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Joey’s Party

Sign for Joey's party
Sign for Joey’s party

We hadn’t been swimming in the lake since we sold our boat five years ago. We hiked through the woods with Duane on Saturday and then followed the path around the pond to the lake. There were some loud picnics going on up on Log Cabin Road and there were a number people fishing from the edge of the pond. One little kid was reeling in the tiniest sunfish when we walked by. His dad was helping him get it off the line. He was all excited. Lake Ontario’s water felt warm and refreshing at the same time.

We brought the paper down to the street pool on Sunday and we were the only ones there. I read the reviews of the new Woodstock books to Peggi revealing who was tripping while playing and how much the bands were paid. Someone was quoted as saying, “If the transportation was better, ninety per cent of the people would have left. I was there a full day early and watched the soundcheck but eventually left on the second night. Dave Mahoney thought we going to starve to death and he may have. He had to eat when he was hungary. And I read that thousands of people left there sleeping bags there. My brother came home with about ten and gave them away. I always assumed it was because people couldn’t find their campsite but it was because they were full of mud. We went down there with no sleeping bags or camping equipment and no food but we did have tickets that we sent away for through WSAY.

Our neighbors, Rick and Monica, came home from their vacation last night and Monica was wearing a Woodstock t-shirt that she bought at Target. She said some skateboarders that she was starring at flashed the peace sign at them. They missed Joey’s party. One of our other neighbors asked if they could use our driveway on Saturday because they were having a big party. We said sure but no one parked in our driveway. It might have had something to do with the arrow on the sign that Joey’s mother made. It was pointing away from our driveway.

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NFS

Martha O'Connor art at Rochester Contemporary Lab Space
Martha O’Connor art at Rochester Contemporary Lab Space

Art work with an NFS (Not For Sale) tag is especially appealing. It is often the best work in a show. Duane was in town for the weekend and we met at the RoCo opening for “State of the City”. It was a funny mix of un-unruly (I want to say the opposite of unruly but I guess ruly is not a word) graffiti, polite hip hop and empty warehouse photography. We spent most of time in the small Lab Space looking at Martha O’Connor’s show, “Augurhood”. Duane wanted to buy the piece shown above but it was NFS. Martha explained that she drew this on the paper wrapping from some imported Italian cheese that she liked.

The soundtrack from the movie, “Short Cuts”, that we ordered from eBay thanks to a link that Joel sent, arrived yesterday and we love it. Its a dark California soundscape complete with helicopters, earthquake rumblings, songs by Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Dr. John, Iggy Pop, Igor Stavinsky and Horace Silver. It was 75 cents plus shipping. Funny that clunky old cds are sometimes cheaper than downloads now.

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Good Orderly Direction

Green ground cover in woods of Western New York
Green ground cover in woods of Western New York

We managed to slow summer’s pace down a bit by not doing a whole lot of stuff. Not going out to see the bands we follow, not going to parties, not going to the last Rhino’s game and not making entries here for a few days. We’ve also been working most evenings because we have a backlog of work for a change. And after work, it’s out to the porch to read. The world slows to a crawl out there.

Peggi took her mom to the doctor this morning They are trying to determine why she has such a hard time swallowing. A battery of tests are in order. She’ll swallow some barium on Monday and they will track the decent with x-rays. I took our 92 year old neighbor’s mail in this morning and I plan to mow his lawn tomorrow while he figures out how to swallow again. They removed most of his pallet when they cut out his mouth cancer last week. He wants to throw in the towel but pep talks may dissuade him. I gave him my best shot while handing him his mail. He was slurping an Ensure.

I do my best thinking while mowing the lawn, taking a shower or walking in the woods. If I’m working on a logo, and I do sketches all day, I’ll jump in the shower and the best idea pops into my head. Today I was thinking about god and I sorted it all out in the shower. We have two neighbors on our small street that boast of being atheists. One is a chemist and the other teaches poetry in the City school district and their conversations got me going on this matter. As a Catholic, I was raised to believe that there was some sort of Trinity construct with the all knowing God the Father, His son, made visible in Jesus, and this spooky Holy Ghost that hovers about. I never could figure it out. I know that when I buried our cat he was stiff as a board I will be too when I die. I don’t believe I’ll be meeting any maker in the great beyond.

I was looking at my niece’s Facebook photos from the recent Jason Mraz concert. He does a song called “Good Orderly Direction“. The first time I came across this concept was in Julia Cameron’s book on creativity. But I gather it is also sort of an out for addicts who use AA but don’t believe in God. The natural order of things is enough of a god construct for me.

Which brings to mind the old MX-80 slogan. “Often in error. Never in doubt.”

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Dueling Tapas

Tapas dish called Pimientos De Padron as served in Rochester New York
Tapas dish called Pimientos De Padron as served in Rochester New York

Spanish people know how to eat, not just what to eat. They kind of excel in both. Some restaurants around here offer what they call tapas but they aren’t. The proportions are way too large. You like that much of one thing, order the dish three times, ya slob!

Tapas in Spain are served over a counter and you eat them at the counter, often while standing. The plates are small like saucers and the silverware is even small sometimes. Maybe the fork only has three prongs or two. If you’re having a beer, a small plate of olives is often served on-the-house and sometimes the person behind the counter may even slide you a complimentary tapa. These small servings take the edge off before dinner and sometimes that is all you need.

We had a small tapas party on Sunday with our friends, Alice and Julio. They brought some, we made one in advance and then made a few while we talked. We ordered Padron Peppers from La Tienda and followed a YouTube chef”s instructions. Although they are a Galician dish we had these for the first time while in Madrid. The place was more cafeteria than bar, brightly lit by fluorescents and was somewhere near Plaza Santa Ana. It was late and we stumbled on it. It looked like it had been there for a century but we could not find it when we returned a few years later. They were sensational.

We watched a documentary on The Crips and The Bloods last night. Forest Whitaker narrated and the funniest part was when they showed how much starch the gangbangers put on there jeans. “Enough to make ’em stand up in the corner with nobody in them.”

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Steve and Steve

Traditional marriage protesters
Traditional marriage protesters

We were sitting out front watching our neighbors pack when Monica brought over three bags of greens that would probably go bad while they were gone. She said, “I think one of them is cilantro”‘ and I thought great. I was going to pick some up for one of the tapas we were planning on making when we got together with Julio and Alice this weekend. We headed out to the Public Market and bought as much as we could carry of local blueberries, peaches, dark red cherries and corn. I grabbed some Italian parsley that one of the tapas recipes called for and then we stopped at Wegmans to pick up the rest.

At the corner of Culver and Ridge, right in front of Walgreens, there was a gathering of protesters wearing suits and holding up big white signs. One of them said, “Honk if You Support Traditional Marriage”. Someone honked. I laid on the horn and didn’t let up. The protesters stared at us not knowing what to think. We drove by them again after shopping at Wegmans and I took some photos and yelled, “You guys are nuts.” They were all guys and one of their signs read, “Adam and Eve not Steve and Steve.”

I got home and unpacked and discovered the cilantro that Monica had given us was actually Italian parsley so I hopped on my bike and headed back to Wegmans. I told Peggi I might take a movie of the protesters and she suggested that I say, Hi Steve”, to all of them as I rode by so I did that. “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” “Hi Steve.” etc. They really didn’t know what to think.

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Walloping Your Dodger

Steve Hoy smoking
Steve Hoy smoking

“My boarding house”, as my mother-in-law calls her senior living facility in Rochester, has one of the best restaurants in town. We ate at “Le Petite Bistro” tonight where I ordered the mussels with Calamata olives in a delicious garlic broth as my appetizer. It was out of this world or at least European. I overheard this guy at another table talking about Sister Bridget and looked over and thought this must be a different Sister Bridget than the one I had in first grade at St. John the Evangelist on Humboldt Road in the city. This guy looked so old. But the woman he was talking to said something about the Sisters of Mercy so I figured it could be the same one. I remember her as being so comfortable. That’s a pretty vague description but it was an important quality for me at that age. i stood up and asked if this could possibly be the same Sister Bridget and they confirmed that she had taught there.

My second grade teacher was a miserable nun and maybe that’s why I remember Sister Bridget so fondly. I remember that one asking for a show of hands on who still believed in Santa Claus. And then there was an endless parade of kooks who told tall tales with twisted moral underpinnings and seemed to delight in torturing the kids that called her bluff. But I still feel that this Catholic education had its merits. And for me they are best expressed in Buñuel and Felini movies.

We watched “The Reader” last night and I couldn’t figure out the guy. I understood him as a boy getting it on with the woman and I dug the woman but I never could figure out the guy as a man. What was his problem? I really dug the woman’s prison room too. It was so cozy. I completely understood her not wanting to leave it. It was smaller than my dorm room in Shea Hall at Indiana University but it was all her own. As a freshman in college I had the room to myself for three days before the other guy whose name was on the door with mine showed up. I had already called home and told my parents that I thought I had an Asian roommate based on his name, “Hoy”, but when Steve pulled up in a Baracuda and asked for help unloading the stereo equipment I knew I was not going to be able to control my situation.

I was determined to turn over a new leaf in college. I was going to study and read my assignments instead of coasting like I did all through high school. But I could not resist Steve’s “Led Led Zeppelin”, “Paul Butterfield” and “Cream” eight tracks. Steve wasn’t Asian at all but 100% Hoosier and he was damn good at coasting so there went my plans. I was thinking of Steve tonight when I mopped up the garlic broth from my mussels. Peggi saw me and asked, “what was that phrase that Steve had for cleaning your plate with your bread? That would be “walloping your dodger.”

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Summer Of Love

Showroom dummies at Lord & Taylor in Rochester, New York
Showroom dummies at Lord & Taylor in Rochester, New York

Our neighbor was saying something about late summer weather and we just had to interrupt him. Summer is not even half over yet, isn’t it? While making way for the BTS stuff Lord & Taylor had a Swim Suit Sale with up to 80% off. Peggi needed one so we drove out Eastview Mall which is conveniently located in the next county so you can save a a few cents on the sales tax. We were noticing all the hippie tainted fashions and this topless display caught my eye.

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Nod (The Cowboy Movie)

Nod closed out the three day Boulder Fest in style and when I say “in style” I mean cowboy style (with disco ball). There were a handful of dancers (Nod is a great dance band) and then there was this cowboy doing his thing. The second song in Nod’s set was “World Still Wants You” and it is one of our favorites.

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Gritty City Jukebox

Hotel Reverie at the Boulder Fest in Rochester, NY
Hotel Reverie at the Boulder Fest in Rochester, NY

I stopped in our bank last Friday to make a deposit and cash a few checks. I don’t know where the tellers go but they move through this branch pretty quickly. I was asked to show my id and then the same teller asked if our business would be interested in doing a display in the bank for a week. He pointed to a tabletop display in the corner that currently featured a popcorn machine with fresh popcorn and a sign for a concessions company. The teller said he had a cancellation for next week and he wondered if we would be interested. I committed to it and printed up a few 8 1/2 x 11 posters with a blowup of an ad and some stuff from our website. He told me the bank opens at eight on Monday and I said there was no way I would be there at that hour.

Sure enough the bank called this morning and wondered if we were still planning on setting up a display. Peggi told them we were on the way. When I got there I was the only customer in the bank and the tellers were discussing what satellite radio station to tune into. One of the tellers told another that she couldn’t stand it when customers sang along with the songs so she suggested they choose an instrumental station. I arranged the three posters on the backdrop and spread some business cards around on the table surface and I scattered some Margaret Explosion matches around for good measure.

The soundtrack for my trip down Titus Ave. to the bank was the Hotel Reverie cd that Jen gave us after their sensationally understated performance at the Boulder Fest on Sunday. Jen’s right-on rhythm guitar, dark, enchanting vocals and high heels complete the package while her brother, John, plays drums and carries the equipment. I say this as someone who walks in his shoes. Hotel Reverie has a pretty active calender.

Nod closed the show in style while a cowboy walked in circles in front of the stage. Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some video of that performance.

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Sacred Heart Of Rick

Rick Simpson at our front widow in new rain gear
Rick Simpson at our front widow in new rain gear

We planned to eat outdoors on our deck and we just sat down when it started raining AGAIN so we moved indoors. I saw a figure out front in the middle of a torrential downpour and watched as he moved toward our front window. It was our neighbor, Rick, testing his new rain gear. He was smiling and he had what appeared to be a sacred heart on his chest. It was a reflection from a light in our kitchen.

After dinner we checked out the opening of the bi-annual Rochester Finger Lakes Show at the Memorial Art Gallery. This is always a fun event and we were really looking forward to it. We were surprised to find parking spots in the lot and the grounds were eerily quiet. They had to move the outdoor band in because of the rain and maybe the rain scared people away. Or maybe there is just damn much going on here in the warm summer months. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that they only had twenty eight artists in the show.

One of them did manage to fill a good portion of the space with an inflatable elephant. You usually can’t see the show at these openings but we had plenty of room to take it in. I didn’t see my “Local Crime Faces” over there because they were not accepted. We found Anne Havens’s “Box Of Sighs”. We hung out by the box and marveled at it and the onlookers as they discovered it was making noises. We filled out ballots with Anne’s name on them for the “Popular Vote Award” while Bleu Cease was filling out his ballots at the same time and we presume in the same way.

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Friday Fish Fry

Fish Fry sign on East Ridge Road in Rochester NY
Fish Fry sign on East Ridge Road in Rochester NY

I stopped in Wegmans this morning to pick up the Friday New York Times. I like their “Fine Arts Section” even though it’s getting combined with other weekend nonsense as they shrink the content and jack up the cost to stay afloat. My cashier’s name was “Heaven”. I told her I liked her name. I spotted this sign near Culver and Ridge for a place called Ricky’s diner. Never been inside but I plan to put their sign in the Funky Signs section as soon as I get around to updating it.

Are Friday fish fries more common in Rochester than other parts of the country? I looked up “origin of the fish fry” in Google for the low down. When I looked up something for someone we do work for she started complaining that the way history is being written today we won’t have anything to trust down the road. Unless I was reading her wrong she was insinuating that people are free to put whatever they like online. I didn’t want to push her because I’m liable to say something boneheaded and she pays the bills so I’m only guessing here. But she wrapped that subject up by saying, “An entire generation will be lost.”

When I was growing up Catholics weren’t allowed to eat meat on Fridays. They rewrote the rules in 1966 so that now the Friday meat abstinence only applies during Lent. We had some fish but I remember toasted cheese sandwiches and fried egg sandwiches that my father called “Mickey Mouse Sandwiches”. It seems every place around here has one on Fridays. Shamrock Jack’s has one of the best but they are too busy during the summer. When we lived in the city the bar at the corner didn’t serve food at all during the week but they had a big crowd for their Friday Fish Fry.

Sure enough Wikipedia’s entry on the “Friday Fish Fry” says “the fish fry is one of the trademarks of Upstate New York cuisine, especially Buffalo, as well as Rochester and Syracuse, New York. But can we trust this entry?

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Bar Band In Heaven

Captain Beefheart drawing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977
Captain Beefheart drawing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977. Photo by Greg Prevost.

I digitized some vinyl the other day. I go tape out of our stereo amp into Quicktime on our laptop and then edit it in Audacity. One of the things I digitized was an old Personal Effects 45. Peggi’s voice and sax sounded too high. Peggi got her sax out to play along and we confirmed that our turntable runs fast. We changed the pitch by -110 cents and it came out fine.

Brad Fox sent me a 33 1/3 book on “Trout Mask Replica” and I’ve been reading that and thinking about the cassette recording I made of Captain Beefheart at the Red Creek in Rochester in 1977. I remembered Beefheart saying something nasty about Drumbo (aka John French) between songs. And of course there are a lot of quotes from Drumbo in the book, some of them lambasting Beefheart. So I got an old cassette deck out of the basement and put the tape in but the deck wouldn’t go into play. It was just sort of froze in the eighties. Luckily we had another old deck down there and I transferred the tape. I posted one of the songs below with the quote from The Captain. You can hear Brad Fox scream as the band begins this song.

I remember there was some dreadful magic act (someone saw Magic Band and thought why not?) that went on first and there were two shows. We went to the second. I still have the ticket. When we got there Greg Prevost (Chesterfield Kings) and Carl Mack’s (Zenith Effluveum get compared to MX-80 in this review) were interviewing The Captain in the parking lot. I think Kevin Patrick’s wife, Corrine, took this photo of him and gave me a print. The stage was still in the front of the room there. The Captain mentioned the the chocolate pie that owner, Jeff Springut, gave him before the show. The band was amazing and included Jeff Moris Tepper, Eric Drew Feldman, Denny Walley and Robert Williams. They faithfully recreated the older material and went on to record “Doc at the Radar Station”.

When David Greenberger was here he was telling us that he was in a Boston band in the eighties called Men & Volts and they did Beefheart covers and Beefheart-like material. I told him about seeing the Trout Mask Replica tour in Columbus at Ludlow’s Garage with Hampton’s Grease Band and the Screaming Gypsy Bandits opening. And he said he was talking to the Bandit’s Mark Bingham in New Orleans about doing a project. And then along comes this little book from Brad.

Captain Beefheart Band at Red Creek in Rochester, NY
Captain Beefheart performing at Red Creek in Rochester, New York in 1977. Photo by Greg Prevost.

Bruce Fowler was also on the Bat Chain Puller lp and by another coincidence we just saw him playing in the band that appeared throughout Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts”. We’ve been watching the entire Altman catalog in order but have been breaking it up with other stuff. It took us three nights to watch that one because I kept falling asleep. So each time we came back to it we re-watched large portions. There is such a large cast in this one and all these interweaving stories that it worked well in small doses. Tom Waits’ character hangs out in this bar where Annie Ross from Lambert, Hendricks and Ross sings with Terry Adams from NRBQ on piano and Bobby Previte on drums and Bruce Fowler on trombone.

Here is my recording of Captain Beefheart Live at Red Creek in Rochester, NY

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Garbage Trucks In Reverse

View from Pier 45 restaurant on mouth of Genesee River overlooking Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York
View from Pier 45 restaurant on mouth of Genesee River overlooking Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York

It’s hard to believe that City has such a nice restaurant on its hands. Granted they had to build a giant terminal for the so called fast ferry to depart from and a suite of offices for the International Border Patrol to hang out in and then they had to buy the failing ship itself. The staff works for the Convention Bureau and they run this place as a not-for-profit. Somebody has to be making a profit because this place was packed on a slow night. They have a great location on the mouth of the Genesee overlooking the two long piers, Rochester Yacht Club, the Coast Guard station and O’loughlins. “Pier 45” is described as “fine dining in a casual atmosphere” and that pretty much nails it. Our server, Bart, was as nice as can be even though we took forever to decide what we wanted to eat.

We were called on to edit a ppt presentation for a talk on the inventor of the submarine that a client of ours is giving in Vermont. This sounded like a fun project but it was filled with technical challenges. The client is planning to travel with her IBM Thinkpad and plugging it into a projector for the talk. We purchased sound files from the iTunes Store and downloaded all sorts of crazy free sounds to punctuate the talk and constructed the show on our machines but when we slid it on to the Thinkpad the sound files got all jumbled up and some even started over when we advanced the slides. Some didn’t even work. The PowerPoint app that machine is quite old so we had to keep the laptop overnight, convert all the mp3s to wav files and embed them in the ppt file. The Thinkpad’s alert sounds sounded like garbage trucks when they put it in reverse. The original submarine was only a vehicle to deliver a bomb, actually attach a bomb, to the bottom of a British battle ship in midst of the Revolutionairy War. This never worked but the guy wound up with some pretty cool credentials.

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Not In New York

Toy alligator on the road near Spring Valley
Toy alligator on the road near Spring Valley

I think we might have been set up by some kid for this one. We were headed over to Spring Valley to to forge our way though the overgrown woods when we came across thing. Peggi and I both thought it was real for a few seconds and then we quickly realized we were in New York.

Peggi had an assignment tonight to video Annie Wells with Phil Marshall and her NYC drummer so we raced over to the Little Cafe and plugged in. Mick Sarubbi was there with his recording rig and he slipped me a copy of Jenna & The Horse Lovers’ set from last weekend. (I gotta get the story on that name. I get the Jenna part.)

What a pleasant assignment. Annie sounded great. She did a Laura Nyro song for Peggi and a beautiful version of Dave Ripton’s “Heroin & People”. Jack Schaefer was there with his son and we smiled at each other when the song started. Jack and I both played that song with the Ripton band many years ago. Annie’s song to Edith Piaf, “Little Sparrow”, sounded great even without Ed Maris’s accordion. Peggi complained that my tripod was acting sticky when she panned. We’ll probably post one one the videos to Annie’s site.

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Dancing With Joey Ramone

We were thrilled to hear Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric were coming back to Rochester so soon after their last performance here. You’d think it was boring in France where they currently live. They got off to a slow but steady start. I say “slow” only because the highlights for me are the bantering between songs. They intensify the music. Like when Eric’s guitar fell over and he went off on a beautiful tirade about creeps who work in music stores and try to sell you all this junk, with their Fender t-shirts and know it all attitudes. “They start talking about a movie and they tell you the whole fucking story”.

Amy Rigby who seemed overwhelmed by Eric’s antics last time they were here really held her own this time and contributed equally to the banter. She said she was all dressed in black until the Gay Pride parade went by on Goodman and went to the rental car to slip into this dress. We watched part of the parade and saw Mayor Duffy again as he strutted by to a round of cheers. I took a shaky movie of Amy’s fantastic tribute to Joey Ramone.

We got there just as Jenna and The Horselovers were finishing their set. They sounded fuller than ever with the addition Jack Schaefer on lead guitar. Jenna looked great in her pink dress. We love her voice and are big fans.

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Made With Pure Hemlock Lake Water

Tanks at the Genesee Brewery

Margaret Explosion kicked off the”UpLift” party at the Genesee Center for the Arts on Friday night and we never even took a ride in their new elevator. We hung around for a while afterward eating flour-less peanut butter cookies that Geri McCormick made and looking at old Genesee beer ads that the people in the Book Arts room had recently printed on their vintage equipment. One of the ads boasted that Genesee Beer was “Made With Pure Hemlock Lake Water”.

Genesee Beer Sign lit up over the Genesee River
Genesee Beer Sign lit up over the Genesee River

It was only natural that the conversation turned to the re-lighting of the old Genesee Beer at 9:30 so we followed Maureen Outlaw over to the river. We parked in the women employees parking lot. This neighborhood is kind of rough so the brewery provides more security for the women’s segregated lot. We could hear the symphony of bottles rattling as they moved down the assembly line. There was a pretty big party out in the middle of the pedestrian bridge that straddles the river and provides the best view of the sign. We spotted the mayor in the crowd and looked up just in time to see the sign emerge out of the darkness.

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España

Hill in the country south of Rochester, NY
Hill in the country south of Rochester, NY

I would take a ride in the country any day over slugging it out with html, php and css. Although I did enjoy getting thoroughly obsessed with making this page work in the PC version of Explorer. I must have worked on it until one in the morning. I didn’t really intend to get into this whole project of redesigning our web site. You know how it is with a plumber getting around to fixing his own leaky faucet. But we ran out of business cards a few months ago, printed some online, passed a few out and then realized the site should sort of look like the card. So we did a simple rework with most of the old content. The whole site is now only five or so pages because we put all of the content in iFrames so you can scroll through it. I did the Web Design page and the Logos page with an iFrame and everything was cool. When I got the Print page I wanted to pop the small graphics up to show enlargements and I managed to find a version of the Lightbox script that would pop photos up out of the iframe and into the parent but when I tested it in IE8 on the PC the photos tried to open inside the iframe. Grrrr.

So I called Bill Jones and he talked me through setting up a scrollable div that served the same purpose and took on the extra challenge of doing the the page without tables. It was fun but not as nice as hopping in the car driving down to my brother‘s place in South Bristol. We did that the other day and came across this hillside that reminded us of Spain. Now, that would really be fun.

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at an opening at Genesee Center for the Arts. I’m thinking of just bringing my djembe instead of the whole kit.

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Follow That Car

Saturn Sky on Culver Road in Rochester, New York
Saturn Sky on Culver Road in Rochester, New York

We just so happened to be following this car on a perfect summer evening when MX-80‘s song came on the radio. Or maybe it wasn’t on the radio but we were singing it.

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Mother Nature Is Boss

Ducks on pond in Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, NY
Ducks on pond in Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, NY

A local farmer was pictured on the front page of the paper this morning expressing his frustration at the amount of rain that we’ve had. He did recognize that “Mother Nature is the boss” even as he speculated that he would lose more than a $1000,000 this year.

I did a little gardening today while Peggi was cranking out a rush ad. I dug into mother nature with bare hands to separate daffodil bulbs that were growing in clusters on the hillside. I transplanted them along the ridge in the back of our house. I did the same thing last year and I was so surprised to see them come up in the Spring. You are supposed to do it when the green from this year’s plants dies. I almost waited too long. The old plants were all dried up and I only found pay-dirt about half of the time.

Mother Nature is taking a toll on the ninety year olds in our lives. Our next door neighbor had a same day procedure to remove a tumor on his bladder. We stopped over to see him when he got back. I asked if the incision was painful and he said, “There was no incision. They went right up my pencil.” I winced but Peggi delights in repeating that line. Peggi’s mom is finding it hard to swallow liquids and this week she has forgotten how to move her legs a couple of times. We plan to celebrate her 92nd birthday this weekend.

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Going Green

Green pond in Durand Eastman Park
Green pond in Durand Eastman Park

We have had so much rain around here this summer that people are comparing our weather to Oregon or Washington State. The ponds in Durand look like pea soup and we keep spotting green on the walls of the street pool even though the chlorine level reads right. I’m not complaining. I could care less about the weather. Our tomatoes are doing great.

I looked at the pictures in “Wolf Kahn’s America” for about four weeks and then continued reading the book. He is as fluid and colorful a writer as he is a painter. In fact John Updike wrote the Introduction and I kept stumbling over that. This quote struck me. “A subject is worth painting only when it transcends the everyday and gets to represent an over-arching insight. This insight only reveals itself in the course of work.” I kept wrestling with it because I am so drawn to the everyday.

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