Category: Lopsided Observations

This could be the same blue heron that terrorized the fish in our neighbors pond this spring. We spotted him yesterday in Durand Lake, acting like he owns the place. Every time we came upon a turtle, sunning themselves on a log, they would jump in the water before I could get my camera out of my pocket but this guy was proudly posing for us.

Margaret Explosion plays Thursday at the Little Theatre Café. It promises to be a fun summer show. Arpad is finishing the mastering on our new cd. Hope to have that available by our next gig.

Every few weeks we pick up a package of postcards at Deb’s house. The cards have generic “vote” graphics on the front. The most recent bunch had the four letters arranged like Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture. There is a sheet of stamps in the package and a list of registered voters somewhere in the country, places where an election or primary is on the horizon. This last package was targeted to residents of Anchorage, Alaska, and we were told to get them in the mail by August 3.

The Activate America logo is in the upper left-hand corner of the list of addresses, and on the other side they have a brief message they would like us to print—not handwrite—something simple like, “Are you tired of prices going up while the wealthy get tax breaks?” Then we let them know when the primary or election is and give them a web address where they can get more information. In this case it was 
elections.alaska.gov..

It is extremely tempting to improvise and write exactly what I think, but I hold back and add only small personal touches of emphasis.

A couple of times we have left our car in Aman’s parking lot and walked under the expressway, then down Bay View along the bay and up the hill to Deb’s house. Both times we found new works to photograph on the walls under the bridges. I’ve collected these photos on this new Public Works page.

My sister-in-law teaches design classes at RIT. I recently sent her a birthday greeting and suggested she get her class to work on a new logo for the USPS. Sometime in the nineties the Post Office hired Young & Rubicam to design a logo to replace Raymond Loewy’s iconic 1970 design. We’ve been living with that abomination long enough!

We watched as the Post Office replaced the old logos on the boxes near our house in the city, and we couldn’t help but notice they skipped a few. We started rounding up photos of the old logo, and we posted them on therefrigerator.net. That website is long gone, but I had ChatGPT track down the page in the Internet Archive.

I found this tiny digital photo of mailboxes on Monroe Avenue, at what used to be called Brighton Commons, on a web page that led to the one above. I upscaled the photo in Photoshop and had AI generate the top and bottom portions. I’m really happy with how it came out. This AI thing has some potential. And I like the logos AI generated better than Young & Rubicam’s.

We were living in an apartment on Dartmouth Street, in a house that Tim Schapp owned, when we decided to get married. Peggi bought a dress from a small shop on Monroe Avenue and I had a suit made by the Turkish tailor who had a shop on St. Paul in the building where New Math practiced.

We rented the non denominational chapel at Colgate, across from Highland Park and a friend of my parents, Jim Hughes, officiated. My brother Fran played some Weather Report tracks on a turntable. My sister, Amy, carried some flowers up the aisle and my brother, Mark, took photos.

Joe Barrett was performing in a play that day at UR Summer Theatre so he couldn’t make it but John Gilmore and Brad Fox, longtime Rochester buddies, were there. We were so happy that so many of our friends from Indiana, where we had gone to school, were able to celebrate with us. Rich, Kim and Dave, Norm and Pam. Steve Hoy was our best man and Peggi’s sister was the maid of honor. Three of Peggi’s girlfriends came from Detroit. We had about ten people sleeping in our apartment that weekend.

My sister, Ann and three of my brothers, John, Tim and Fran took us out to dinner on Sunday and I learned one of them met a foreign exchange student who was working as an au pair for a couple at our wedding. He followed her half way around the world like the Wreckless Eric song.

I’m a little worried this might be too much—spinning records before and after a set with the band. The initial idea, a set of jazz 45s followed by the band and then a set of party 45s, seemed more interesting than playing two sets, so we booked it.

Pulling records for the two sets got a little crazy. I could have easily fit many of the records into either set, so I kept confusing myself about which one I was building. Jimmy Smith’s “Midnight Special” is party jazz. I’m starting the second set with it.

I think this gig will feature the whole band. And because Skylark is a nightclub, we’ll play through the sound system, which means Ken will bring his electric bass and the rest of us will go through the PA.

Jack made it to the Jazz Fest gig, but he was unable to make the last two Little Theatre gigs. Those two nights—with sax, cello, bass, and drums (and no bass clarinet or guitar)—were like night and day. The first took us into messy territory with no subject, just vamps with no body. The second took its time and eased into things that allowed a melody to come to the fore. Peggi can always do that if she has the room.

Because we don’t rehearse and we don’t have any songs, all we can do is talk about it. That, and relax and stay open.

Boat 2004

The utility elevators at the hotel we stayed in New York were being repaired so the staff was using the same elevators as the guests. Regular guests were complaining about it, otherwise we wouldn’t have noticed. I went down to the exercise room each morning and I found faster to take the stairs. I took this shot between the 7th and the 8th floor. It is similar to the photo below that I had in “Portals & Planes,” from a few years back.

It didn’t matter that it was raining and especially cold as we headed up to Chelsea. We found an oasis called Rosemary’s on Greenwich Avenue where we had smoked salmon, beet salad with pistachios and coffee. It didn’t matter that so many of the galleries in Chelsea were closed for installation of new shows. Hauser Wirth on 18th was showing “Life With P. Philip Guston : Paintings and Drawings 1964-1976.” The show was mounted in conjunction with the release of “Life With P.: Journals, 1966-1976,” poet Musa McKim Guston’s book collection of her journals.

Many of the paintings, drawings and prints are from the collection of Guston’s daughter, Musa, and many are illustrations of Musa McKim Guston’s poetry. We got real comfortable here. Five short films with Guston play in a continuous loop in a side gallery. And when you dizzy from Guston immersion the Hauser Wirth book collection merits a few hours of browsing. Rather than packing the book around town we will order online.

Our city is a Sanctuary City. We have a city street address but we live in a town which does not have guidelines that prohibit law enforcement from assisting in ICE maneuvers. So a group of citizens has been meeting at the library and preparing to take our concerns to the town board. The board appoints the police chief, establishes their budget and is ultimately responsible for establishing police guidelines.

We were standing outside the library this morning, waiting for it to open, when we spotted these three back military vehicles. I saw someone sitting in the smaller of the three vehicles and I walked over to ask what was going on. I asked if they were part of the town police and he told me they were from the city of Rochester and they were working with the town police on some sort of operation. I was ready to push for more information but I was distracted by the assault rifle in this guy’s lap. Its trajectory, in the that casual position, would have pierced the door and entered my lower half. At that moment the tinted window in the vehicle to my right rolled down and I said hi to another armed soldier. I muttered something like, “I didn’t know the city had such serious equipment” and I walked back to our group.

We planted a row each of lettuce, arugula, spinach and cilantro this afternoon and I got these news alerts on my watch while we were down there. I was trying to digest the first one – the Musketeer demanding the biggest firms on Wall Street to use his AI platform, one deliberately tweaked to generate racist, antisemitic and violent content. And then thinking about the war and Pete Hegseth uses biblical justifications, describing “the fight against Iran”Epic Fury” as a struggle for “Christian Nation” values. He prays for “maximum lethality” against the enemy, implying there is something like minimum lethality.

I looked up a few of Hegseth’s recent chestnuts:
“Blessed be the lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”
“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”
“Give them…overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
“Break the teeth of the ungodly.”

It seems like yesterday when W launched his “GWOT” (Global War on Terror” with “Shock and Awe.” In response I did the piece above for a Pyramid Art show. Tom Burke bought it and I had almost forgotten about it but here we go again.

Christ died for our sins or so the story goes. He died on this day, Good Friday, between noon and three o’clock. I remember sitting on our front steps with my brother and sister on day as beautiful as this one, a day off from school too, while we attempted to stay quiet for those three hours. It was my mom’s idea. We could only go so long without laughing at the situation. I don’t think we crossed the hour mark. We had already given up candy for Lent and we had just two more days before we could gorge ourselves on chocolate.

It is hard to find any humor in all this. I miss Charlie Rangle.

This sticker has been on the unfitly box at the corner of Goodman and Ridge for so long I can’t be sure which president it was intended for. It was cold and blustery but sunny day for the No Kings Rally and the local turnout was impressive. So many smiles in such dark times. If Congress can let the president go to war without approval or even a coherent explanation this sticker will read like a foreign lanquage.

I think we were headed up to the Portuguese restaurant, Adega on Elm Street in Toronto, when we spotted this sign. The red and yellow of the Spanish flag with a jack-like graphic in black in place of the coat of arms just screamed out to us. Too slick to be graffiti, I assumed Chaos was a club or a line of clothing but I couldn’t find anything via Google. The way the sign is framed by glue from what came before, the “ski” tag that just about matches the yellow above, even the green/blue figure interacting with the animated jack add interest. but I could quibble that the angle of the cross piece in the letter “h” doesn’t match the “c” and “a” but I like the graphic typography and word it serves is “Chaos.” The sign would work bette here in the states that it does up there.

These two photos were taken in two different countries, both from the train as we crossed the border after spending four days in Toronto. We had cold but beautiful weather there and rain on the way back, so these pictures reflect the dreariness. The Niagara River cuts a deep gorge and natural border between the two countries, and the view from the train was dramatic.

My cousin lives about a half mile from the Amtrak station on the US side. We called her to say hello on the way over (her dad, my uncle, was the world’s biggest train enthusiast). She arranged to have coffee and sandwiches from Di Camillo’s waiting for us on the way back. There is an hour of downtime while Homeland Security does its thing, and it flew by as we got caught up.

There is an unwritten rule in museums that says if you put a work-on-paper from your collection on display for six months you have to put it back in storage for at least five years. UV damage, fluctuations in humidity etc. We learned this little tidbit at an “Open Mic” session with Lauren Tagliaferro at the MAG of Friday. You’ll have to hurry over there to see this Robert Motherwell collage before it goes back undercover.

I played all four of our “My Funny Valentine” 45s yesterday (for my valentine.) Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Chico Hamilton and Jerry Mulligan. When I was done Peggi said, “And didn’t Chet Baker do that song?” In small print on the Mulligan record it listed Chet Baker on trumpet.

All four versions are in my Jazz45s playlists below. The song is a marvel.

He’s not funny anymore. The ones who thought he was and now feel otherwise may just be enough to turn this thing around. I do get the sense the tide is beginning to turn. Our flirtation with fascism may have run its course. The “I alone can fix it” guy has enriched himself, his family, the tech oligarchs, the oil tycoons and the Middle East Sheikhs. He is gleefully destroying the progress we were making toward generating the green energy we’ll need for all these future endeavors. Rochester is a sanctuary city so we are probably one of the next targets. I would like to help protect what is left of our democracy.

By coincidence the George Wegman painting we have hanging in our bedroom slipped down in its frame this morning. I found some linen hanging tape and hung it back in place. In George’s artist statement, on view at Richard Margolis’s space this month, George says he asked himself what it would it be like if my paintings could cry. He says he laughed tearfully and cried sadly during the project. His crying paintings are exceptionally beautiful.

There is so much to look at (and think about) in Colleen Buzzard’s studio. The walls are forever in flux with work in progress and I never fail to fixate on a jewel like the piece above.

Peter Monacelli’s fan club packed the fourth floor of the Anderson Arts building. Richard Margolis grabbed this cluster. Pete has been dealing with some health issues but he never lets that get his spirits down. His artist statement included this quote from Robert Henri.“Art is the true province of every human being. Art is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside extra.” Pete says, “In my artistic life I have attempted to put the thought of all that I love in all the things that i have made.”

I love gatefold album covers especially ones that utilize the spread and span the gutter. I photographed the spreads of a few of my favoites back in 2011 and today, after listening to a Last Poets single, I went down a Mati Klarwein rabbit hole.

Klarein hung out with Jimi Hendrix and Salvador Dali. He created album covers for Carlos Santana, Buddy Miles, Jackie McLean and Earth Wind & Fire as well but the three above are gems. I noticed the initials, “BF,” on the back of Bitches Brew. I’ll have to get that back to Brad one of these days.

I love how my father left the tree he outlined in watercolor as is and then animated the figures in this painting. I was standing next to him at my easel when he painted this. We were taking a painting class at the Memorial Art Gallery and I must have seen the photo he was using as a reference, one of his own, but I didn’t study it closely. I remember thinking how innocent the protesters appeared, the so called “Raging Grannies.” But then they were free to protest in the middle of a working day. And my father, retired from Kodak, was there protesting the Bush administration. He would be filled with rage today.

I recently came across the photo my father used as a reference. And I immediately spotted Bill and Marilyn, a former classmate of mine, holding up the peace sign. They often come to Margaret Explosion shows and we sat with them at the last high school reunion. I sent them the photo and a photo of my father’s painting.

On our walk we ran into Steve Grieve at the end of Hoffman. He told us we had to go to his Facebook page to see his movie of a fox catching a squirrel, killing it by biting its neck, and then burying it. And just a few minutes later a woman stopped her car and asked me if I was the one carrying a “Trump is a Mindfuck” sign at a demonstration downtown. I said I might have been and she said she loved the sign. She introduced herself as Theresa, a new neighbor, and as she drove off she said, “Trump is a Mindfuck.”