Category: Lopsided Observations

In Louise‘s comment to my last post she pointed out that there are two sides to the sign I had shown so as I passed by today I stopped for another photo. Peggi had to explain this one to me. It is way beyond Catholicism.

A few weeks back we visited a couple of nearby funeral homes to get estimates on direct burial costs. My dad wanted to prepay for himself and my mom so the money, according to state law, would go into an M&T account to cover costs at the time their deaths. Peggi and I are thinking we should be doing this as well. Costs are not locked in, of course, so we probably have a few years if we’re lucky.

My dad made a decision on the home and called back the contact at Newcomer on Empire Boulevard to ask if he could draw up a bill and send it out. The contact said it should be done in person so he set up an appointment for this morning at 9:30. My dad had his check book and a different fellow, a big burly guy in in a suit, met us at the door. I said I had an appointment with the contact. The big guy told us he would take care of us and abruptly asked, “Names?” I wasn’t even sure it was a question but I spoke our names without using any verbs or prepositions, just the two pronouns. He took us downstairs past the showrooms with the ornate caskets and golden bibles and into a conference room with a poster of two hands clasped in prayer. A large monitor hung over the table with Microsoft Windows 7’s blue start-up screen. I pulled out my iPad and read the notes aloud from our first meeting with the contact.

The big guy asked what kind of casket we wanted and I said there is no casket, it is a “direct burial with the body in a shroud.” He said they must use some special machinery to lower the body.” My dad was squirming and raising his eyebrows. The next few exchanges were more awkward and ruder still. My dad said, I think we’ll take our business elsewhere and we got up. I turned back to the guy at the glass door as we were leaving and said, “You have a funny attitude.” He said, “Have a nice day, sir” and he looked the door behind us.

I have worked for myself most of my life and I’ve run into all sorts but I can’t think of any situation where the the deal was done, the specifics were settled on, the check was all but written for two customers and two more potential customers were in the office and the guy blows up the deal.

I’m so happy that Roz Chast’s brilliant memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” was chosen as one of the New York Times 10 best books of the year. It addressed the absurdity of issues like these with mountains of grace and humor.

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The local American football team, “the Bills,” are on a winning streak but I can’t bring myself to watch them for some reason. My neighbor says he is “afraid to watch them” so he records the game and looks at the highlights if they win. Last weekend we watched the final Major League Soccer game of the year, a game between Los Angeles and New England. It was Donovan’s last game of his career and they won but it was a sort of sad game. We caught a Premier League game this weekend between West Ham United and Sunderland and the difference in the level of play was quite remarkable. I can see why the US’s national team coach is encouraging our player to play overseas.

We recently became aware of the Spanish activist group, “FLO6x8.” Sort of a Flamenco Flash Mob they combine incredible music, passion, performance and a deep culture while trying to affect change. Watch them disrupt the Spanish Parliament.

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The water level on Eastman Lake was way up, so high that the little foot bridge at the south end of the trail was floating. Along the shore we spotted the stumps of a few trees that beavers had just taken down. You can see some bite marks at the bottom of these small trees above. We assumed the fallen trees had floated to the out flow of this manmade lake and had jammed it up so we tried to find the overflow drain. We walked entirely around the lake and never found the outlet. It’s somewhere down along Lakeshore Boulevard.

I was thinking about how civilized the designers of the park were, creating these beautiful manmade lakes over a hundred years ago. And then the line from “Hearts and Minds,” a 1974 documentary about the Viet Nam war, popped into my head. I think it was a clergyman, maybe a priest, in Viet Nam talking about the invasion while it was going on. Something like, The US treats us like savages. We’ve developed our civilization over 5,000 years. They’re the ones who are the savages.

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The yearly RoCo Members Show is always a good one. With one piece from each member it is democratic to a fault. There is not enough room to hang the work properly. Some pieces are too high or too low and many just don’t work with the nearby pieces. So you have to take your time and look at each piece as though you were wearing blinders. There are some real jewels.

We spotted work by fellow classmates and of course were partial to those. Bill Keyser, John May, Maureen Church and Leo Dodd. I put my yellow dot next to Peggi Fournier’s owl. The opening was packed, as expected, and the conversation sensational. My head will be swimming tonight.

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The Question Bridge show at Rochester Contemporary is very good, not so much as an art show but as a real dialog on important stuff that just doesn’t get talked about. The dvd presentation of black men asking and answering questions about race is very thought provoking. They stay on topic and it gets real and deep. It would be more artful if it didn’t feel like a side show in the dark with seats. Couldn’t they figure out a way to project those talking heads on the white walls of the gallery instead of that scrim?

Tonight’s related presentation with dance company director Garth Fagan, artist and teacher Luvon Sheppard and Carvin Eison, the director of RCTV, was intended to work the local connection to this topic but they mostly avoided the direct talk about race. It was interesting to here them talk about being creative, that is always an interesting conversation, but their talk was not as insightful as the presentation.

The highlight of the night for me was when Garth Fagan said the the difference between painting and directing dancers is a painting doesn’t talk back. Luvon told the Lion King choreographer he was wrong. His paintings do talk back.

Heather Erwin was closing up shop by the time we got over to the Hungerford Building. Brittany Williams, who shared the “Hair Don’t Lie” show with Heather, was on the way out the door but we did get to chat with Heather and talk about her painting of Brittany.

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Voting day provides an opportunity to to walk through the woods into Matthew and Louise’s neighborhood and then across Sea Breeze Way and down Point Pleasant Street to the firehouse where where fill in the little circles. Someday we’re going to rent the funky little bar that is on the other side of the room divider in the hall We’ll have a party, maybe get Margaret Explosion to play and then spin some soul, blues and country records.

Hard to believe the size of the paper ballot in New York. And filling in little circles like we did in grade school on tests. At least we don’t have to show picture IDs yet. Instead of a massive amount of voter fraud we have a massive amount voter indifference. After all the mudslinging I imagine the typical voter feels like this little dog.

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Peggi and I were camping out in our neighbor’s backyard when a storm came up quickly and forced us to take refuge in the back corner of their garage. We were huddled together on the concrete floor, wrapped in sleeping bags when I woke up. The neighbors, Mike and Carna, were standing over us. It was kind of cozy and all I could think was, “I’ve had this dream before and I want to go back there.” But it was beautiful out. Again.

Days with gorgeous weather are bad for making art. At least that is my experience. Beautiful days are made for wandering around town with no agenda or taking a walk in a new direction. My father emailed me us reminder of a sale Rochester Art Supply was having today. They had a tent set up in an empty lot near their store on West Main and they had some incredible deals on paper and packages of raw canvas. Richard Harvey was there and Liz Durand, artists loading up on supplies. When the weather does turn we’ll get down to business.

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I had a 9PM appointment to talk to Stephen Black in SPOKEN gallery.sg, an online mix of art, creative writing and virtual reality. I was given instructions to download this Unity gaming app but when I launched it I was told it could not be verified. I may just have to visit Singapore to hook up with Steve.

I’m thinking this may be the last weekend this year for the swimming pool on our street. There is so much color creeping into the greenery it makes want to try landscape painting.

We stopped into Hart’s, downtown’s newest grocery store, for the first time. They seemed a bit overstaffed or maybe there just wasn’t enough shoppers there. We were there at noon so we bought a yogurt and listened to the Mambo Kings who were playing in the parking lot. My grandfather, uncle and cousin (all three of them named Ray Tierney) were grocery store people. I shopped and worked in their stores when I was growing up and it seemed like a tough business with tiny margins. Hart’s seems like a dream. I hope it works out.

We left Hart’s to do our monthly shop over at the Abundance CoOp where as one hundred dollar shareholders we get 10 percent off once a month. They are planning to move to a bigger and better location on South Ave. and I wish them the best as well.

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My father recently commented on how we never read the bible in Catholic school or in church for that matter. We had our Missal and there was plenty of scripture in the Mass but the Catechism was our bible and the Pope had the final word. Protestants are always going around quoting the bible, the literal word of god, and us former Catholics (if that is indeed possible) are left in the dust.

I was reading an online article about ISIS and one of the comments referred to Deuteronomy 13:6–10 to justify some damn thing. I had to look it up.

 “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

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I’m so happy Louise invited us to “Museum Hours” last night at the Dryden. We met for a drink beforehand at Carrol’s and Mathew wore his “Dean & Britta shirt. There was some sort of retirement party so we sat outside. The mosquittos chased us out just before showtime.

I was the first to raise my hand when they opened the floor to questions from the director, Jem Cohen. I was bugged by the moderator’s lengthy discussion of of the relationship between the museum guard and the visiting Canadian. I didn’t think that was what the movie was about and I was hoping to hear the director bring the discussion around to art, appreciation of it and an understanding of where the urge to create comes from. I ran circles around that thought and confused myself more than him. He takes his time and gives very careful answers, the exact opposite of my process.

I loved how he dove into the paintings in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisch and cut to his hauntingly beautiful scenes of the dreary, winter city. Back to the the museum, the Rembrandts and especially the Bruegals and then to the museum guard studying the patrons the way we studied the paintings. That connection to Bruegal’s process picturing museum goers as subjects for paintings crosses centuries of art making urges. I thought it was quite powerful and beautifully expressed. A fine tribute to fine art.

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Forbes Magazine ranked Rochester second on its list of “opportunity cities, places where it is possible to have a business impact, build a successful career and make a comfortable living in a relatively short amount of time.” Delmonize Smith, commissioner of neighborhood and business development for the City of Rochester, is quoted as saying “The creative class that’s here that typically has to make this choice between expanding on their passion or their creativity or paying their bills–they’re able to find a decent place to live, pay $400-$450 a month and focus on their passion.” This is exactly why we’re here.

But as lucky as we are to have such a healthy cultural scene the housing would not be so affordable if the city proper did not have real economic problems. Half of its children live in poverty for starters.

Meanwhile Attorney General Eric Holder announced the arrest of a Rochester convenience store owner as the first American to be charged with recruiting fighters for ISIS and plotting to kill returning servicemen.

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The mailboxes for four nearby houses are clustered between two big oak trees across the street from us. We repaired some potholes out there earlier this summer and set aside today to dig a drainage ditch right in front of the mailboxes. I took a photo of our neighbor’s layout for the project a few weeks ago. There is a depression there from the mailtruck and last winter it filled with melted snow and turned to a sheet of ice. It was especially dangerous in my slippers when I’d go out to get the papers.

The hole was about three foot deep and we filled it with leftover stone that another neighbor had lying around. Peggi usually drives the tractor but she was still at yoga when we started. Manual labor like this counts as exercise so we skipped our walk today and will probably go to bed a little early tonight.

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I used to like baseball a lot. I played it. I collected the cards. My favorite team was the Milwaukee Braves. This was all a long time ago. Fred Costello is still grinding the organ but everything has changed. Gone are the Knot Hole afternoon games when you could get out of school to see the game. Gone is the game itself.

The Red Wings had a good crowd tonight, eight or nine thousand, but no more than a handful were watching the game. The whole world has moved on. The management provides distractions between every inning because no one is watching the game. And that may actually be backwards. No one is watching the game because the management is bent on providing distractions. The guys that used to sell popcorn, peanuts and beer can’t even compete with the concessions stands. We watched people walk up and down the aisles with piles of food, ice cream sundaes and 25 ounce beers for the whole game. It was all rather startling to an old timer. There was a game here but nobody gave a shit.

There is no hole in the home rum fence waiting for a ball that would give the hitter a brand new car like there was on Norton Street. The outfield is an LED overload. They blast snippets of the Violent Femmes, the Ramones and Queen. If they played more than forty five seconds they would have to pay royalties. If this was a soccer game you couldn’t take your eyes off the game. Maybe that is the whole point.

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With a little bit to a lot of rain everyday we have perfect mushroom growing conditions. Our walk in the woods last evening was interrupted by samples of several species. I think we finally spotted the Chanterelles that we were looking for last week. We were told they grow near the Coral mushrooms and that’s right where we found them. They are supposed to be delicious.

We spotted the one above in a clearing and took this shot with a flash. I sent it to my father and he identified it from one of his many resource books as a Yellow Amanita Muscaria. It’s poisonous but it has some serious Psychoactive properties. There is so much mushroom lore to sift through. I found this description on Shroomery.org. “Used correctly, it is pleasurable at its worst and limitlessly creative, intensely ecstatic, universally beneficial and incredibly healing at its best! You’ll probably puke all over the place, so be prepared!” And this from erowid.org “the experience I was having was a simulation of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. I understood that I had to keep pounding these nails out of an invisible cross which I was nailed to. I would be free once the task was completed.”

We buy our mushrooms at Wegmans.

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I could not figure out what was wrong with the Flash last night. Claire Regan asked me as much while we were sitting with her. I didn’t understand why Adriana wasn’t starting in the midfield. She is a real workhorse. Zerboni, who is usually dominant in the center, was off her game and Carly Lloyd was not much of a factor so the middle just fell apart. Boston, the last place team in the league, scored four goals to the Flash’s two. Abby was still sidelined from the injury we saw a few months back but we have hardly missed her. Samantha and Jasmine are fun to watch as they fill in down front.

Maybe I jinxed the team by cheering for my favorite player on the US national team, Boston’s Heather O’Reilly. She had two goals and two assists. This was a must win if the Flash wanted to go to the playoffs so this will probably be my last WNY Flash post this year. In the meantime, I wish the City could find some way to promote the Flash. There are only eight NWSL teams in the country and this one is really a jewel.

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