Fallen yellow crab apples on Humboldt Street, Rochester, NY
I grew up about a half block from this little man-made island and I was lost in the past as we drove up Humboldt Street. I spotted this little crab apple tree that had dropped its load and I asked Peggi to stop the car. The fruit on the ground was an entirely different color from the leaves on its branches, a startling sight. The apples were all in good condition, sort of surprising an animal had not taken care of that, and the bright green spray paint on the curb was nice accent. It wasn’t until we got home and looked at the photo that I saw the sign.
Bar at Tratta in Culver Road Armory, Rochester, New York
Peggi had the perfect route picked out for our multifaceted Friday night journey around the city. Our first stop was Rochester Picture Framing where I picked up a piece of glass for a drawing I’m putting in a show at I-Square Gallery. Next stop was dinner at Trata in the old Armory on Culver Road. Not only have they repurposed the building while letting the old skeleton show, they’ve repurposed the furniture and the even the water glasses which were made from sawed off wine bottles. They fit perfectly with the old timey water bottles and managed to make tap water look elegant. (Our water did win first place at the State Fair this year.)
Three bars, three floors, this was a busy place on Friday night. Peggi read some not-so-good reviews online so we took our server’s recommendations. We split orders of sautéed calamari with corn and black beans, brussels sprout salad with a lemon vinaigrette and the fresh Gulf Coast scallops that were Fed-Exed in that day. Everything right on.
Onward to Bop Shop to pick up tickets for the Sunday Chandler Travis Philharmonic show then to the Art Store in Southtown Plaza where I picked up a frame and some archival mat board. And then down the road to the Dyer Gallery at RIT where Pete Monacelli and George Wegman were in a show of WildRoot artists, a collective from the early seventies. George had a fantastic abstract charcoal drawing in there that both Peggi and I took as an artist’s studio.
We drove back through downtown to the Axom Gallery for the opening of their new show of paintings by Jim DeLucia. The work is somewhere between painterly illustration and pop and looked great in this space but our conversation was centered on dancing and the lessons gallery owner Rick Muto and his wife have been taking. Rick told us he really loved the Samba and had since a Popeye cartoon he vividly remembered from childhood. I told him I would track it down and send him a link.
My blood donation at the Red Cross in Rochester, New York
We have a friend who donates her blood platelets on a regular basis. The process is a real time commitment. The least we can do is donate blood. I thought it was going to be an in/out kinda thing but there is all sorts of screening beforehand and you have your vitals checked out long before they stick the needle in.
Once we were cleared to donate and caught up on our CNN Headline news Peggi and I sat next to each other in big barbershop style chairs. We each had a nurse drawing blood and they made a contest out of it. I filled the vessels above in four minutes and thirteen seconds.
Margaret Explosion tonight – Little Theater Café.
Listen to Rocket Racer by Margaret Explosion, recorded live at the Little Theater Cafe.Leave a comment
My father finished his painting just in time for Brighton’s Art Festival this weekend. He was also scheduled to give a watercolor demonstration at the town hall in conjunction with the show and after the demonstration he and I set up shop to do festival goers’ portraits. I warmed up by doing Peggi and then one of my mom but my mom didn’t like the drawing I did. My father said, “Give her twenty five years and she’ll like it.” She didn’t like a portrait they had done in New Orleans 25 years ago but it’s hanging in their dining room now.
After the show we ate at Magnolia’s, the restaurant Obama ate at when he was in town. We had never been there but found some great salads on the menu and even Railroad Street IPA. After dinner the four of us walked down Park Avenue to Parkleigh where my sister works. We used to buy the New York Times in here when it was still a drug store. Now it is completely packed with stuff I couldn’t imagine buying. I feel like I am on another planet in there but they do a great business and they treat my sister right.
Long hair musician statue at Kodak Hall in Rochester, New York
The Eastman School of Music’s Philharmonia and the Eastman Rochester Chorus tore the roof off the sucker last night in Kodak Hall. The free concert of Mahler’s wild Symphony No. 2, commonly known as “The Resurrection” although it is not about Christ, was dedicated to the memory of Dean Douglas Lowry who passed away a few weeks ago. The place was packed and there were nearly 300 instrumentalists and choral members on stage. Eight double bass players!
The deer are out of control around here but there is one less because my brother hit one a few nights ago. He did a few thousand dollars worth of damage to his vehicle. The ten point buck in the photo above comes by our place every day. When he’s not chasing women he likes to rub his antlers on our trees. The trees can’t live without their bark.
I took this picture of my parents around 1970 or so. I think Kim developed the film for me. My parents were sitting at the table in our back yard where we often had dinner in the summer. I was looking for a photo from that time because my parents went to calling hours tonight for our old next door neighbor. Our neighbors had ten kids, more than anyone on the block and the house seemed perpetually out of control but they were very nice.
At dinner tonight my mom was explaining her discipline policy back in the day. When one or a handful of the neighborhood kids would act up around our house my mom would ask them to go ho home. When the kids got home their mom would sometimes come down to our house and ask what it was the kids did. My mom did not want to get into it. She just settled things that way.
There were seven kids in our family and if we all had friends over, there could be thirty kids in the back yard. I told my mom I remember her coming out of the house and telling everyone to go to their own home. It was dramatic and impressive. She could really clear the place.
Our best guess is that it is someone who walks (well most people walk) but walks like we do (“the walkers”). Someone in a car, even a stopped car, would never be able to toss their empty beer cans so accurately into this boggy area around the same fallen tree on a regular basis. It must be a walker and they probably do it at night. We rarely walk after dark so that would explain why we have never run into them.
By now I assume some neighbors think Peggi and I are the Bud freaks because they have spotted us carrying the empties back. The culprit probably has an OCD problem as well as a drinking problem. I mean you could get rid of an empty anywhere but these are always in exactly the same spot. I’ve thought about putting up a camera like the one Steve Grieve has out in the marsh to photograph deer but then I wonder if maybe there already is a camera up here photographing Peggi and I as we habitually pick up the cans.
Budweiser is not using their patriotic can design anymore (type Budweiser in the search engine on this page to see the other entries on this subject) and how about that one can (above) that is taller than the rest. Budweiser has taken their 24 ounce can up a notch. This one goes to 25.
It was comforting to know our neighbor was pecking away in the light filled room at the back of the house next door. I imagine a writer’s work is never done. Even while socializing you always get the sense that you just might be material for repurposing. So it was a sad day when their year lease ran out. We’re still sleeping with our bedroom windows open and it is much too quiet over there.
When the phone rings at 6 AM you know it’s going to be a strange day. My dad asked my mom to call 911 because he felt terrible. She called my sister next and then my sister called us. At a certain age it seems you have to check in at Emergency a few times a year just to keep things moving along.
Lots of tests and a host of the usual problems but no smoking gun. Could it have been the knockwurst sandwich, the German potato salad and or the vanilla milkshake that my dad had for dinner at the Highland Diner? Or maybe a general sausage buildup due to the the meal my dad had the day before at Brew & Brats outside of Naples? The doctor said, “It could be.”
The staff at Highland Hospital was just fantastic, thoroughly professional and attentive, all the things you hope for when things spin out of control, but also very friendly. The Spanish speaking maintenance man was just a delight, the technician who looked exactly like one of those tall, skinny African “inmigrantes” you see on the streets in Spain with blankets of designer contraband spread out in front of them. He had the most beautiful, charcoal black skin. The nurse who my niece, a wedding photographer, had met when she tried to liven up a really boring wedding, demonstrated the dances she did on the emergency room floor. The “Lawnmower, The Shopping Cart” and the “Lawn Sprinkler.” The doctor, who was going to medical school in the Scorgie’s days, told us he had one of our Personal Effects lps and had seen Margaret Explosion at the Little and better yet, he has a copy of my dad’s “Brighton Brick” book at home.
I hear the town plans to thin the deer herd this year. Last year we heard the town didn’t have the money to fund the “bait and shoot” program. I don’t know if any of these things are true, they are just things neighbors talk about around here. The deer are gorging themselves on nuts this time of year and it is almost impossible to scare them off. I would not want to be the one charged with hunting or trapping these guys. It would be way too easy.
Most days our walk takes us into the park. Yesterday we walked to the park and then took a walk. We met a group at the kiosk on Zoo Road and took one of the Arboretum Tours that volunteers host. We’ve taken these tours many times but always learn something, mostly we learn things over again. No one knows how long the Dawn Redwoods will live or how big they will get because seeds from the species were only recently discovered. When telling conifers apart it helps to remember the cones on fir trees grow up and cones on spruce trees grow down. Hint: There are fewer letters in the the words fir and up. White oaks have rounded leaves (like the Matisse cutouts) where red oaks have pointed leaves. Hint: I forget what the hint was.
Cheryl Laurro was the queen of Monroe Avenue back in the day. She ran Godiva’s and The Mission by day and at night she blew the doors off the house when she fronted her band, Lilly’s Buffet, sort of a precursor to Anonymous Willpower. She left town years ago but she will always be a dear friend. After dinner with her last night we watched every Pete LaBonne video we could find online and then she called up a this video of her father’s 1956 song “Jive Train.”
The 45 was recorded at at Fine Recording Studios in Rochester when Jim Laurro was still in high school. In fact he was only sixteen and the sax player, Pee Wee Ellis, who went on to write “Cold Sweat” for James Brown, was living with Jim in Cheryl’s grandmother’s house. He lived with them for two years before joining James Browns’s band. Cheryl’s cousin put the A-side up. We’re waiting for the B-side, “I Woke Up This Morning.”
JIM LAURRO AND HIS ORCHESTRA – Jive Train / Woke Up This Morning – Fine F8-2157 A-side instrumental, b-side vocals
“Pee Wee” Ellis – tenor sax, Joe Personte – trumpet, Willie Bryant – trombone, Jim Laurro – piano, Dick Sampson – bass, Val Colombo – drums, sung by King George
500 copies ordered, 21st August 1957. Masters sold to the Adora Recording Co., May 1958
Any time is a good time to take a ride in the country but there is no better time than October. The hills are alive with color, the weather is warm enough to stop the car near a farmer’s field, a roadside stand or somewhere in a small town. Without the ferry our only option here is to head south and the Finger Lakes are somewhat of an obstacle for east/west travel so we often pick a lake and drive around it. But even that is really over planning.
It becomes pretty clear we have no idea what’s in our own backyard when you get down to Watkins Glen at the bottom of Seneca Lake. The tiny town is full of tourists from all over the world. We walked up the glen’s stream in the state park past waterfalls and 200-foot cliffs with an international crowd of smartphone photographers.
We had a gig last Wednesday when Jeff Munson got together with some old friends of ours from high school. I asked him how everybody was and he said there were a lot of pot bellies but it was great to see them all. They got around to talking about a classmate who died in Viet Nam. Jeff told us he went downtown with Rex when Rex reported for duty, trying to talk him out of it all the way there. I wish he had been successful.
CASUALTY DATA:
Start Tour: 01/15/1971
Incident Date: 04/16/1971
Casualty Date: 04/16/1971
Age at Loss: 20
Location: Thua Thien Province, South Vietnam
Remains: Body recovered
Casualty Type: Hostile, died outright
Casualty Reason: Ground casualty
Casualty Detail: Misadventure (Friendly Fire)
Troy is not that far away, a few hours by train. We were kicking ourselves for not making the effort to catch a rare Pete LaBonne gig. But of course that is exactly what YouTube is for.
Tierney gathering for breakfast at the Treadway Inn on the corner of Alexander and East Avenue in Rochester, New York 1959
You can’t reheat a soufflé and you can’t call it a reunion if it happens every year but the Tierney side of my family gave it a go again yesterday afternoon. The family was large in the photo above, taken on my grandparent’s anniversary, but we were just getting started. My youngest sister wasn’t even born yet. Many in the blowup of this photo are gone and yesterday we had to put name tags on to identify ourselves to all the new additions.
At one time or another most of the family worked either in my grandfather’s or my uncle’s grocery stores and I felt enough time had passed that I could tell my cousin, Ray III (in the center of the photo above), about the time his father, Ray Jr. the owner, found me in the milk cooler of his grocery store sitting up on the shelf eating a banana cream pie that I had swiped from the dairy case. Stockboys don’t have silverware so I was holding the whole pie up to my mouth when the cooler door flew open. Ray III said, “don’t worry, he probably saved the empty box and got credit for the pie.” I didn’t want to tell him it was a regular routine.
Times Square Building from revamped Central Trust Apartment
An advantage of the demise of downtown, starting with the urban renewal efforts, the white flight and the crush of the suburban malls, is the really amazing loft style living arrangements that are now available in the heart of the city. We took the Landmark Society’s weekend tour of exciting spaces to live and work. A loft in the old, 1959 orange striped, Central Trust building on Exchange Street with a birds eye view of the Wings of Progress atop the Art Deco inspired Times Square building was our favorite sweet spot.
Scott McCarney “Married” at Visual Studies Workshop
I guess we missed the opening for the new show at Rochester Contemporary. They have it on Thursday now to avoid the First Friday crowd. I don’t think we missed much. We tried tweeting MoMa with the telegraph prompter that someone rigged to an iPad but I could only get gibberish out. I got a kick out of Kristen Lucas’s piece in the Lab Space. She documented an effort in the state of California to legally change her name to exactly what it was in the first place. She likened it to “refreshing” a webpage.
We showed up at Visual Studies just as they announced Scott McCarney as an award winner for his Gilbert & George piece, “Married.” That’s Scott on the right. He had one of his marvelous books in “I Do” show as well.
Sullivan barns at Starkey’s Corner overlooking Seneca Lake 2013
Vince Gilligan cited “The Twilight Zone” as the pinnacle of good storytelling. Peggi and I reach for old Hitchcock shows when we’re in a storytelling mood and have been working our way through the midfifties via Netflix. I have a red envelope in our mailbox this morning with “Rear Window” in it. I love movies that don’t go anywhere, that unfold in one location on one set. “Rear Window” is like an Advent calendar with all the windows open at once. It’s like a live video feed version of Facebook.
We watched the classic last night because we can’t make the Wednesday night Hitchcock series at the Little. Our band plays in the café on Wednesdays and last week we played to “39 Steps” goers as well as the regulars. Years before digital binging the Dryden Theater hosted a Hitchcock festival on the big screen and that cemented our reverence.
We drove by my aunt and uncle’s old farm last week. They downsized this year and sold the place. The house, just to the right of the photo above, was built in 1819 and was the only house they ever lived in. My aunt, also my godmother, cooked on a wood burning stove in the kitchen and we loved visiting their place as kids. My uncle called us “city slickers” even though we showed up with cowboy hats and jeans on. He’d set aside his chores and take us for a hayride through the back pastures that overlooked Seneca Lake. Feeding cows, collecting eggs, sheering sheep, this was the coolest place on earth.
We had lunch yesterday with my aunt and uncle in their new digs, a small complex outside Clifton Springs and it was a delight to hear her reminisce about their life in Starkey’s Corner. On the way home we stopped in the town itself, coordinates: 42°57′44″N 77°8′15″W, to see the “covered sidewalks” on Main Street that my uncle talked about. The sulfur springs appear to have kept this town, with interesting restaurants and shops and even an art gallery, eternally young.
Falling leaves don’t make much of a racket but the acorns sure do and this year we have a bumper crop of acorns. I pointed my camera at our neighbors house, their roof has better acoustics than ours, and recorded this nutty, free-jazz piece.
I’m getting a little worried about our late planting of spinach. It has been about ten days since we’ve seen any rain and the five day forecast in this morning’s paper was all sunny icons. May have to resort to the garden hose.
