I’ve continued to adjust the sound of my tubs while they’re home for a few weeks. Tuning and dampening and listening. After all these years I’ve discovered that drums sound best at their lowest (loosest drum skin tension) position just before pitch falls apart. That is as low as you can go without the heads flopping about or having rattling unpleasantries attach themselves to the the way the drum rings when you strike it. There is a sweet spot right there and the drum rings with its fullest potential. You can imagine how big the drum is by the sound of it. You can just picture it. If you find that position on all the drums in your set they will undoubtedly be in tune with each other.
I play a Chinese kit made by Mapex with a snare, a 14 inch floor tom and a twenty inch kick. I hate their logo. Wrong font for the awkward space between the “A” and the “P.” When I bought the set I said I’ll take that maple set over their but put a different head on the front of the bass drum, one without that logo.”
Instead of walking in the woods today we walked up to Wegmans and trudged home with some heavy items. Flour, a half gallon of milk, grapefruit, yogurt, corn meal and an extra quart of milk to replace what we borrowed from Rick and Monica this morning in order to make make blueberry pancakes. I stopped to take this dumb picture of a hand made sign and a guy came out waving his arms and shouting “Can I help you?”. I said no and he raised his voice a few notches. “Can I help you?”. I yelled, “No”. I was already thinking this sign isn’t good enough for my sign collection but I took the shot anyway just to to piss the guy off.
I had six cans in my arms already when I spotted these. The Budweiser man has struck again. I say “man” but who knows. We speculate endlessly about whether this is the work of a kid. It can’t be. No kid would continue doing this for three years! It must be an adult and it must be a man. A lady wouldn’t buy a 24 ounce can of Bud, would she? And are these cans thrown here from a moving car? Tossed across a lane from the driver’s side. I doubt it. They are always in the same spot. He would have to be too good a shot. Who would walk this far down a nearly deserted dead end street? We usually come to the same conclusive guess. It must be one of the neighbors. “Honey I’m going out to walk the dog.” Someone who is already in the doghouse for their drinking!
This tree on Culver Road in front of the Church of the Transfiguration is older than the United States. It has it’s own plaque. And it reminds me that a lot of what I like about this place was here before the Revolutionary War.
We had dinner across the street last night and I started a dissing Christmas. We’ve only been celebrating this holiday for a hundred years or so. Why can’t we stop? Christ wasn’t born on Christmas. (Rick looked it up. He was born in September or July according to two different sources.) Jesus was Jew. He wasn’t a Christian! The Catholics gloomed on to the Solstice and picked the date for Christ’s birth just like they lifted lifted all their mysteries and miracles from pagan myths. Etc. I was just trying to liven up the conversation. I do like the holiday lights.
I only have one tom in my set and I haven’t liked the way this floor tom has sounded for a long time. I tuned it higher the other night and it sounded better but too loud. This afternoon I took the dampening ring that has been on my snare and tossed it on the tom. It sounds just amazing, almost melodic. And the snare sounds better without the ring. The tom is about to become a big part of my sound.
Frozen wetlands off Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
The Eastman House put up a mint copy of the 1974 political thriller “The Parallax View” with Warren Beatty last night. And it was free for members. Peggi and I both thought we had seen it back in the day but we hadn’t. We would have remembered the spectacular shots. Same cinematographer as the Godfather movies and it really looked good on the big screen, so good I was laughing at inappropriate times. The plot was delicious too. Just like the Warren Commission got to the bottom of the JFK assassination and George W.’s plan to hire Henry Kissinger to get to the bottom of the World Trade Center bombings we never really know who’s calling the shots but there is probably a multinational corporation behind it.
Graham Nash curated the Rock n’ Roll photography exhibit at the Eastman House and we’ve been trying to get there for a month or so. I’m hoping Anton Corbijn’s Beefheart portrait is in the show.
Don Van Vilet was a rock n’ roller and real painter. He told The Associated Press in 1991. “I don’t like getting out when I could be painting. And when I’m painting, I don’t want anybody else around.”
Empty stage at Tala Vera restaurant on State Street in Rochester, New York
The surge of rush hour traffic is still outbound when the work day ends in Rochester. Empty lofts are being converted and empty nesters are coming back but most of downtown is still pretty much a ghost town at night. Less a ghost town than it was in the Scorgie’s days but still pretty hostile. State Street near the old four corners is particularly forlorn so the new Tala Vera California style Mexican restaurant/bar/nightclub is almost like a mirage.
We were there kind of late on Saturday night and there was only one other couple in the dining room. The place looks beautiful and the empty stage looked inviting. There is a sound system in place, a piano and oriental rug on the stage and a drum set in the corner. The new restaurant lets you bring in your own wine with no corkage fee until January one so we brought a bottle of Spanish red and our jalapeño appetizer was so hot we drank it fast. Their tortilla soup was delicious as were the dishes we split.
A laptop on the other side of the room was playing the kind of guitar driven, tight snare jazz that drives us crazy so when the other couple left we asked the the owner if we could plug our ipod in. We had just been listening to a Margaret Explosion gig from a few weeks ago and we picked up right where we left off in the car. It was just like being at home in a five star restaurant. We had two Christmas shows to go to and I wished the owner good luck on the way out. I do hope he can bring people downtown to his cool spot.
Watkins & the Rapiers were in full Xmas drag when we showed up at the Tango Café and the place was packed. The band took a break while Scott, accompanied by Steve Piper on guitar, did a beautiful song of his called “Stars at Christmas”. His lyric, “Walk down each street as if it’s yours,” is one hell of an image.
The Christmas season wouldn’t be right without Bob Henrie and Goners take on the season. So we packed up and squeezed in to Abilene for their rockin’ last set. Bob Cooper was sitting in with the band on piano. Peggi bought her red Farfisa from him about thirty years ago.
Peggi plays Farfisa organ on this Hi-Techs chestnut, “Screamin’ You Head.”
The third dvd of “Breaking Bad” arrived in mail today with only one episode. Guess there was a writer’s strike going on back then. We toyed with watching it right away and getting it back the same day’s mail but work got in the way.
Work seems to be getting in the way of NYC trip too. We were planning to take the train down, visit our nephew who’s going to Columbia Law School and then stay with our friend, Duane, in Brooklyn. I called Duane today to tell him it was looking like weren’t going to be able to get away for a few weeks because of work. Ugg.
I had already planned a few art stops. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has show up in Harlem at the Studio Museum near where our nephew lives. She does portraits of fiction characters and I love the way she paints. Another great paint handler, Luc Tuymans, who just had a retrospective at SFMoMA, has a show of recent paintings at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea and of course once you get down there there is no holding back with the art onslaught.
We’ve been following the “Steve Martin art lecture at the Y” story and read Steve’s letter to the editor in last Sunday’s paper and I was excited to hear Colbert had Steve Martin on his show last night. I might have to buy his book.
John Gilmore insisted we put this cable tv show called “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue. In fact he asked for our password and he added the movie himself. We spotted it in there and bumped it down a few times (I didn’t like the name of it) but it eventually worked its way to the top when we weren’t looking and then showed up in our mailbox.
We really love it. It’s over the top and believable at the same time without getting into reality tv territory. We watched the first three episodes in a flash and while we were waiting for the next disc to arrive our neighbors brought over a movie called “Leaves of Grass” with Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. It was a similar topic. We watched the movie together and I was obnoxious throughout because I couldn’t believe how pale this thing was stacked up to “Breaking Bad.”
We don’t have cable tv so we have a lot of catching up to do and there is nothing but “Breaking Bad” in our Netflix queue now.
Yellow cherries in the woods with snow, Rochester, New York
I don’t remember this yellow cherry tree from last year. It’s the first thing we saw today as we entered the woods. The skiing was excellent as long as we didn’t stand still. The ground is not quite frozen yet so the snow is sticky down there.
People were talking about sixteen inches but that doesn’t seen possible. We have about five out there now and I just checked the weather – “Occasional lake effect snow showers. Additional accumulation 3 to 5 inches in the most persistent snows…greatest near Lake Ontario and in the eastern suburbs. Lows in the lower 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph becoming west. Gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.” Didn’t keep Peggi from going to her yoga class.
Did anybody see that article about the State of Kentucky using economic development funds to build a replica of Noah’s ark. It’s kinda down there near the Creation Museum. Separation of church and state issues make it sort of controversial. They’re talking about rebuilding the Tower of Babel down there. I’d like to be there when they speak in tongues. Or how about that article about the neo nazi’s lawyer who has hired a make up artist at $125 a day to cover up his defendant’s tattoos during his capitol punishment trial. “Could be distracting or prejudicial to the jurors.” Is there such a thing as a fair trial? My friend Rich sorts a lot of these issues out for me.
“From a Series of Narrow Escapes . . .” by Alice de Mauriac at the Rochester Contemporary 2010 Members Show
What a beautiful painting this is (the painting not my snapshot)! Like the E string on a double bass playing a particularly, seductive note or the air that is being misplaced by it. It’s my favorite piece in the new Rochester Contemporary Members Show.
Skateboarder memorial on Norton Street in Rochester, NY
I’m quite sure I saw Akeer Matthews many times as we travelled up and down Culver Road. He was hit by a car a few months back right across the street from Case’s Garden Store where we buy our plants in the Spring. I know I would have been a skateboarder if that subculture was around when I was young so I always take note of them in a crowd.
Margaret Explosion played at the annual dinner/auction/benefit for Rochester Roots last night. Certainly a worthwhile effort, to get city youth to eat right, green and local when possible, it was none the less a rather sad affair. We played up on a small stage in an old auditorium in the Downtown Presbyterian Church and the sound was great. We tried our best to stay in the background (so much so that a woman started an announcement as we were starting a song) while mostly older, progressive types bid on bath soaps and local wine. Bob and Ken left after we finished playing but Peggi and I stayed around for the dinner. It was delicious and entirely locally grown. I guess what makes it sad is that a program as obviously right on as this one must depend on volunteers to support it. That and the PowerPoint presentation after dinner.
Painting class ended for the year, just in time to do some more painting. During the last class (i.e. “therapy session”) I overheard Fred explaining another one of painting’s conundrums to a fellow student. Tony was working on a big abstract, one with what he calls “pours” of pigment and medium, and he had a nice section at the bottom of his painting that I had complimented him on earlier in the evening. I was only listening as I worked on my own set of problems but I know Fred was covering up that section on Tony’s painting when he launched into a familiar rap.
“The minute something becomes precious, it is a liability. You’re going to dance around it, trying to protect it at the expense of your painting.”
These universal guides, always address the worst first, if the question comes up the answer is yes, get to the point and then shut up, work for the other abstract painters in the class. They work for the women who paints animals, the guy who does Maine landscapes, my father’s whimsical watercolors and my crime face paintings. The guides, of course, are bigger than painting and that’s why they are universal.
Old farm land off Westfall Road in Rochester, New York
Yesterday, I took a trip back in time with my father. He had asked for some help with a dig he was doing at the old farm property on Westfall Road which the town of Brighton has recently purchased. The town burnt the old farm house in a fire department exercise and then bulldozed the charred remains into the earth and then they stuck a sign in the ground that reads “Archeologic Dig”. My father pointed out that it was misspelled but I didn’t notice. He has uncovered an old well and a brick path that runs between it and the house. I tried to lift some big pieces of concrete out of the old well without falling in. My father is using Google SketchUp and old photos to reconstruct the property as was in the early 1800’s.
Instead of walking in the woods today we headed over to “Simply New York”, the new store on Culver Road up near the lake. We saw an albino squirrel on the way. Everything in the store is made in New York. I looked at a t-shirt that read “If you’re lucky enough to live in Sea Breeze, you’re lucky enough.” We bought a jig saw puzzle made in Buffalo, some pepper pasta made in Watertown and some shoes made in Batavia. I wore the shoes home in the rain and my feet stayed dry. I told the owner I was going to bring them back if my feet got wet. He gave us some Hedonist sesame chocolate (made in Rochester) for the walk home.
Everything is going brown and then grey but the the subtly of those browns and greys is astounding. The deer know this. We’re just figuring it out. Click photo to enlarge.
When Jim Mott was staying with us last Spring he mentioned that his wife, Sonja, had just released a new book about growing up in Rochester, New York. I ordered it from Amazon while we stood there. Jim said we could meet Sonja the next week at an art opening at the Oxford Gallery where he had would be showing some paintings. We went to the opening but we had the wrong night so we never connected.
Leighton Avenue, Bowman Street, Grand Avenue, Lamont Place and two locations on East Main near Culver. I know every one of the streets that Sonja Livingston mentions in “Ghostbread”. My parents lived upstairs in an apartment on Alexander and Main when I was born. We were right around the corner from Corpus Christi where Sonja spends so much time. I was baptized there. My family moved east of Culver to Brookfield and we lived there for ten years, right across from the Kirby Vacuum Center that Sonja talks about in her opening pages. Later, Peggi and I lived across from East High for twenty six years. We were only a few blocks away from most of what happens in this gorgeous memoir but we were a world away as well. Like Sonja I played Mass with my siblings but my six siblings all had the same father and he lived with us and provided for and nurtured us. The extreme differences in her circumstances in such close proximity is only part of what makes this book so engrossing.
Sonja’s chapters are short, sometimes only a page but they are so efficiently packed and carefully crafted they knock me out. Some nights I found I could read only a few chapters before wanting to set the book down, close my eyes and savor the exquisite setting. I suggested my mom bring this book to the next meeting of her book club.
We found good homes for as much of Peggi’s mom’s stuff as we could but there was a whole lot lot over. The clothes all went to the battered women shelter and we donated a couple tvs, a microwave, and other furniture to the living center next door to her apartment. And an antique dealer that Dick Storm’s recommended picked the place clean of stuff he can put in an upcoming household sale. You didn’t think the stuff in those sales actually came from the house where the sale is did you? And then we worked our way down the food chain by offering some stuff to a consignment shop in Winton Place and on the last day Mary Kaye from a place on Titus Avenue took what was left for her shop. We managed to get our garage cleaned out this summer just in time to fill it up with boxes of old photos and knick knacks, baubles, bibelots, curios, curiosities, doodads, gewgaws, novelties, ornamentals, trinkets and tchotchkes. If we had more traffic on our street I’d put a “free” sign out by the road and give this stuff away.
We made some sort of a deal with a consignment shop to sell Peggi’s mom’s furniture. We split delivery to their shop and they decide what price they’re gonna put on it and if the stuff sells, we get fifty per cent. It only makes sense in this new economy.
Paladino’s got pretty catchy campaign gimmick but I think we’re mad about different things.
Ken’s bass amp crapped out last night so he played without it. We got a little quieter and it was all for the better. Paul Perri came up to chat as we were packing up. We went to grade school together at St. John’s on Humboldt Street. He says he has a picture of our third grade class at home and he promised to email it. Talk immediately turned to Catholic School, wacky nuns, alter boy shenanigans, war stories. Paul left and a small group of us were still talking about religion.
When my parent’s house was broken into we wound up spending a considerable amount of time over there with the police, a locksmith and theinsurance agents. We were still in bed when we got the call so we hadn’t eaten anything and at some point I found myself rumaging through their cupboards where I found some Kebler Honey Grahams. There was some pulp heavy Tropicana in the fridge so I anxoiusly tore open the wax paper package on the crackers, excited at the prospect of dunking them in a tall glass of OJ. I hadn’t had this treat since I left home as a teenager.
I would habitually try to split the crackers along the vertical center line so I would get something like a six by one inch long cracker to dip in the glass. I’d hold the cracker in there as long as possible so it would soak in the juice and then try to get the cracker out of the glass and into my mouth before it turned into mush in the glass. My parents used to buy the Nabisco Graham Crackers in the red box and then Honey Grahams came along. I think they were made by Kebler at first so we switched brands. I remember one being better than the other but I can’t remember know which one I preferred. I put a whole package down (one third of a box) and stopped there althoiugh I could have continued. That was limit back then and I stuck to it.
As I mentioned a few days ago I took Peggi to the hospital so they could stop her bloody nose. It was our most pleasent emergency room experience. The receptionist asked if I was a Dodd. I said I was Paul and she said, “Oh my god!”. She lived across the street from me and I used to babysit for her and her siblings. We each ran down the whereabouts of our respective big family members and we noticed that she was particularilly interested in my youngest brother’s status. I’ll have to pass this info on to him when I see him. Anyway I think she fast tracked us and gave us an especially nice doctor.
She was the second former babysitting victim that I have run into this year. I remember how tense it was dealing with the parents and then how easy it was to babysit once they left the house. I loved every minute of it and when I finally got the kids to bed I’d go through the food cupboards just like I did at my parent’s house.
Our car is over at Jeromes’s getting the once over. It was time for an oil change but it’s also time for new brakes, new tires and a new pump for the window washer fluid. Those guys are the best so I know it’s in good hands but it is a strange sensation handing over the keys to a car with an Obama sticker on it to a garage where Glen Beck’s fire and brimstone rants are blasting. Bipartisanship in action. We just watched Network the other night and were surprised how relevant the thirty four year old move is.
We borrowed our neighbor’s car so Peggi could get to emergency because she had a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop. They packed it with liquid cocaine solution. her lips went numb and the bleeding stopped. And then we borrowed our other neighbor’s car so I could get to my painting class. I didn’t mind asking him because I had just helped him take down a diseased tree. You can see his time tested method in the photo above. You basically create a hinge that runs across the center of the tree by cutting the wedge perpendicular to and facing the direction you want the tree to fall in and a cut straight in on the other side about four inches above the wedge cut. The tree teeters on the uncut “hinge, you can almost tip it with a wedge and it drops. Can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon.
