never got to the part where I would need to think of olives or tortilla or pulpo.
The test came back “Not Detected,” which sounds a little fuzzy. I did the prep yesterday and was still able to play horseshoes with Rick. I drank the two containers of Gatoraid mixture and we watched Barcelona barely manage a draw with Granada. I still had not budged. It was a little worrisome but the time the sun came up I was clean as a whistle.
Peggi drove me out to the maze of doctors’ offices on Jefferson Road. The nurse told me I could keep my socks on and she handed me a heated blanket. She marveled at my veins and set up the IV for the anesthetic. I was kicking myself for not bringing the newspaper in because I laid there for about forty-five minutes. There was a lot of hubbub out by the front desk and then I saw my doctor walk by slowly. She looked a little long in the tooth so convinced myself that it was another patient and not my doctor. When she came back down the hall she was in a wheelchair and someone was pushing her. I figured the patient had some sort of episode and that was why everyone was rattled.
The nurse came back in my room and explained that they had had some sort of equipment failure and they were not going to be able to do my colonoscopy. But they said I could go back over to Wilson and a doctor there could perform the procedure. Or I could reschedule and do the prep all over again. They took the IV out. I got dressed and we drove over to Wilson, a decidedly more urban environment but more comfortable.
I asked the receptionist there if she knew why I was transferred and she told me my doctor wasn’t feeling well. So now I await the diagnosis on the three polyps that were removed and my next colonoscopy.
“I’m not afraid of dying’ and I don’t really care,” or whatever those words to the Laura Nyro song that Blood Sweat & Tears took over the top are, was blasting from this guys’ sound system as he rolled by us. Obnoxious and hysterical at the same time. We passed this guy many times in the park, along the lake and even saw him coming down Culver Road from East Ridge one time. He gets around and thinks nothing of cranking his tunes, the Baby Boomer hits, for all nearby.
Peggi agreed to walk up to Aman’s Farm Market with me if I didn’t get any beer. We were going for fresh corn and fruit but we also needed garlic and onions and milk and cheddar cheese so the weight added up. And this was the longest we had walked since I sprained my ankle. Since we only get up here two or three times a month I put a 4-pack of 3 Heads Ha Ha! Nelson in the bottom of my backpack.
I wasn’t able to walk with Peggi today so I took a photo of her as she walked by on the street below. I sprained my ankle watching a soccer match, the Brazil Argentina World Cup qualifier. The PA at Urgent Care thought I must have overstretched it while sitting with my legs under me down in front of the tv where I can see who’s who on the pitch. And then as I descended our basement stairs, trying not to put too much weight on my sprain, I stubbed the big toe on my good leg. There was a crack and it hurts worse than my good leg.
The artificial intelligence on our tv apps recommended two stellar movies based on what we they think we like. “The Wicker Man” from the golden year of 1973 was sensational. Extolling the virtues of paganism over Christianity I felt like was inside a Bruegel painting. When that was over we started “Trilogy of Terror” with Karen Black from 1975. I can’t wait to get back to that one.
My brother, Fran with Nhung at Tea Ceremony for her son, Tony and his bride-to-be, Lindsay
My brother’s lady friend was one of the original Vietnamese boat people. She and her family left just after we lost the war in her country in 1975. As we prepare for a new wave of refugees I can only say that, based on what is right in front of me, refugees make our country better in every way.
Peggi and I were invited to a Tea Ceremony, a traditional Vietnamese event based on a marriage custom where the groom goes to the bride’s family’s home and officially ask for their daughter’s hand. In this case, where the bride’s name is O’Conner, the ceremony was held at my brother’s partner’s home. Her son can be seen in red in the center of this photo.
The groom’s friends, the big guys in white, made a grand entrance in five GMC Sierra Denali pickup trucks. My brother’s was one of them. He is a mason, the best in the county, I have no idea what the other guys do but their trucks were all in spotless condition. Incense offerings where made to the ancestors before a Buddhist altar and the groom presented the bride with some studded earrings. When she opened the little box she found the price tag was still on them. I offered to cut it off with my pocket knife and I put the tag in my pocket. We examined it at home and discovered the earrings were $2,000 dollars at Macy’s.
The bride and groom presented us with small red plastic glasses of tea and the ceremony was followed by a brunch with homemade Vietnamese food. We sat across from my brother and saw that he was eating tofu and eggplant. Last I knew the only vegetable he would eat was corn. I said something about it and he said, “I don’t ask what it is. I just eat it.”
Richard Miller, winner of the annual Leo Dodd Historic Preservation Award for his volunteer work in restoring Brighton Cemetery
The Brighton Cemetery, on Hoyt Place overlooking the Eastern Expressway and former Erie Canal bed, is no longer in Brighton. The surrounding property owners voted to be annexed by the City of Rochester so they could hook up to the city’s sewer system and through some sort of loophole the city was not required to keep up the cemetery. It fell into serious disrepair. Richard Miller has devoted his retirement years to restoring the gravestones and maintaining the property. His volunteer work earned him the Leo Dodd Historic Brighton Preservation Award, an award given each year in my father’s name.
Pittsford Wegman’s provided a box lunch for the Historic Brighton group and the town historian tried to separate the folklore from the historical facts on the history of the familiar local names. After the presentation we spotted the recipient in the parking lot. I noticed he had saved the plastic knife, fork and spoon in his shirt pocket. I asked him if he could be sure the grave stones that he repaired and uprighted were above the right bodies. He thought for a few moments and told us the cemetery wasn’t as badly vandalized as others because nobody knows where it is. Even though thousands of cars whiz by the Winton Road, a stone’s throw away, every hour of the day.
Brighton Cemetery photo by Leo Dodd 2014
The cemetery was founded in 1821 so we are commemorating its 200th anniversary this year. I remember walking around the cemetery with my father as he pointed out names connected to Brighton’s brick industry. Preserving that story was one of my father’s retirement projects. My father would be so proud have Richard Miller win this award.
Backyard garden along Maplewood Avenue backs up to Genesee River gorge.
Today is the feast day of Santiago, the patron saint of Spain. We’re celebrating with a hearty Spanish dish, something we plan to eat in front of the tube while watching Spain play Australia at the Tokyo Olympics. We’ll have some Spanish wine and and desert (something we rarely do.) Peggi borrowed our neighbor’s spring-form pan and made a Tarta de Santiago.
We haven’t watered our garden in weeks. We’ve had plenty of rain just when the trees need it as they try to kick out another set of leaves after the moth defoliation. We picked a big bag of greens, kale, romaine lettuce, basil, zucchini and jalapeños for Matthew and Louise. Our neighbor, Michael Burritt, the percussion teacher at the Eastman School of Music, was playing his mallets while we picked and weeded. I have no idea if he’s practicing or working out a composition but the melodies, as beautiful as they are, never seem to resolve the way a pop or jazz tune would. We were meeting M&L in Sodus at El Rincon and just as we crossed the bay bridge we realized we had forgotten the big bag of vegetables.
The Maplewood Neighborhood Association sponsored a Garden Walk yesterday. Other than practicing in Larry Luxury’s basement back in the eighties I had not spent much time in this part of the city. The homes are stately, huge and well preserved. We started our garden walk by parking our car at Aquinas High School and walking up Dewey to the palatial Seneca Parkway.
Going west Seneca Parkway dead-ends at the railroad, which made for a well-timed bathroom stop. We crossed the street and park-like median and continued east on the opposite side of the street. There were thirty some homes on the tour and each backyard was a world unto itself. Not only gardens but swimming pools, patios, outdoor living rooms, fully appointed outdoor kitchens and cocktail bar-like settings. People live large in this part of the city. A couple who who had lived in their home for fifty years told us some of the neighbors have moved from one house to the other on the the same street.
At some point I had Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party” going through my head.
