Category: Lopsided Observations

One of the rewards of getting old is that the obituaries are more interesting. So many people we grew up with are getting the back page send offs these days. Jack DeJohnette, who drove Miles’ band in the “Live Evil” stage, played with Alice Coltrane, Joe Henderson and Keith Jarrett and passed. We saw him with a trio out at Red Creek in the seventies and then in a duo setting with Bobby McFerrin at the Jazz Fest. I loved his playing.

The O’Jays’ bassist, Anthony Jackson, left us. I had never heard his name before but learned he invented the six string bass (two too many, I would say) and he was known for the iconic bass line on their song “For the Love of Money.” We have the forty-five and played the intro over and over after reading about it. Because we never watched the Apprentice we didn’t know it was the theme song. I hope Jackson lived a comfortable life with the proceeds.

We don’t get Fox so we can’t watch the Blue Jays beat LA in the World Series and none of our three La Liga teams had matches this week so by Wednesday we were jonesing for some action. We tuned into a Copa del Ray match between Real Sociedad and Negreira. Real Sociedad, from San Sebastian, is a top team in the Primera Division and Negreira is an amateur team in Spain’s sixth division. There are plenty of lopsided matches when the Copa del Rey gets going. Every team in Spain is eligable. We had walked through the village of Negreira when we did Camino de Santiago and we were in San Sebastian to see Chilida’s museum. Most of Negreira’s players had worked regular jobs that day and they were expected to peter out fast but despite the 3-0 scoreline they gave the pros a real run for their money.

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Like one half of the city, we went to another “No Kings” rally yesterday, this one along the river downtown. It was a beautiful day to be out but there were so many issues to address. In 1969 it was just one. It can overwhelm you and make you feel like we have not made any progress. The anti-progressive movement is formidable. Despite the overwhelming number of issues, most people seemed to be having a good time.

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I grabbed this photo from Jason Wilder‘s site. I didn’t ask permission and I hope he doesn’t mind. I just thought it would be the most effective way to steer a few eyeballs toward his work. He collects found photos, “curates” is a better word, and his own photography has the same miix of mysteriousness and wonder.

I stole this card off the Gonechester website. I don’t think Geoffrey will mind. Osmer Hulbert, “one of Rochester’s most conspicuous personages” according to a 1886 newspaper notice of his passing, owned a “recess,” one of the first restaurants in New York State on Main street, where Powers Building now stands. The obit state, “He was a perfect encyclopedia of local history, and to hear him talk when he was in the right mood was particularly interesting. He had a remarkable memory and his recollections of old Rochesterians were always enjoyable. “

Today, Gonechester is the perfect encyclopedia of local history. Hulbert’s Oyster Bar is just a tidbit on the site. I get lost there for hours. Just imagine how long it takes Geoffrey to research and compile this treasure trove. In anything other than Trump world he would be paid handsomely for his efforts, preserving our history. I hope you find the site as enjoyable as I do.

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Years ago Wreckless Eric proclaimed, “All tours begin in Rochester.” Sure enough, Amy Rigby opened her book/music tour at the Bop Shop last night albeit without the book. The shipment from the publisher was a day late for her tour. She said she had to buy one of her new books, “Girl to Country,” from Amazon so she could read from an actual copy. She didn’t let that phase her as she effortless moved from chapter to song, both expertly crafted with a keen observational sense. 

Her chapter on meeting Eric at a gig in Hull was especially exquisite. He was djing with a crate of records and she already had “Whole Wide World” in her set. She asked if he would join her for that one. She had transposed the song and he told her, “The song has two chords and both of your are wrong.”

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The average American teen spends 4.8 hours a day on social media and nearly three-quarters of them say they’ve used an AI chatbot for companionship. I am not average or a teen but my chatbot hours per day number is definitely going up. Not for companionship, that part sort of creeps me out. I wish ChatGPT wouldn’t compliment me, pretend to be flirting with me or even give me a thumb up. I assume I could just ask it not to respond with “Perfect” and “Excellent question” but I don’t like feeling responsible for its development. I might have to get over that as every question I ask it is another set of data points.

I was using the free version for a few months but I pushed it too far with questions related to a not-for-profit corporation I am connected with and it would not go further without me subscribing. It’s better than Apple Support for geeky stuff. I’ve been putting tomatoes from our garden on my morning toast and topping it with olive oil. When I asked ChatGPT why tomatoes and olive oil is such a good combination it replied, “Fresh tomatoes and olive oil are kind of a perfect duet—like Cannonball Adderley with Joe Zawinul.” It punctuated that line with a smiley face and then went on to explain the chemical properties. I was a little taken aback by the personalized analogy so I said, “I like your analogy of the perfect duet – Cannonball Adderley and Joe Zawinul. Do you know something about my musical tastes?” Sure enough I had asked about a jazz 45 and it had that info in the profile it is building on me.

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My mom has her Devo hat on in this picture. Looking back, I see she was very fashionable but at the time I resisted the white bucks she insisted we all wear. My brother Mark has my friend, John Abraham’s, hat on. John is looking over my right shoulder and I’m clutching my missal. I can see some holy cards sticking out of it. We used those as bookmarks and I still have quite a collection of them. We’re standing in front of our grammer school. The convent, where most of our teachers lived, is seen in the background and the church, where we had just celebrated my brother Tim’s First Communion, was next door. Tim’s wearing a white tie.

There were at least five Catholic churches in Irondequoit when we moved here. The two on Culver are both senior living facilities now and the parishes all united as one, named after the first Native American saint, Kateri. Church attendance has withered. Millions of people are confessing their secrets to spiritual chatbots now. And then there is organized religion’s attempt to shove credible sexual abuse allegations under the rug. That cost ourl diocese 246 million in a settlement that was finally distributed to the victims.

My mother was working for the diocese when she married my father just ten months before I was born. The office was located in the former Knights of Columbus building at 50 Chestnut Street. We took the bus down there after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays because Catholic schools didn’t have gyms. The CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) had a few gyms, an auditorium, a pool and even a candy counter as you came out of the locker room. The Diocesan offices were upstairs and the priests lived on the top floors. There was a sign on the corner of the building that read “If You Lived Here You Would Be Home By Now.” I was never sure why that merited the effort. Garth Fagan Dance occupies some of this space today.

My mother would tell stories about how the priests she for were forever chasing the girls around the office. I would laugh at the thought and she would say, “No, they were bad!”

We went to both a high school reunion and a family reunion over the weekend. At the first my former teammates were still digesting the fact that our soccer coach is serving life in prison for sexual abuse. When the first allegation was made by a teammate our school, just like the church, quietly transferred him to another school where other allegations were addressed. At the family reunion my cousin told me he received his portion of the settlement from the church. Some consolation. I have two cousins who were nuns. One left the order with her partner. The other is still a nun with partner and still fighting the church hierarchy for more meaningful roles for women. What kind of religion insists on an all male, unmarried priesthood? The job description itself attracts perpetrators.

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I had the window seat on the way in to Los Angeles. I put my iPad camera in record and pressed it flat against the window to steady the cam. It worked until we touched down but I won’t spoil that. The song is from last week. Jack was unable to make the gig so no bass clarinet. It was the night before the first day of school for Melissa’s kids so no cello either. We called Bernie Heveron that afternoon and he sat in on guitar.

It was a good night, crowded but oddly quiet, plenty of attentive new faces. It affected the way we played and, of course, it was all new with Bernie. We had played with Bernie back in the early eighties but he played bass back then.

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I remember celebrating Brian’s 70th birthday at the Little. Maybe it was his 60th. We’ve know Brian a long time. Everybody knows Brian. He and his big bass have played with or sat in with most bands in the city. His 80th bash was hosted by Danny at Abilene. The Goners, Brian’s longest running band and the best in the city, had their gear on the stage out back and since most people there were musicians the music never stopped. The party was billed as 3-7 and the Goners never got up there until after seven.

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Before repairing a few pot holes the park maintenance people had fun with the orange spray paint. I took a series of photos there this morning. This one was my favorites.

I wish we didn’t have to come home to such terrible news. One of the first things I read was J. D,. Vance’s statement “We’re at the WH monitoring the situation in Minneapolis. Join all of us in praying for the victims!” And Kristi Noem, “I am praying for the victims of this heinous attack and their families.” I immediately hear my mom’s voice, “I wish they would stop praying and do something.” Fat chance. The guns were “perfectly legal.” 

The mayor of Minneapolis issued a statement, “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.” Right on, but while I respect the sentiment I can tell you those kids at Mass in the middle the day were probably not praying. Most likely they were spacing out. I went through the tenth grade in Catholic Schools. The nuns were always dropping the lesson plans and taking us over to church where someone would inevitably get sick, barf in the isles and they would sprinkle that disgusting orange stuff on the puke. We may have been looking at the statues or the Stations of the Cross or goofing around with our friends but we weren’t praying. It was just June in that state when Vance Boelter, after preaching the gospel in Africa,  assassinated congresswoman Melissa Hortman. 

The Annunciation Catholic church shooter apparently went to the school. The police say the shooter is transgender. The mayor said, “Anybody that is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community — or any other community out there — has lost their sense of common humanity.” On that I agree with the mayor.

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In yesterday’s post I mentioned we had had to drop out of Matt Green’s Rochester walk in order to catch at least part of Joe Tunis’s twenty-sixth annual Day-Tour. This one consisted of 8 shows in and around Rochester where Joe performs with different musicians in each location. Peggi and caught one of his very first tours and try to catch at least one performance each year. Peggi made this video.

By chance we crossed paths with one of Joe’s earlier performances while we were on the walk withMatt Green. Joe was just finishing up at East End Green (across from Ugly Duck Coffee) when we left the Little Theatre. And then over near Grove Place we ran into James Tabbi power washing his porch.

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If there was ever a movie that was right up our alley “The World Before Your Feet” is it. A documentary about Matt Green walking every street in New York City, over 8000 miles, it is just as fresh today as it must have been when it was released in 2018. Matt just completed his journey in September and he was on stage for a Q &A following an afternoon screening of the movie. He is just as warm and cheerful in person as he was in the movie. No wonder he never mugged.

In the movie we get to experience the Brighton Beach bungalows, the gridded streets of torn down houses at the end of Queens, Emma Lazarus’s grave in Greenpoint cemetery. She wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” How quaint those words sound today. We see the oldest living thing in NY, the 400 year old Queens Giant tree and Seagate, vast expanses of former industrial site in Staten Island and the Coney Island gated community.

Finishing the 8,000 miles was really never really the objective. Each day’s adventure was the point. Along the way he collected funky images of former synagogues that have been converted to churches, barber shops and hair salons with z’s in their name like Cutz or Kutz and 9/11 murals. His ability to stay in the moment was remarkable.

After the Q & A in Rochester Matt plotted a google route for a group walk. We left from the theater and headed over to Grove Place, down Saint Paul, through the Projects to High Falls and then across the river and down an alley behind State Street across Main to the old subway bed on Court Street and then through Washington Square Park. At Clinton Matt turned to us and said “I guess will do one more bridge.” We had been walking for two hours and we planned to catch Joe Tunis performing at Visual Studies Workshop at 4 so we reluctantly left the group. It was as good as the movie.

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Our neighbor’s son and his Russian bride have been painting their garage this summer. They live in the Adirondacks but they have spent the last three weeks or so here with his parents. They are taking their time with the paint job but doing it right.

I seems like a week since I last posted here. The summer heat has slowed things to a crawl, things like my brain, but it is all good. We don’t have air conditioning and that contributes to the lazy pace. We’ve spent a good amount of time in the garden keeping a steady stream of greens coming in with successive plantings. And we walk down to and along the beach most days. We spend most nights reading by candlelight on our screened in porch listening to the crickets, the owls, an occasional coyote and our neighbor’s air conditioning.

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In order to retain Elon Musk as chief executive Tesla just granted him shares in the company worth $30 billion. The richest man in the world now has $150 billion worth and his overall wealth is estimated to be $350 billion. Just the kind of guy you want to put in charge of slashing federal aid programs.

Forbes has Donald Trump’s worth at $5.1 B, half of that coming from his $TRUMP Meme coin. I could be wrong but his inauguration gave us a glimpse of the end of the world, that scene where he was surrounded by tech giants and billionaires.

Meta posted a 36 percent quarterly increase in profit and a 22 percent jump in revenue. Not sure what happened to the Metaverse but they are now working on “super intelligence.” The A.I. will help Meta’s advertising business by improving its social media feed to keep users on its apps longer. Meta’s family of apps, which includes Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has 3.48 billion daily users and they are going to use super intelligence to trap them in their ecosystem and increase the advertising revenue.

Peggi read “Careless People,” some of it out loud. NYT called it “genuinely shocking.” I guess that is still possible. Emotional targeting, algorithms that detect when a teenage girl starts deleting her selfies or uses the word “depression.” “It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and would take that information and share it with advertisers.”Not to mention spreading hate speech or finding the “persuadables ” in a presidential election.

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You can’t stay away from politics. Not that that should be an objective. I’m just thinking how it keeps intruding, like when the president of FIFA couldn’t get Trump off the field while Chelsea celebrated their amazing victory over PSG.

Mary Jean Eisenhower, the president’s granddaughter, said in an interview. “I think it was a beautiful program, and I just found it very disturbing when it got caught into the political …” Conceived by a Kansas farmer and created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Food for Peace” has sent sacks of grain, agricultural surplus, stamped “From the American People” to more than four billion people in 150 countries around the world. Now it is effectively dead. The program was administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Elon Musk fed “into the wood chipper”

PEPFAR, the campaign to end H.I.V. globally, was crippled by Elon Musk’s Government Efficiency inititive. Created during the George W. Bush administration the HIV treatment and prevention program is credited with saving over 26 million lives in low income countries. It was widely considered the single most effective public health campaign ever.

And this from Reuters: “U.S.-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10 million are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organizations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations following President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze U.S. foreign aid. The U.S. government will spend $160,000 to incinerate the stocks at a facility in France that handles medical waste.”

As Elon Musk told Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

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When someone asks for suggestions for things to do with out of town guests I always recommend parking somewhere in the High Falls district off of State Street and walking across the Pont de Rennes Bridge (named after Rochester’s sister city) for a spectacular view of the falls that put Rochester (the Flour City) on the map with all the mills that harnessed the power of the river to turn their stones. And at the other end of the bridge is one of Rochester’s oldest breweries, Genesee, with a restaurant and a great gift store for iconic souvenirs.

Between the gift shop and the room where they make the specialty beers is a huge arial photo of downtown Rochester, like maybe 15 feet long, with approximently twenty buttons to push, one for each decade of Rochester’ beer history. The buttons each illuminate locations on the aerial photo of the breweries in operation during that time.

As popular as breweries are today you would think we were at a peak but if you pushed “1870-1880” twenty four locations light up. Rochester hit its high mark in working breweries during this time and the city vied with others for recognition as the nation’s preeminent brewing city. Emil Reisky and Henry Spies ran one of the breweries near the city’s High Falls. They sold the brewery to Mathias Kondolf and he renamed it “Genesee.”

1850-1860 Rochester benefited from an influx of industrious German immigrants. The city’s brewing industry also benefited from this migration and from the growing theory that beer was healthy. (It was sometimes referred to as “liquid bread”.) This frustrated temperance advocates. Lager beer was brewed and sold in Rochester for the first time in 1852. The Germans’ technique of aging beer often produced a lighter and smoother alternative to traditional ales. 

1880-1890 The brewing industry employed the developing technology of refrigeration. This allowed bigger brewers to transport beer more effectively and to farther locations, eliminating many small local breweries. Bartholomay emerged as the largest of Rochester’s breweries, employing 150 workers, producing 300,000 barrels a year and utilizing 75 horses to deliver beer throughout the city.

1910-1920 The battle over Prohibition continued as the U.S. went to war against Germany. Politically compromised, large brewers (mostly of German descent) were easily vilified. My grandfather and his partner changed the name of his bar on Thurston and Chili Avenue from “Munich Tavern” to the “Dodd Miller Restaurant.”

1920-1933 While alcohol was illegal, consumption did not stop. Estimates indicate that Americans’ overall consumption of alcohol decreased by only 30 percent. My grandfather ran a speakeasy during this period..

1950-1960 Genesee’s entered the world of television advertising with its most memorable campaign. The “Jenny” girl made her first appearance in 1953.

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Bob Smith, for twenty five years the host of “1370 Connection,” used to say, “Follow the money.” By starting there he could explain almost everything. It does sort of make the world go ’round. Lately I’ve been starting with the Business Section of the NYT instead of the A section and I’m finding the articles there, grounded in business practices as they are, bring a certain amount of clarity to the topics that can produce rage in the A section. Tariffs, the Big Beautiful Bill, War in Ukraine, China, Crypto and AI.

When I went away to school I was asked to choose a major. Up until then I had not given a thought to that subject. I really had no idea what my father did at Kodak. A Mechanical Engineer working as a Design Engineer, the lens projects were top secret at the time. I put down “Business.” I guess I was thinking about my grandfather behind the counter in his small grocery store. Turned out my roommate, already a junior, was also a business major. His father owned a jewelry store on the town square in New Castle, Indiana. My first semester I took Business Admin 101. Classes were held in a big auditorium just down the street from my dorm. All I remember about it was the IU football players coming in late, en masse, like someone was shepherding them through the academic phase of their careers. People called it a “pud course.” I switched majors in the first few weeks.

Our president got his BS in bs from Wharton Business School, went into business with his dad and was quickly sued for racial discrimination. He is a talented snake oil salesman with an insatiable appetite for attention. How much money can you make on perfume? Capitalism has its aberrations but I believe it is as good an organizing principal as any. I just wish Trump was a better business man.

China already has global dominance in high-tech industries like batteries, robotics and drones. They control the supply chains for rare earth minerals used in electric vehicles and they have the best electric vehicles on the planet for the best price. If you follow the money you see how the Big Beautiful Bill funnels money to the top, the tired “trickle down” theory. The Chinese government provides financial support for aggressive innovation. Trump is crippling green energy initiatives. China is going to have our lunch.

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The building above, on Mustard Street near our old neighborhood, may have been part of the old French’s food processing factory. Once one of the iconic Rochester companies, they left town in the late seventies. I grew up with the stuff and remember how good that yellow streak looked on the hot dog pictured in the billboard behind the center field wall in the old Red Wing stadium.

I poked in front of this build while did my interview with Cal Zone on his WAYO Record Geek show. We video-chatted with Rich and Andrea today and Rich asked if I intended to do any more radio work. (Rich has a wildly succesful podcast series on Elmore Leonard’s books.) I laughed at the idea and said something about the interview and my song taste being kind of mild-mannered. When we hung up Peggi asked why I badmouthed my show. I am really happy that Peggi liked it.

During dinner tonight we found a news story from the Detroit News about Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster and Cosa Nostra boss who disappeared in 1975. Peggi had taken me by the Red Fox, the restaurant on Maple and Telegraph Road where he was last seen, when we were visiting her parents back in the day. They never found his body and didn’t even declare him dead until 1982. Now fifty years later someone is selling $30 tickets to a multi media presentation on July 23 at Macomb Community College where they will reveal where the body is buried. .

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I parked in front of this window on my way to a yearly dermatologist appointment. I like being his first patient of the day and this window looked especially nice in the early morning light. Do I have skin cancer yet? He didn’t see any.

Our neighbor, Rick, is out front on his unicycle. He has a clown gig at the harbor this weekend and he’s warming up. He told us he’s having trouble with his “quick mount,” getting up on the bike from a standstill. At seventy-five with a knee replacement I would say he’s doing great. We played horseshoes for the first time this year and we both fell apart midway in the third round. It was tied with a match apiece and we were neck and neck to the last throw but it took forever to get there.

Local strawberries are on the shelves. The season lasts only a few weeks so it needs to be pounced upon. We picked up three quarts at the Brighton Farmers Market and heard Debby Kendrick Project at the same time. They sounded great in the open air. We bought some exotic mushrooms (the proprietor called our attention to the primordial underside) and some locally made mushroom pasta as well. It made a perfect dinner.

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