Category: Lopsided Observations

My parents, in their later years, had season tickets to the Rochester Philharmonic. Peggi’s mom had tickets too when she was living here. The program is generally too stuffy for us but if we can help it, we don’t miss a performance of Ossia, the experimental, new music group of Eastman students. Last night was their twentieth anniversary performance. Students from the first configuration are long gone but some, the Jack Quartet, students from a decade or so ago, returned for the celebration. Last night they performed in Kodak Hall where the Philharmonic generally performs and the first piece, Morton Feldman’s “String Quartet and Orchestra,” she transcendental. Feldman sculpts with sound and you get to experience the carving, the exquisite execution of each sound. And then the space around that sound carries equal weight. It becomes a meditation.

The second piece on the program, “…Zwei Gefühle…” by Helmut Lachenmann, was hard core. The piano player needed an assistant to open and close the piano cover as he played. It was cold and clinical but arresting.

Their final piece, Steve Reich’s “Triple Quartet,” the program item that brought out the crowd, was drop=dead gorgeous. Romantic with gypsy-like violin solos in E minor. I love Steve Reich for his hallucinogenic patterns but I didn’t know he had this in him.

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“Alternative facts” entered the lexicon over the weekend and now everyone is talking about whether we are in a post truth world. I keep thinking of our friends, Pete and Shelley, and their preference for fiction over non. After every visit we go home with a list of books, mostly ones on loan from the library. Some of which, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” pretty much layout our current non-fiction state. I get the feeling they think our obsession with current events is silly because fiction so much broader. But if the context for understanding fiction is reality based where would fiction be without non-fiction. And with “alternative facts” and “post-truth” that context goes out the window. Might as well merge those two departments in the library.

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A couple thousand came out on a fifty degree January day for the People’s Solidarity Rally at Washington Square Park, the site the Occupy protests that my father painted, above. I’m glad I went. I felt really proud of our city. The speakers, all from various contingents of the so-called movement, were mostly inspiring. A fiery Mayor Lovely Warren invoked Susan B. Anthony. Brighton supervisor, Bill Moehle, complimented the crowd on the great homemade signs, “Make America Think Again,” “Second Graders Against Trump,” “Free Melania,” “Babes Against Bullshit,” Pussies Against Putocracy”, “Non Judgement Day Is Near,” “What’s Taking the Impeachment So Long,” and then focused his rowing talk on the common bumper sticker, “Think Globally. Act Locally.”
to the Women’s March father’s Occupy Saint Mary’s Church

We had lunch at Han Noodle Bar on Monroe Avenue and came home to watch protest footage like this clip from Madrid.

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I thought I might find my mom in the beauty parlor this morning but Cindy, the hairdresser, told me she had just left. I found her sitting, more like lying, in her new chair in the hallway by the office. Kathleen made a milkshake for her, chocolate this time, and she thickened some Cranberry juice in a small plastic glass. I wheeled my mom down to her room and positioned her so she could look out the window, not that she is interested in the outdoors anymore. She was particularly talkative. I only understood a small portion of what she said but when she’d ask, “What do you think?” I pretended and said, “I think that is a good idea.”

Doris came in the room with her walker. I said hi and Doris asked me what my name was. I told her and she said, “I recognize your face but I’m not too good with names anymore.” I told Doris my mom and I were talking and she said, “I remember you dancing with your mom last week.”

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I’ve been carrying around this list of shows that I want to see in New York for so long that many of the shows have closed. The dark Rothkos at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim, Max Beckmann at the Metropolitan and Joseph Albers at David Zwirner 537 West 20th.

And I only have until the 28th to catch Philip Guston’s Nixon drawings at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea, a show called “Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975.” From the gallery’s website: “These trenchant works were created at an historic moment, amidst the tumultuous political climate of the early 1970s, as the United States suffered under the weight of civil unrest and social dissent following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Senator Robert F Kennedy, the chaos of the 1968 presidential election, and the enduring violence and brutality of the Vietnam War. In his studio in Woodstock NY, Guston’s distress over the political situation was fueled by conversations with his friend, the writer Philip Roth. The artist and the writer shared an intellectual disposition for the mundane ‘crapola’ of American popular culture, and in Nixon discovered a subject they could each mimic and animate in art.”

Which brings us to the Trumpster. Will the “Bikers for Trump,” “Wall of Meat” be able to protect him?

The

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It is fitting that I can’t remember the word I stumbled over this morning as a read an article aloud to Peggi. It was a common, multi syllable word but I tried saying it without immediately knowing how to pronounce it and it came out like someone just learning English.

We took a walk through the park and spotted ski tracks but no skiers. There was grass showing through the snow. We spotted more tracks from an ATV that looked like it was joy riding through the park, spitting dirt on the snow as it tore up the trails. Not the first time we’ve seen these tracks. The whole world’s going hillbilly.

We cut through the woods and came back via Center entrance, a dead-end that is about a mile long. We were just rounding the first turn and a car rolled down its windows and the driver “Hi. Bruce Lindsey. I haven’t seen you guys in a while.” We had no idea who he was but we played along just like we do at the Memory Center where my mom is. “Yeah. Why is that?” I said.

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We started the holiday like a million or so other Americans. We watched Donald Trump’s “Thanksgiving Message” on YouTube. The two minute video felt like a propaganda piece from a Third World country. Comments are disabled on the page. Trump’s “prayer” for unity rings about as true as Rupert Pupkin. But how about that stock market!

A walk in the Arboretum put things right.

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We regularly run into Dan and Lisa at Rochester’s First Friday art openings and we’re always talking about going out to eat together but we eat early and they eat late so the will probably never happen. We went to Lisa’s father’s funeral mass over the weekend and sat by an old neighbor. I was their paperboy years ago and I even babysat for Lisa. The priest talked of how Christ conquered death by His victory on the cross. Only the Catholic church could spin such a tale and then talk about it at someone’s death. If Lisa’s father had lived his life differently he too might have been able to conquer death.

In high school I had a summer job working for Lisa’s uncle. In fact I was his first employee. We drove around the city in a pickup truck and installed aluminum awnings on windows and doors of people’s homes. This guy’s business really took of and he became known as “Mr. Enclosure” by installing patios and sun rooms on people’s homes.

We ran into Chris Maggio at the funereal and I told him I read about his father in Georgia Durante’s book on Rochester’s mob. Chris said he shot the cover and was only recently paid for the shoot.

Someone, maybe a relative, read the book of Ecclesiastes piece, something that has never sounded as good as it did when the Birds did their version in 1965, and through dramatic pauses they they were able to find some life in that passage. And this is why we go to funerals.

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It would be so easy to alter this campaign sign. The letters and numbers are off the shelf at Home Depot, a standard size font. I could put a number “4” on top of the letter “N” and it would be so subtle the owner might not even notice. There are very few pro Hillary signs around. Most with her name on it are negative. Trump has the angry supporters, angry enough to make their own signs in many cases. Everyone knows Hillary has New York’s electoral vote sewn up and that only makes them more angry.

We had dinner at Scott and Sue’s house the other night. There were maybe twelve people there and of course the conversation turned to politics as soon as we sat down. There was a sameness to everyone’s point of view, all aghast at Trump’s antics and boneheaded positions so it was a rather boring exchange. It made me realize how Trump has not only given voice to the undercurrent of Republican themes (anti-imigrant, anti-abortion, anti gun control, anti tax, anti science) from the last few decades but how he has energized the campaign. He has rescued politics from the doldrums. He has done us all a favor by crystallizing the fear-mongering stance. It is all out in the open. It should now be easier to rise to the challenge.

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The WNY Flash match, which was broadcast on Fox 1 this Sunday, is up on YouTube now. It is the best Flash game we have ever seen and we have season’s tickets. Without entirely spoiling the game for you I will say the Flash are headed to the finals in Houston this Sunday. I wish I could be there to cheer them on and just go crazy like we did hollering at the tv in Kerry and Claire’s living room last Sunday with Barb from the Flash Mob.

The D&C’s Jeff DiVeronica has been doing a great job reporting on the Flash all season and his wrap-up in this morning’s paper was outstanding. The Flash, without any National team starters, are playing like a real team. No weak parts on the whole pitch and plenty of personality. They are playing better than they ever did with Abby or Carley or Morgan or Sinclair or even Marta, the biggest names in Women’s Soccer. And they beat Portland in their home stadium, with over twenty thousand fans, and National team players Tobin Heath, Megan Klingenberg, Allie Long, Lindsey Horan, Emily Sonnett, Nadi Nadim and Christin Sinclair.

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Two doors down from the house with the pink door, the purple bench out front and the Trump 2016 sign on the porch there is this cute little 13′ Scamp camper. We thought it was surly a vintage trailer but I looked it up when got home and found they are made to order. Now that the US Women’s soccer team is out of the Olympics we’re thinking maybe we could do a little traveling in one of these.

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Our second planting of lettuce and spinach is in the ground. The seeds are supposed to germinate in 7 to 10 days and this is day four. The temperature has been in the nineties so we’ve been watering twice a day to keep the ground moist.

Every time we go go down to the garden we bring back produce. I picked our first eggplant today and few more tomatoes along with a perfectly plump jalapeño. We have enough kale for a small army. A few of our tomato plants are now over nine feet tall. I asked Peggi to stand by them so I could take this shot. Our stakes stop at six feet and I’m afraid they are going to fall over soon.

Our bumper crop could go bust if a ground hog shows up. One of our tomatoes had claw marks in it.

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Politics is rude, everything about it. You don’t discuss it in polite company. You discuss it at home or with friends and like minded people. We were riding our bikes down Lakeshore Boulevard today when we spotted this gem. Political lawn signs are especially rude because there is no discussion.

My cousin used to be the first house you come to as you travel west along the lake, but then they built a house behind them, actually on the lake but the driveway runs off Lakeshore so they are the first house you come to now. And after that is the house that Ted Turner stayed in many years ago when he sailed Lake Ontario with the owners of that big grey place. This sign is in front of The fourth house after the beach where the owner spent most of the past year building a big berm around his property.

While I was taking this photo Peggi spotted the camera mounted to the tree above and behind the sign. You can see the camera in the blow-up of this photo. He was getting footage of us as we laughed at his sign. We speculated as to whether he was capturing audio or not and just in case Peggi looked at the camera and asked him what he thought of the recent Russian connections to Trump.

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The last two Catholic funeral masses we’ve been to were said by priests with accents so thick it was nearly impossible to understand what they were saying. It is almost as if the church is going back to Latin, the way it was when I was serving mass as an altar boy. The church is desperate for priests as well as congregation.

With tall ceilings, cream colored walls, abstract stained-glass windows and no statues except for the crucifix on right hand side of the alter and the slim Blessed Virgin mounted to a wood panel on the left, Mother of Sorrows Church looked like a big, modern chapel, a “Spiritual Vessel” as the the type on the wall proclaimed. A Renaissance style painting of Mary looking skyward with the crucified Christ collapsed in her arms was the central alter piece. Two dimensional representations of the fourteen stations of the cross were hung on a navy blue panel that circled the sanctuary and it looked like the Yankee logo was mounted on the ceiling although I think it was a particularly decorative letter “M.”

After the mass I picked up a holy card in the foyer. I have added it to my holy card collection. It has a picture of Blessed Virgin with a small vessel on her heart with seven small swords piercing the vessel. Above the picture it read, “Devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary” and it was followed with instructions to say one Hail Mary while meditating on each sorrow.

1. The Prophecy of Saint Simeon.
2. The Escape and Flight into Egypt.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem.
4. The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on the Via Dolorosa.
5. The Crucifixion of Jesus on Mount Calvary.
6. The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Descent from the Cross.
7. The Burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea.

On the way out we drove by the back of the old church rectory which was right next to the abandoned Mother of Sorrows school and I took this shot. This situation could be number 8.

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