Category: Lopsided Observations

There were rumors about Brother Heathwood when I was going to school at Bishop Kearney. I had a friend who was in plays there and I remember him laughing about how Heathwood , the drama teacher, chased after the girls. There is nothing funny about sexual abuse so severe that it robbed a former student of the ability to conceive. I lasted two years at Kearney and find it telling that my favorite memory of the place was when Dave Vercolen stood up in class and punched the abusive Brother Levy right in the face. Heathwood’s order, the Irish Christian Brothers whose local members lived on the top floor of the high school, went bankrupt paying off victims who successfully sued. Yet the Catholic Church is still above water.

We were having dinner with my sister at Vic & Irv’s (aka Lakeside Hots) and I heard the the guy sitting next to us tell the waitress, “The only reason I come in here is to read the paper and listen to the music.” There is always a newspaper on the counter there, just like a Spanish place, and that day’s had a picture of a smiling John Laurence Heathwood along with an article about the abusive Sister Janice Nadeau (“Hawk”) from St. Margaret Mary where my cousin went.

Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” came on the sound system. We had just read the reviews of “Leaving Neverland,” which was being aired on HBO that night, and as much as I love that song I didn’t want to hear it.

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“I have revisited the ages of my life. These are my rivers.” – Giuseppe Ungaretti

Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1888-1970, was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. Peter Monacelli is an Italian modernist poet, artist, musician, critic and academic. He had a second opening on Friday for his mini retrospective, “These Are My Rivers,” at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. It takes at least two visits to take this show in. This time I was blown away by this cluster of nine exquisite pieces. Pete’s wall tag was the recipe and icing on the cake.

“These are my Rivers. A symphony in three movements.

1st Movement: Searching For Home
For that place we knew before we were affected by the world, before we gave up our innocence too cheaply.

2nd Movement: Escaping Extinction
Religions promise of an afterlife: Informed by 1950s sci-fi movies.

3rd Movement: The River
The river is a symbol for Gloria. After the rain.”

That’s a lot to work with.

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Funny how my eye doesn’t pick up the color shift but the camera does. I feel as though I’m flooding the work area with incandescent light but the daylight from the southern exposure window to the left brings shifts the temperature.

I watched these two in person. She was pacing with her phone and he was talking to someone else on his device, using the free library wifi. She was strung out. He looked like he could give a shit. Next thing you know their mugshots were in the news. Today I surrounded them with garden foliage. I’m doing them as Adam and Eve and hope to begin painting tomorrow.

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These lakes in Durand Eastman are so small. I can’t imagine what kind of fish people pull out of them in the dead of winter. There must be something else to this ice fishing sport. I picture some incredible homemade soup and black coffee from a Stanley steel thermos. Maybe the guy in this red tent is reading the morning paper.

When Peggi’s parents came up here for six weeks one summer we bought them a temporary subscription to the Democrat & Chronicle. At the time we were subscribing to the afternoon paper, the Times Union, but we picked the D&C for them because it leaned to the right. Well, they found it too left wing so that did’t work out. And the golf course in Bristol, near where they were staying, was closed most of the summer because it was the rainiest on record. The Times Union disappeared and I don’t want to see the same fate for the D&C.

Did anybody see David Andreatta’s column on the former Monroe County Supervisor? I know print is dead for most people but we can’t just tune out. I worry that many of my neighbors already have. Why else would we have paid Maggie Brooks for 23 years at the public trough? How about Steve Orr’s reporting on the abuse and coverup at McQuaid? While newsprint slips away the local team here is working harder than ever in hopes that enough people care enough to pay a few pennies a day for online access to keep them informed. Don’t be a dumb ass. Give it up.

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Historic Brighton celebrated their 20th year by serving cake and punch at the conclusion of their annual meeting. My siblings and I were invited because they were presenting an award in my father’s name. He was one of the founding members and he would have been thrilled with the turnout on Sunday. This year’s Leo Dodd Award went to Betsy Breyer, who had a fatal heart attack on the way to last year’s meeting. She was a longtime editor of the newsletter and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her book on George Eastman.

Michael Lasser, host of WXXI’s Fascinating Rhythm, was scheduled to give a talk entitled, “The Songs of the Suburbs,” but he had to cancel. Grant Holcomb, the former director of the Memorial Art Gallery filled his slot with a presentation on “The Image of Lincoln in American Art.” It started with traditional, historical paintings of Lincoln in action, signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and then wandered into fanciful portrayals of the young Lincoln and Lincoln pennies. Grant could have stopped at Leonard Volk’s life mask of Lincoln. What a face!

I was thrilled to see a couple of Horace Pippin paintings with Lincoln in them but when we approached modern times, Grant sort of went off the rails. David Salle’s painting from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with a miniature Lincoln medallion floating above a woman’s breast, got lot of screen time and we did’t get to see Dali’s tour de force.

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We were out walking and Peggi had to go to the bathroom. There was a library across the street so we ducked in there, the Frederick Douglas Community Library. They had a big display of books for Black History Month and I picked up “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and read a few pages detailing a slave master’s demeanor while dispensing a whipping. I think I have a digital copy of this and I keep meaning to get to it.

While we were in the library my watch gave me a news alert that the NFL had reached some sort of settlement with Colin Kaepernick. Maybe they’ll make him Commissioner.

Next door I noticed School Number 12 is now called Anna Murray Douglass Academy after Frederick Douglass’s wife. And just a few steps more down South Avenue stands a historical marker, planted in 1984, Rochester’s 150th Anniversary year, that reads “DOUGLASS HOME Frederick Douglas, abolitionist and editor of the the North Star hid many fugitive slaves at his home on this site.” The plastic replica of the statue in Highland Park (above), one of many around town marking the 200th anniversary of his birth, was standing near the sidewalk . His birthday is celebrated on February 14th, yesterday.

The temperatures had dropped below freezing and the sidewalks were a mess but we soldiered on and walked around Highland Park where the real statue of Frederick Douglas, overlooking the bowl, looked magnificent.

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A low scoring soccer match can have you on the edge of your seat with non stop action. Just saying. There was only a few minutes left in the big football game when my brother’s LG TV threatened to shut down. This happened a few years back and because he had rearranged all his furniture to accommodate the family he couldn’t find the remote for five minutes or so.

It wasn’t just the game that lacked excitement. No one took the knee and the halftime show looked like a Trump rally. I did like the CBS ad with the animated double eye logo mimicking old CBS shows. Bud Light body slammed Coors by calling attention to the corn syrup they put in their product. And the vintage Warhol “EatLikeAndy” Burger King ad was so ordinary it was startling.

My brother is a gourmet barbecuer and I would pick him as the Super Bowl MVP.

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Peggi’s sister called from LA during the cold snap and Steve Hoy called from Charleston, making sure we were ok. Both times we had just returned from skiing. We had to get out early today, before the temperatures warmed. All this snow will be gone tomorrow.

Todd McGrain and Fola Akinola’s video “Eclipsing the Sun/A Biological Storm at Rochester Contemporary Art Center is amazing. I won’t spoil it for you.

Peter Monacelli’s show, “These Are My Rivers” opened last night at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. Curated by Anne Havens and Colleen Buzzard it is a tour de force of paintings, drawings, collages and sketch books pulled from a lifetime of art making. Pete’s work is graphic, tangible abstractions of meaningful elements of his experience. He presents you with gifts that come straight from these influences.

I love this art space. Like the loft jazz, performance spaces in the seventies it is an old fashioned, DIY scene. Conversation is up a few notches here. And since Colleen’s studio is just behind the gallery you have the big bonus of peeking in on her endeavors. Pieces in all stages of development spring from every nook and cranny of her studio. It is an idea factory.

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We had just a touch of fresh snow last night but it was enough to bring some crisp traction back to the ski paths. And at sixteen degrees the trails were crunchy. A wind was coming off the lake as we skied toward it and just as I said, “There’s no one out today,” we saw our first fellow skier. He smiled as we passed each other and said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

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The vulture capitalists have already taken a big bite out of our local Gannet paper. I’m reporting this because I know full well that no one reads the print version of the paper anymore so you wouldn’t know this. I have been a faithful reader since my pre-teen paper route days.

The paper got smaller at first. That is the sheet size shrank. And then the B section, what used to be local news, went national. The articles were plopped in from USA Today. And the C section, what used to carry arts and entertainment articles, now might have a piece on craft beer, if you’re lucky. There is no one left at the paper to cover the arts scene.

The letters to the editor were dropped on weekdays, a community forum that required only an editor to open the mail. The nationally syndicated columnists were gone too. This week they cut out the B and C sections entirely. The paper is just two sections, A and D. If you go to the Democrat & Chronicle’s website you will be assaulted with full screen pop-up ads and tiny articles.

Local Eagle Scouts are in jail for threatening to blowup Islamberg, a rural New York hamlet. The President wants a powerful wall. There is a lot going on out there and Will Cleveland cannot cover it all.

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Am I the only one who misses the early html days? When websites were fun, both to design/program and visit. Before php, css3, html5, responsive coding and social media. I accept that the answer to my initial question is yes so let’s move on.

While standing under the Freddy Sue Bridge I was thinking about this piece I did on the Refrigerator back in the day. I couldn’t even find it online. There were no links to it but it is still out there floating around like a whole lot of other content must be. I managed to find “Click On A BridgeTo Go Under” only by looking at the local copy on my computer and surmising what the url might be. Digital photography was brand new when I did it and that was probably the only reason the photos looked interesting to me at the time. They were only one half or one gig photos and from a camera that was terrible in low light.

In 2001 I did a piece for the “Hide & Seek” show at Pyramid Art Center. It was a digital installation and it ran on a pc at the gallery during the show. It was sort of a digital maze. I visit it every once in a while thinking that it might have totally fallen apart but it has held up pretty well. I’m afraid to look at it on a mobile device. – Check it out.

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This mild winter has allowed us to continue walking. We have always walked but we ratcheted up the distance last year in preparation for our walk across Spain and our weather has permitted that to continue. Or maybe it’s not the weather at all. Maybe it is simply that the more you walk, the more you enjoy it so you walk more.

We walked in and out of downtown on both sides of the river and I was thinking about Paris Texas, the movie we had watched the night before. There wasn’t nearly as much walking in it as I remembered. We saw it when it came out and at least once since but I remember marathon walking and there is very little of that in the movie. It must have made an impression.

Like Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” Wim Wenders’ outsider take on America did not initially meet with success. We loved it and the soundtrack. We bought the vinyl and I played it last night during dinner. When Personal Effects was recording the soundtrack for the Planetarium show we deliberately aped Ry Cooder with an instrumental called “Cirrus.”

This time around Dean Stockwell was every bit as good as Harry Dean Stanton. Hard to believe he had quit acting before this film and was apparently working as a real estate agent. The real star of the movie is Sam Sheppard’s script. Hunter, played by Karen Black’s son, was astounding.

The extras had thoughtful interviews with Wenders in German, French and English. I loved “In His Own Words,” Wenders’ movie about/with the Pope and I liked the extras from that, shown on 60 Minutes. My profile has been built and I am ready for more Wim Wenders recommendations.

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My grandfather was a butcher. It is a craft. He took great pride in his work and it was evident when he cut off a big slice of freshly made liverwurst and passed it over the counter to me. He also owned the store so salesmanship, good business practices and knife work were required for him to become successful.

The Asian behind the counter in the fish department at the Pittsford Wegman’s had all these skills. We were considering buying some Red Snapper. (The fish at the top of the picture above is a Red Snapper.) We had made it a few months back. We baked the whole fish and split it down the middle before plopping it it on our plates. It was delicious but we had to eat each small bite very carefully as it was full of bones.

The fish guy told us he would cook it exactly as we did and then eat it with chopsticks because he knew how to pick around the bones.  He drew the fish (above) in a few seconds. He even made the fish smile. He illustrated where to look for the various bones. He grabbed another fish, one that he had just filleted, and suggested we cut the fish open before we bake it, remove the bones, put it back to gather like a whole fish and then bake it. 

His presentation was so good Peggi that told him that Wegmans ought to video him and share his tips on their website. He liked that idea and said he would propose it.

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“You, the proletariat, the blacksmith of the new time, you forge time with forms. . . You are an innovator. We. . . rushed from a barricade toward the world of new transformation, light and non-objective one, because the great recreation of our undying spirit is coming.” Kazimir Malévich 1918

Dada seems to have made its first appearance in Russia where the Futurists’ influence was strong. The “Russian Dada” show at the Reina Sofia in Madrid featured Malévich as a bedrock and he stole the show.

Dada was a reaction to the propaganda and slaughter of World War I and Surrealism sprang from that. Dorothea Tanning was born in a small town in Illinois. She dropped out of school and turned to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago for inspiration. She travelled to Paris to meet the surrealists but returned when World War II broke out. She married Max Ernst and they moved to Arizona. She lived to 102, Outlasting many art movements. “Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door,” a retrospect of her work fills the third floor here and it is a revelation.

Tanning refused to be labeled a “woman artist” saying, “one is given, the other is you.” Her “Woman Artist, Nude, Standing” (above) asserts feminine power as a creative force to be reckoned with. With nods to Goya and deKooning she presents herself armored in her own voluptuous flesh while wearing only a black mantilla with a red poppy.

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This black and white photo in a display case was the first thing that caught our attention at the “Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960” show at Albright Knox. A recording of the metronome piece was playing overhead and a February 1965 letter from John Cage, addressed to Albright Knox, was sitting next to the photo. We wrongly assumed the photo and letter went together. The metronome piece, ‘Poème Symphonique,’ was performed by György Liget at the gallery and John Cage was here for a performance and lecture the same year. Buffalo was and is a happening town. Well, it was really happening when the Pan American Expo was herein 1901 and with a resurgence underway it is happening again.

The show here was was called, “Giant Steps: Artists and and it features major works by some of the leading artists of the period, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, and it reconsiders those who played an underrecognized, but vital, role in furthering the visual avant-garde in the United States and beyond. The permanent collection here is outstanding. Seymour Knox was buying the the collection, mostly modern art, as the artists were making it. This show digs deep into their collection and is well worth a ride along the lake to civilization.

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Leroy, New York is only forty five minutes away but it feels like another world. Like so many small towns it has seen better days. The Jello Museum is still here. Donald Woodward, the son of the original owner, bought Amelia Earhart’s airplane, the “Friendship”, in 1928, and Amelia Earhart drove here to visit her airplane. The airport is being revived. And the Creekside Tavern, built in 1820 on the banks of Oatka Creek, has been completely redone by Billy Farmer. He has bands out back on the weekends and we’ve driven out here twice to hear the Debbie Kendick’s project. I recommend the band for sure and I’d take route along the river. We took 490 the second time and it is deadly how boring that stretch can be. Maybe if you were shopping for an RV it wouldn’t be so bad.

Our neighbor thinned out some pachesandra and offered it to us. We decided to plant it along our driveway. That project took up the better part of day, digging little holes and winding up the roots to poke the plants in. To do something like this now you have wear your tick armour, socks, pants and long sleeve hoodies soaked in Permethrin. While I was suited up picked a handful of blackberries from the vines growing in mini forever wild area.

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William Keeler, Librarian & Archivist at the Rochester Historical Society, gave the featured presentation at the annual Gideon Cobb Day Celebration in Brighton. His talk, “Rochesterville on the Rise,” started with the Native American trading post near Indian Landing a couple hundred years ago. The British controlled the waters of Lake Ontario before the War of 1812. A reenactor can be seen in the photo above along with John Page and Brighton’s Town Supervisor William W. Moehle.

Tryon, where the bike park is now, was where all the action was, a boomtown on the move until the sandbar at the mouth of Irondequoit Bay filled in, cutting off access to the port of Tryon. Carthage, on the other side of the Genesee River, the next biggest nearby settlement collapsed when influenza swept through town. Rochesterville, just south of the High Falls, was nowhere as big as Geneva, Bath and Canandaigua. Gideon Cobb was one of its first inhabitants. He ran a brickyard where Cobbs Hill is today and my father restored Cobb’s folk hero status.

Early Gideon Cobb days were celebrated at Mario’s where the new Whole Foods is going in. Ray Tierney, former Brighton councilman and Historic Brighton board member, has organized the last two and they now feature an award presentation, the “Leo Dodd Heritage Presentation Award.” Last year’s went to Sandra Frankel and this year it went to John Page of Bero Architects. I’m happy Historic Brighton has carried on but I couldn’t help but feel the void left in the organization. They need someone with the desire to dig through the past, willing enough to attend the meetings, lobby the politicians to preserve the remnants, someone who likes taking pictures and illustrating a story and someone who likes to share what they have found. They need someone as enthusiastic as my father was.

Personal Effects – “Boom Boom Town/Violince” from “Personal Effects – A Collection”

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