Category: Lopsided Observations

I didn’t notice the concentric circles on Gloria’s bread at first. It was maybe the third or fourth time we had some. She gave Peggi some of her sour dough starter a year or so ago and Peggi has managed to keep it alive by feeding it and making bread every other week. Often it is French or semolina loaves but my favorite is the Seeded Multigrain, Gloria’s recipe. But Peggi’s bread never had the rings on it until today. The secret is a wooden proofing basket called a banneton.

The Milwaukee convention was depressing. I copied this line from our local paper’s coverage. “After finishing a prayer, the pledge and a rendition of “God Bless America,” the delegates raised their fists and immediately began chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I spent too much time thinking about how the good lord spared Trump and yet made a quick decision not to protect the fireman seated nearby him. I’m so happy Biden is hanging up his cleats. We can finally move on with wild speculation and positive energy.

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We’ve been preparing to paint our house for the last month. Had to repair some of the concrete blocks and let that set up before painting. We finish work by dinner time and eat while watching soccer. We. usually have the summer off but this year the Copa America and Euros were happening at the same time. We don’t have cable anymore so we started out with Sling. in order to record the matches, stay away from the news and then watch them one at a time. We dumped Sling about halfway through. They were trimming the games, starting the second half at 70 minutes or so and then cutting away with four or five minutes to go. We settled on Fubo and now we are paying as much as we did with cable but we’re doing it without Spectrum. We will dump it after the finals tomorrow, both on the same day so we”ll save the Copa final for Monday. Posting here has taken a back seat. Did I mention that Spain is going all the way. Peggi will wear the Jersey tomorrow!

One of the most popular 45s in our house is Nature Boy by Bobby Darin. Peggi’s childhood friend, Chris Firth, wrote her name in magic marker on our copy. We might also have Nat King Cole’s version on an lp. I know we used to have it. Bobby Darin does a swinging version and his backup singers almost steal the show. Of course Coltrane’s version is beautiful. Elvin Jones almost sounds melodic. And Etta James does a great version. But “who wrote this thing?” we wondered while out walking.

I looked it up when we got home and that led me down a long rabbit hole. Known by the lower case moniker, eden ahbez (1908 – 1995), he was possibly one of the first hippies, long hair and a beard, white robes, sandals, he lived outside under the first “L” in the Hollywood sign. He left the sheet music to his song with Nat King Cole and it went to number one in 1948.

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return

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We had taken our friend, John, to his doctor in Geneseo and we stopped at Schaller’s on the way home so John could pick up a bacon burger. As we were leaving with the goods we spotted this silver spaceship of a car. It pulled into the parking lot next door and the driver got out and went into Hollywood Traders (“We Buy Gold”). I stopped to take a picture of the car. I wasn’t the only one doing so. Two teenagers were grinning, flashing hand signs and taking selfies in front of the beast before I got out of the car. The license plate read LKY 8466. Peggi looked up the price and found they are north of 100G

On top of our existential crisis, the president has forced people my age to confront our eventual demise. If he doesn’t step aside and let the Democrats nominate a vital, clear headed woman (like Gretchen Witmer) in the next week we’re going to be forced to have a Trump Bible in every household. Maybe she could initiate campaign finance reform and get rid of the electoral college. Great Britain, France and even Iran have all shifted leftward. I want to be optimistic. When asked about stepping down Biden said: “If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that I might do that.” We are overdue for the second coming.

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We’ve been walking early this week, before our second cup of coffee that is, in order to beat the heat. We were amazed at how many people were already at the beach on Juneteenth. You run into different people at that hour. This morning we ran into Fred Sanfilipo. His camera looks like a military weapon. He said he had been taking photos in the park since six.

Fred had his own agency back in the Mac II days and each year we’d see him in the front row at Jazz Fest. A couple of years ago we ran into him in the park. He brought our attention to an unusual bush with magnificent flowers, a Harlequin Glorybower. He gave us the address of his Flickr page and said he would put us on his mailing list. Now three or four times a week we find an email with a nature photo, just the photo and a witty subject line. These two photos are recent examples. Almost all his photos are taken in Durand Eastman Park and all are something special.

Fred says he hates Facebook (we seconded that) but he loves sharing his photos. If you would like to be added to his mailing list comment here and I will pass your email address along to Fred.

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We kept the last disc we rented from Netflix and we have yet to watch it. The “Muscle Shoals” documentary is still sitting by the tv. Funny how antiquated that process looks already. I know newspaper home delivery is just a matter of time. I went to the NYT site to report a no show for our paper this morning and found this message when I logged in. “We’re sorry, but we’re unable to deliver your paper today. However, we’ll redeliver it tomorrow.” Redeliver? They’ve already fired their copywriter.

We stopped out to hear Wren Cove at Red White and Brew on State Street. It was the same night the Yankee sensation was on the mound at nearby Red Wing Stadium. They had a record attendance that night and the bar was nearly empty. Wren Cove is just a duo so they only sounded better. Melissa, the cello player (she also plays with Margaret Explosion) turned 40 that night so we had a card for her. After the set Melissa told us she feels so old now. We laughed. Andrew, the guitar player in Wren Cove said, “You’re a musician. Musicians are 29 forever.”

I’ve taken over the table in our place with the construction of another “Brief History” episode. It takes about a year to collect the images (please redeliver) and a few idle hours for the match-making. And then I will take my time with the digital release.

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This Sun Ra Sunday (link) was a gorgeous sunny day. So sunny I felt the back of my neck burning as we sat on a blanket in the middle of Parcel 5. Gentle Sun Ra music was coming from a blue bag and Jason was reading what he described as an Appalachian gothic novel. It was a small book with wide leading. An envelope with found photos spilling out of it was sitting in front of us. Each was a jewel, intriguing for completely different reasons and each prompted digressive conversation.

The second musical selection was a collection of Arkestra tunes featuring June Tyson. My head was swimming with memories of Midtown Plaza and the promised revitalization shows. The Manhattan Restaurant, the stores that used to surround this area, the friends that worked in the buildings around us. The music was transporting us.

Tents lined Broad Street, near where we were sitting, a flea market overstuffed with vintage gear. I bought the found photo (above) for a dollar. On the back of the photo was a handwritten description, “Bob’s new boat. He built it. It will go 70-80 miles per hour. This is at Millerton.”

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We have been putting together songs for a live cd (is there any other kind?) and a few of the tracks are from a night when Peggi couldn’t play because she had broken her finger. She is playing around with overdubbing (I know that would make the track not quite live) electronic sax parts. I shared the songs with her from my Apple Music (formerly iTunes) app and Peggi found she could only play along with the first 30 seconds of each song because of some sort of copy protection. I sent the songs to her directly from my hard drive as a workaround.

We watched the Apple Event, not live and not the whole thing but enough. The presenters were creepy, even Tim Cook. If I have the gist right Apple has borrowed ChatGPT, branded it as Apple Intelligence and incorporated it into their family of apps, all of which we use. The stock went bonkers and we sold some more. We bought our first shares back in the 90s when we were playing the Bug Jar happy hours. Steve Brown, one of the three original owners was tending bar and selling stock.

Our neighbor, Rick, bought the Lou Reed tribute lp at Record Store Day and he just let us borrow it. We have watched the Keith Richards “Waiting for My Man” video many times. It turns out it is the best thing on the album. Second best actually. The cover is the best thing. A Mick Rock photo of Lou with a mirrored reflection printed on a silvery stock. I was looking forward to Joan Jett’s track but it was a flop. Mary Gauthier does a beautiful version of “Coney Island Baby” and Bill Bentley writes the thoroughly enjoyable liner notes.

Bentley talks about working for Warner Brothers when Lou recorded “The Raven,” an album we never caught up with for some reason. So this morning, before our walk, we streamed The Raven! It is sensational!

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In Judy Gregory‘s artist statement at Richard Margolis’s Gallery she says, “Throughout history, regimes and individuals who have felt threatened by words have done their best to eliminate the sources from which those words have come.” Gregory was in the audience at Chautauqua Institution on August 12, 2022 when Salmon Rushdie was nearly killed by a knife-wielding attacker. In response to that experience she created the piece “8/12/22”, a panel made from transparent used tea bags in which “WORDS turn into SWORDS. “

On the wall, in the fourth floor hallway between Margolis’s space and Colleen Buzzard’s space, I found this sheet of paper taped to the wall. That is indeed where the magic happens – between the spaces.

I liked Jon Gary’s photographs at Colleen Buzzard’s, particularly these two. The show was called “High Contrast” and I was thinking about that property when I said to Jon, “So, these are high contrast.” Jon said they were but also he was thinking of the contrast between the photos he had separated into pairs when he hung this show. Even though I was drawn to the pair above I had missed that aspect.

In the back room of Colleen’s, where Hucky holds court, art books are typically laid out on the big table. An open invitation to browse and ideally, prompt art talk. Hucky said they were in NYC last week and I’m guessing they stopped by Printed Matter. I found a Laura Fields book in which each spread had the top half of the front page of an issue of the New York Times with one color photograph on the left and a reproduction of a flat, abstract painting on the right. I flipped through the book a few times and was drawn to the paintings but I could not figure out the connection with the newspapers. Peggi pointed out that Fields had picked up a detail in the NYT photos, a linear pattern, whether it be from a piece of cloth or made of metal pipes, and created a painting with that motif.

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I way I understand it Pete set his phone down on a table next to where he was giving a talk. Richard was walking about the room taking photos of the crowd while Pete talked. Near the end of the track Richard set his phone down on the same table. And then picked it up again. But he didn’t pick up the right phone. Pete put what he thought was his phone in his pocket and went home.

Richard could not get into his phone so drove out to the Apple Store. They wiped Pete’s phone clean and and restored Richard’s phone account. Sometime later Richard got a cal and Pete’s phone rang. It was a call for Richard. Neither of these two are thieves so they both went out to the Apple Store and straightened it out.

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I ran into Daniel Armbruster, Joywave’s lead singer, in the Bop Shop while I was previewing 45s on the turntable. I told him we really liked the two songs from their new lp that were pre-released a few days before. That lp is out now and if this commercial doesn’t get you to click the “Buy” button nothing will.

Joywave premiers a short film in Little Theatre 1 tonight. We’d love to be there but Margaret Explosion is performing in the Café at the same time – 7pm. As it happens we are also premiering a short film today as well. Stephen Black created this gem with one of one of our shortest songs (under two minutes).

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“There is a sour tendency in cultural politics today — a growing gap between speaking about the world and acting in it.

In the domain of rhetoric, everyone has grown gifted at pulling back the curtain. An elegant museum gallery is actually a record of imperial violence; a symphony orchestra is a site of elitism and exploitation: these critiques we can now deliver without trying. But when it comes to making anything new, we are gripped by near-total inertia. We are losing faith with so many institutions of culture and society — the museum, the market, and, especially this week, the university — but cannot imagine an exit from them. We throw bricks with abandon, we lay them with difficulty, if at all. We engage in perpetual protest, but seem unable to channel it into anything concrete.

So we spin around. We circle. And, maybe, we start going backward.” – Jason Farago

I’m guessing Jason Farago worked on this opening passage to his NYT review of the Venice Biennale for a bit or more likely it just crystalized for him after x number of wall tags. Even Pope Francis stopped by the “Foreigners Everywhere” (probably titled as a poke at Italy’s rightwing) Biennale to celebrate its message of inclusivity toward marginalized people. The show’s curators include L.G.B.T.Q. people as “foreigners,” and even the Indigenous peoples of Brazil and Mexico, of Australia and New Zealand as “foreigners.”

When I was growing up there were just a few Little League coaches who took their best players out after three innings and let the second string play the last three. It was inclusive but sort of hard to watch. I am a big fan of the long overdue Title 9 provisions and women soccer players being paid on par with the men – equal playing field etc. But pleasing the senses

This trends has shaped many local shows as well. And so, ok, it didn’t delight the senses. That is not what it set out to do. But it was inclusive. It makes me feel like a straniero.

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“I will stop the killing, I will stop the bloodshed, I will end the agony of our people, the plunder of our cities, the sacking of our towns, the violation of our citizens and the conquest of our country.” – DT on the campaign trail

His jeans are slung low. He wears a white t-shirt and a red bandana. He’s a bit beyond middle age with a scruffy beard. He looks like one of those guys that stormed the Capitol. He started working on this roof during the pandemic. Back then he had two other signs in his windshield and he was cranking right wing radio while he worked. The roof was never fished. Scaffolding and bundles of roofing sat on the roof through two winters. We thought Covid had killed him but he’s back – with one of his signs.

Fetal Voting Rights!

No Borders!

Stop Government!

Mandatory Carry!

Make America Pray Again!

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We caught up with two phenoms this morning by watching a highlight reel of Caitlin Clark from Iowa’s victory over LSU. I love her. And then the new Beyonce album, the whole album. It is a monster although at the hour mark I reached overload on the multitracked vocals.

Woodchuck Tree Service has been working at this house for five days! They toppled of this giant. We’re guessing the trunk is headed to a mill. We were headed into the park to looking for a good spot to view the eclipse. We found a perfect spot in the empty lot across the street from Bruce’s house. I was thinking I could stop by the House of Guitars and ask. Last time we were in there Armand, Bruce’s brother, was pacing up and down the aisles while his radio show was playing through the sound system. He was saying “the name of the place is I like it like that” over and over. I assumed we had just missed that classic. Armand sounds really great on the radio. His show airs at these times .

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“Boil-water notice issued after body found in Highland Park Reservoir.” Now they are going to have to put a cover over the highlight of Olmsted’s park to protect the drinking water.

The blossoming fruit trees, forsythia and Cornus Mas had a dusting of snow when left for our walk this morning. On Log Cabin Road the sun came out and it was a spectacular sight. I pulled my camera out of my pocket and the lens wouldn’t open. It had been so long since we walked and the battery had drained. We were caught up in the early spring and got ourselves into a few projects in the yard, the kind that leave you exhausted at the end of the day. But what a treat being outside all day. I think this is the longest since Ive been away from my blog.

As seen above, we had gig somewhere other than the Little Theatre Café (where we can be found every four weeks) – a memorial celebration of Dave Ripton at Skylark Lounge with three bands. Frying Pan played first, Margaret Explosion was in the middle and the great Nod played last. It was quite an experience playing through a PA, even the amps were miced and the open vocal mics picked up the stage sound. We had no soundcheck I used Brian’s drum set. Ken played his electric bass rather than the double bass. We did a version of “Floating at the Bug Jar” for Casey, Skylark’s owner. He used to own the Bug Jar when we played happy hours back in the day.

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As many times as we have been up and down Culver Road I never get tired of it. It is one of the city’s main arteries between downtown and the lake. We lived just two block off Culver in the city and we’re just two off it here. I road my bike from one end of it to the other and photographed some of the highlights. I always liked the house above. It reminded me of a house in the old section of Beverly Hills.

The new owners have been making some changes (i.e. wrecking it). So with the temperatures in the seventies yesterday, I rode my bike over to the house to take an updated picture. Nothing Lasts Forever.

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February’s bonus day brought a brief but welcome reappearance of winter weather. We walked to the end of Hoffman Road in a snow squall. The red winged blackbirds that we’ve been listening to for the last few weeks were nowhere to be found. The marsh looked like a Tarkovsky still. Twenty-four hours later the sky is blue and the temperature is fifty degrees.

Since my father first identified the yellow flower pushing its way through the snow on our hillside I’ve noted the date. They were out on February 14 this year, the earliest date since I started keeping track. Jared spotted a groundhog in the garden a few weeks ago so he already has the electric fence on to protect the lettuce that wintered over. The cherry blossoms in the park are worrisome. It is good to see the chipmunks are out of hibernation but I miss winter.

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I don’t watch enough football to know what the red zone is but there was an awful lot of red in last night. Enough red in both of the teams’ uniforms for me to keep getting them mixed up in the opening half. And then there is the red in Taylor’s lipstick. The 3D ‘s Super Bowl LVIII graphics, painted on the center of the field were so distracting I couldn’t follow the plays. Going in, Peggi and I sort of thought we were for Kansas City, having watched a few minutes of game earlier in the season while at our neighbors.’ But everyone else in the room, three of my brothers, both of my sisters and our brother-in-law were routing for San Francisco so we had to watch it. It turns out they had all had enough of Mahomes, Kelce and especially Taylor before the game even started.

The lead switched a few times and it was a great game by other Super Bowl standards but we watch so much European football that it was really hard to keep our focus on the game. The US game all happens in snippets, incremental movements of the ball with heroic force by armies of players, with ads between every play. The European version, by contrast, is fluid, 45 minutes without commercials, a fifteen minute break and 45 more. Last night was a five hour proposition with fantastic food and good company.

I didn’t like seeing Kelce slam his helmet on the field and scream at the coach. I worry about Taylor.

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Horseshoe Road, the neglected, long closed-to-traffic road through Durand Eastman Park, is as pretty in the winter as it is in summer. We skied up it today, by the clubhouse, and across Kings Highway. There is another half of the park over there, most of it undeveloped, that we rarely see. The hill leading down to the valley was too windswept to provide a soft landing so we turned around.

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I took the photo above one week ago, just before the snow. The northeast corner of Main and Clinton was looking especially sad. When I was kid I thought this was the four corners of our city. It was where all the actions was, the Roasted Peanut store, Fanny Farmer, Jay’s Record Ranch and the gag gift store. Only later did my father set me straight. The real four corners is blocks away on the other side of the river and it too was once the center of downtown.

When I photographed Main and Clinton in the seventies I was thinking the same thing, about how run-down and seedy the stores looked. But at least there were people out on the streets.

Saint John’s on Humboldt Street had neither a gym or a ballfield. We had recess in the parking lot. We would get on a city bus after school, get off downtown, and work our way to the CYO, now home to Garth Fagan Dance, where they had a gymnasium and pool. There were so many people in the streets back then. I don’t like this trajectory.

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