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.
Lake Ontario as seen from Rochester New York in November of 2016
I post notices for Margaret Explosion gigs, tag Peggi, and then get off Facebook as quickly as possible. I don’t exactly know why but the forum gives me the creeps. I guess it is prompts like “It’s “so and so’s” birthday today! Wish him the best.” Why? So FB can monetize my communication? They keep stats on every hover, every click. The whole thing is suspect. It depresses me that world wide web has turned into this but our civilization is still young. I know most people don’t worry about this and just have a good time with it. I am happy for them.
I’ve been thinking about their business model because at Wednesday’s band gig I talked to two people who said they had quit FB after the election. I could’t believe it. If they liked it before Trump why would they leave it now? Whether you were for or against him, this story is just getting going. I gather there was a lot of political badgering among so-called FB friends and I stay away from that. I like talking about politics but I don’t like provoking a fight. We always talk politics face to face face with Gerry at Atlas Eats and today was no exception.
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!
Everest Institute on Portland Avenue in Rochester, New York
It was so nice out we decided to ride our bikes over to Home Depot. We had a short hose that we wanted to return, one of those that connect your outdoor faucet to the big plastic spool of rolled up hose. Our old hose sprang a leak so we had picked up a new one but when we got it home I realized it had a female fitting on both ends, kind of a lesbian hose. We were in front of Home Depot when I realized I had forgotten to put the hose in my bike basket. We went in the store anyway and bought a second pair of noise cancelling headphones, his and hers. They look like Beats but they are not wired for sound.
Further down the road we stopped in the Starbucks on the corner of Ridge and Goodman. The clerk tried to sell us a holiday version of the “Flat Whites” at two for one but we held up the line quizzing her on the holiday flavoring. Was the flavoring in the coffee? Was it a powder that they added? She was uncertain and we grew suspicious so we ordered two regular “Flat Whites.” We sat down near the door and I speed-read a Wall Street Journal while we waited for our order. It occurred to on me that we were sitting right where the Golden Point was maybe fifty years ago. I used to have a hamburger and fries there while I waited for my father to pick me up after soccer practice, just something to hold me over until we got home for dinner. He worked at Kodak and Bishop Kearney High School is near that intersection. The old Everest Institute is just across the street on Goodman.
I really like this Trump University concept. A millionaire (and now president elect) sharing what he has learned in the real estate business, spreading the wealth around. Studying with a master at a University, not philosophy, history or art but a real profession and not from life-long academics but from a successful entrepreneur. Not some elitist major but an honest, practical trade. Does anybody know where the school is located?
Red Japanese Maple leaves, pachysandra and wood pile, Rochester, New York
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.
Never Hillary sign on Wisner Road in Rochester,, New York
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.
Ossia performing live in Highland Park 2016, Rochester, New York. Photo by Peggi Fournier
We dressed warmly for Ossia’s outdoor, noon performance in Highland Park this Sunday. I wore gloves for the first time in months. It was the world premiere of Eastman faculty composer Robert Morris’ “Four Gardens” for mixed instrumental and vocal ensembles. Their website said the piece was “designed to be played outdoors, overlooking the reservoir in Rochester’s Highland Park.” We should have read that more carefully because we assumed the performance was to take place in the grotto that was pictured on their website. We went there first and then drove through the park for a half hour or so before we found the groups (four gardens) performing simultaneously around the overlook where the old Pavilion was overlooking the reservoir. I wish we had been there for the entire performance because what we heard was beautiful.
I’m not so sure about curator, Lisa Hostetler’s premise for the new show at the Eastman Museum. “Personal and collective memories are so inextricably intertwined with photographs,” that the disappearance of the physical print in the digital age “is altering society’s relationship to memory.”
In “A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age” she has rounded up work from contemporary artists whose work speaks to the potential consequences of the medium’s metamorphosis. Often the photographic process and material are intregal to the work and that physical property brings the work closer to an art object than a digital image. Alison Rossiter exposes outdated paper, sometimes from the forties, and without a camera she creates stunning landscape-like images. And Phil Chang has mounted prints that were not fixed. They are fading away under glass and he promised to put new prints in a few days. Even without knowing the premise it is a sensational show, a feast for the eyes and even nourishment for memories.
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.
Scamp camper and wood sided pick-up on Wisner Road in Rochester, New York
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.
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.
Crooked Hillary sign on Lakeshore Boulevard in Rochester, New York
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.
Mother of Sorrows Rectory on Mount Read Boulevard in Rochester, New York
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.
Old school funk band playing on the street in Midtown Manhattan
This old school funk band, playing on the street in midtown Manhattan, sounded great a block away. A perfect formula, pumping bass, drummer dragging the beat, scratchy guitar and soulful sax. I wish that sound, the era that Chic dominated, would come back.
We spent some time in midtown this visit, soaking in shows at the Modern, the Met and the new Met Breuer, and I couldn’t get over how good the fake Buddhists are. They look the part, shaved heads, orange robes, innocent smile, and people were giving them money. Don’t people read the news?
We walked through the park to get to the Metropolitan and stopped at the pond where a miniature sailboat race was taking place. We thought we would start with the Cornelia Parker piece on the Met’s rooftop but we had to work our way through the Roman sculpture garden, one of my favorite stops. We found Julian Schnabel in there holding hands with a young woman. He was wearing his pajamas. I got a photo of the two as they walked away. The rooftop installation, the facade of a house like the one in Psycho which Hitchcock based on a house in an Edward Hopper painting, struck me as a dumb art project but I got over that in a hurry. The house was really otherworldly against a backdrop of modern skyscrapers.
Peggi and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary over dinner at an Italian place. The waiters were Hispanic and they played early seventies pop. So bad some sounded good. Two of the worst got stuck in my head, Chicago’s “Saturday In The Park” and whoever does, “Take It To The Limit.” The playlist led to a discussion of how punk rock saved us from this shit. And then Alan Vega died that night.
Three politicians, Cheryl Dinolfo, Anthony Daniele, Bill Moehle, at opening of Brickyard Trail in Rochester, New York
We were surprised to see so many people gathered on the sidewalk across from the Brighton town hall this morning. A ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Brickyard Trail was scheduled for 11 and there were already more than a hundred people. Cheryl Dinolfo, Adam Bello, Joseph Robach, Joe Morelli, Sandy Frankel, Anthony Daniele and his father, Mario, Mayor Bill Moehle and Brighton town board members were all there to give an hour’s worth of tedious, self congratulation on accomplishing something so simple. I was asked to say a few words on my dad’s behalf and I was last on the list, the only non-politician to speak.
Fifteen or so years ago my father started uncovering the history of Brighton’s brick yards. The glaciers had generously deposited the right combination of sand, clay and lime in the Pinnacle Range. Cobbs Hill is named after brick maker, Gideon Cobb. Leo Dodd, one of the founding members of Historic Brighton, produced a book for the organization on the early brick industry. My father essentially brought to life the brickyards, the kilns, the train tracks that moved tons of clay from the fields to the furnaces, the homes the workers lived in and the baseball fields they competed on. His passion for art, engineering and history enabled him to depict this pre-photographic past in watercolors and 3D cad drawings. Peggi and I provided technical support as he developed the Brighton Brick book and then presentations and websites on the town’s early history.
He continuously pressured the town, most of the same politicians who were gathered here, to recognize and preserve the remnants of its past. Saving the Buckland House and the meadows behind it where the Bobolinks visit every year, preserving at least one of the old barns on Westfall Road, naming the woods after the Edmunds family that once owned it, the Edmunds family whose diaries of daily farm life my father transcribed, these were all issues he went to bat for. There would be no brickyard trail if it wasn’t for my father. I reminded the crowd of this when I spoke, just as the fire trucks showed up to respond to a woman who had fainted during the politicians’ drivel.
The Brickyard Trail runs through one of the former “clay banks.” The town was developing it while my father was still alive. We’d pull in the temple’s parking lot on the way home from his doctor’s appointments and check on the progress. My father was too sick to get out of the car on the last visit so he had me take photos. The politicians managed to cut the ribbon and the Brickyard Trail opened. We walked the trail with a small crowd and quite a few people made a point to tell us my father would have been proud. As modest as he was he would have proud.
Street performers at Jazz Fest 2016 in Rochester, New York
Nacka Forum is the name of one of saxophonist, Jonas Kullhammer’s, bands, one that was formed to explore music like the band’s heroes, Ornette, Art Ensemble and Sun Ra. With great players on trumpet, bass and drums they bring their European roots to the jazz table and pay tribute to the greats. Our jazz fest buddy, Hal Schuler, alerted us to the fact that this drummer was here with Blake Tartare, one of our favorite shows ever at Jazz Fest. Jonas has been here many times with other bands but he saved Jazz Fest 2016. Finally a real, loose, swinging, musical, jazz group in the tradition but completely their own.
Nacka Forum was in Kilbourn Hall last night. They have two shows at the Lutheran Church tonight. I would not miss them. I’m keeping track of a small portion of the Jazz Fest here.
Cosmo Grille Dress Code sign in downtown Rochester, NY
Wandering around downtown between Jazz Fest acts is a good way to assess the city’s progress. Nothing stays the same. The city core was hurting and nearly emptied out but for the past ten years or so it is definitely on an upswing. Development and rehabbing are visible everywhere. The buried portion of the Inner Loop is a huge step in the right direction.
Clubs come and go. Jazz Fest venues are different every year. For me old memories are connected to buildings all over downtown. I never heard of the Cosmo Grill but this sign is posted near the door of a building on East Avenue. You can tell a lot about a place by the rules they set up for themselves.
Cosmo Grille Dress Code
In order to maintain a quality level of entertainment we request that our guests adhere to the following dress code standards:
• No Athletic Wear
• No Excessively Baggy Clothing
• No do-rags
• No oversized chains or medallions
• Baseball caps must be worn straight forward or backward
• No torn or soiled clothing
• No profanity
• Shirts must be worn
• Mens shirts must have sleeves
The management and security staff reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone they feel is not dressed appropriately. Thank you for your co-operation.
Budweiser’s new America can on the ground in Durand Eastman
So we rode our bikes down to Sea Breeze and got sucked into the scene down there. Funky fishermen mixed with people feeding bread to the ducks. A Canadian duck was standing on a rock on one leg. It was chewing at its right leg that was bound to its body in a rat’s nest of fishing line. A family of white mute swans swam by, two adults and four brown little ones. A county employee was telling a family that they were pretty but mean. He had stats on how much the birds of invasive species eat in one day. And just as he was talking we watched one of the adult swans go after the Canadian duck. Duck feathers flew while the duck tried to stay afloat. The county employee called a nearby vet for advice. There wasn’t much anyone could do.
I was struck by his conversation. He was on hold for about ten minutes and when he reached the receptionist he began describing the scene with the “So.” I keep hearing this in radio interviews where the so called experts pretty much know what the question coming their way will be. They begin their response with “So.” This has trickled down to county employees.
Kandace Springs behind piano performing a he Rochester International Jazz Fest in 2016i
Soccer matches have gotten in the way of both nights of jazz fest this year. We had to catch the Flash meet the bottom placed Boston Breakers on opening night and we were treated to seven goals from our favorite players. We saw patterns develop that we knew were there. And last night we came home early from the festival to watch the US lose to Colombia for the second time in this Copa America. Tonight’s final between Chile and Argentina is also irresistable. We did manage to see a really great trio last night at the Lutheran Church.
At Harro East last night Kandace Springs played piano and sang mid-tempo, soulful jazz tunes. She was accompanied by bass and drums but she probably would have sounded better on her own. The band had a hard time following her loose, personal groove. She did a fantastic version of John Coltrane’s “Soul Eyes” which also serves as the title of her new album. She has a great voice and, of course, the look.
