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New York Is Now

Two Blue striped chairs at the curb in Rochester, New York
Two Blue striped chairs at the curb in Rochester, New York

My neighbor is anxious to resume our summer horseshoe ritual. He texted this morning wondering if I had given any thought to how we could safely play. I ignored the text.

Just days after posting my picture of a fox eating a squirrel outside our bedroom window we came across what we first thought were turkeys, about ten big birds in the trees over the marsh. A few of them were on the ground picking at something. They didn’t startle or take off like turkeys do, they held their ground as we approached. They turned out to be vultures feasting on a dead fox. It didn’t look like the same one.

Don’t know why “New York Is Now” popped into my head. I had to hear it and it still sound fresh. It is now. Ornette recorded the album in 1968 and he used John Coltrane’s rhythm section, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. I had forgotten that until the second song, “Toy Dance.” Ed Blackwell, Ornette’s go to guy, is my favorite drummer in the world and this didn’t sound like his distinctive parade style. It doesn’t sound like Elvin Jones either. Jones was so physical with Coltrane and on New York Is Now he sounds limber and free.

Coltrane’ s lp, “The Avant Garde,” recorded eight years earlier, features Ornette’s line-up, Don Cherry, Charlie Hayden and Ed Blackwell. Three of the five songs on this lp were written by Coleman. I plan to listen to that today.

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Hunter Gatherer

Pink flag, golf balls and Beech nuts
Pink flag, golf balls and Beech nuts

We’ve noticed bike tracks on some of the trails through the park and we’ve occasionally seen guys on bikes, those fat tire things. They don’t pay any attention to the “No Biking on Trails” signs. We noticed a new sign yesterday planted right in the middle of a trail that goes straight up a hill. In addition to being obnoxious the bikes tear up the trails and lead to erosion. I spotted this pink flag on trail today, probably alerting other bikers to the path. I brought it home with me along with six golf balls and three Sweet Gum seed pods that looked like a brown version of the Corona virus.

There was a period, five or six years ago, when I was bringing home Budweiser cans from a spot near the marsh on Hoffman Road. I put all those photos in a slideshow below.

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Victory Garden

Fox having a squirrel for lunch outside our bedroom window
Fox having a squirrel for lunch outside our bedroom window

We’re finding the nearby neighborhoods are less crowded than the park in the morning. We walked down to the bay today, down the big hill at the end of Point Pleasant and out Schnackel Drive where the homes are barely above water. Schnackel continues further along the shoreline but only as a walking path. There are a handful of more homes right on the water but we ran into a dog back there a few years ago so we left it unexplored today.

Zig zagging through the neighborhoods we’ve noticed a few garden projects underway. Big pressure treated poles stuck in the ground for fencing on the south side and some sort of open air structure up top tying it all together. There must be plans online for these Victory Gardens because we’ve seen a few and they all look alike. We’re lucky to have a small plot of and in our neighbor’s backyard where there is sunshine and a short electric fence to keep the animals out. And what’s with these fantasy doors in people’s yards that are hung on a frame and apparently swing open to more yard?

We heard the woman at the end of the street found a tick stuck on her side. She had it tested and it was negative. Our friends, Pete and Shelley, in the mountains, have already found a few on them. And Jim Mott, the painter and birder, has three attached to him.

And why isn’t the government putting unemployed people to work rebuilding our infrastructure? It’s not like no-one has ever thought of this. The WPA was a win win. AmeriCorp could be fully staffed. What are we waiting for?

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Keywords

Our two Birch trees in early morning sun
Our two Birch trees in early morning sun

The street we moved onto has a swimming pool on one of the lots 1960. Ten families belonged to the association then but only three households, all couples, belong now. We do meetings with Roberts Rules of Order. This one was via Zoom. We took the cover off under the threat snow and we all wore masks.

Certain words keep coming up during the pandemic. “Exacerbate” is one. Every move that Trump makes, it seems, exacerbates the crisis. In a conversation with Peggi’s sister she used the word “cavalier” in reference to potentially unsafe behavior while out in public. That stuck and Peggi and I now use that word every day. There was a restaurant downtown, where the Metropolitan Building is now, that my brother and I used to go to when we skipped school. It was called “The Cavalier.”

It was too cold for the golfers this morning although we did see two solo parties. One guy was wearing gloves and a down jacket as he teed off. We took one of the paths that skirts the course and I found three balls. A Wilson, a Titleist and a Precept.

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Day Fifty Nine

Gentle waves on Lake Ontario
Gentle waves on Lake Ontario

There was hardly anyone out this morning. Must have been the low temperatures and the threat of rain. The gentle waves hitting the shoreline had me in a meditative state. I could have walked all the way to Niagara Falls where my cousins are having a closed funeral for my Aunt Ann. We perfected this state while walking the coastline of Portugal last year on our third Camino.

The waves work like a mantra because they are not perfectly timed. I take that back. They are perfectly timed but not quantized. And each wave sounds different from the last. It is nothing like a drum sample. I paid 45 dollars to learn TM when I was in college. The person who gave me my mantra told me not to time it with my breath or say it in a rhythmic way but just let it be the next thought each time. This is really tough for a drummer but I got it.

Right now I would like to just drift off with these wave and let them wash this whole thing away. This is Day 59.

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Sleep Of Reason

Video for Margaret Explosion song, “Sleep of Reason” by Stephen Black

I remember how easy it was to record the Margaret Explosion album, “Skyhigh.” Pete and Shelley were in town for a few days. I think Bob came over the night before and we set up the mics and recording equipment. Ken came over the next morning and we made a few pots of coffee. We recorded the album in the basement, just started playing, and we got five keepers that first day. “Sleep of Reason,” named after the Goya print, was one of them.

Just before the pandemic Steve Black was here with videos he shot in NYC the week before. He picked “Sleep of Reason” to accompany his butterfly footage. Easy.

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Broken Link

Mary and Leo Dodd sitting at table in our backyard 1969
Mary and Leo Dodd sitting at table in our backyard 1969

I don’t know if I ever knew what my parents were discussing when I took this picture. With seven kids there was always something going on. If I had to guess I would say someone had gotten into trouble.

The last of my mom’s siblings, my Aunt Ann, has died. Her husband is the last man standing in the generation before me. They were our favorites on that side. So easy to talk to and laugh with. Interested and interesting. Her parents, my grandparents, are both in the big family picture from 1920 that I just put up on the Tierney Market page. Although she wasn’t yet born she knew these people and that link to the past is gone.

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A Love Supreme

Tree trunk cut along path in Durand Eastman
Tree trunk cut along path in Durand Eastman

A big pine fell across this path in Durand over the winter. We crawled under it quite a few times and today we found that they had cleaned it up. The park has such a slim staff it takes them months and sometimes years to clear a trail. This is an especially nice one as it connects Zoo Road to Pine Valley.

Tom Kohn from the Bop Shop stopped by this afternoon to pick up some Personal Effects CDs for his store. Can’t keep em in stock! I found a video on my hard drive that someone had shot at Club Mirage in 1985. I chopped one song out yesterday and posted that but there was also a pretty cool version of “A Love Supreme” in there. And whoever it was that shot the video got some good footage the crowd dancing to a sang called Baby Baby. I might have to chop another song out in my Corona time.

Margaret Explosion was scheduled to be performing in the Little Theatre Café on Wednesdays this month. We would be there tonight but were not. With Bob Martin’s help we’ve been researching ways to stream a performance from multiple locations.

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It

Short entry for a short song. Still sounds good to me. Personal Effects. Mid 80s. Video shot at a downtown Rochester bar called Club Mirage. Song clocks in at just under two minutes. Peggi Fournier – keyboards, Bob Martin – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums, Robin Goldblatt Mills – bass. Kevin Vicalvi – sound. Duane Sherwood – lights.

Lyrics to Personal Effects song, "The Beat of Life" from 1981
Lyrics to Personal Effects song, “The Beat of Life” from 1981
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Correction

Snowy Magnolias against a blue sky
Snowy Magnolias against a blue sky

I love these Snowy Magnolias, so aptly named. They’re much prettier than the clunky, tulip-like Magnolias.

Is it because of the pandemic that this is the best spring ever or in spite of it? The wisteria which typically herald the new season are still yellow after almost four weeks. The daffodils still standing. The cherry blossoms are still on the trees. We’ve not had a wind storm or heavy rain or heatwave to crash the party. This year it is a slow orgasm.

Spring blossoms in Durand Eastman Park
Spring blossoms in Durand Eastman Park

I suspect the pandemic has shaped my perception. I’m not an essential worker or a high school senior. I didn’t lose my job. I am healthy. It’s just that the world moves more slowly now. Why is the newspaper so big. Oh, it must be Sunday.

My appreciation and respect for the natural order, the plant and animal world, has only grown deeper. The virus is throwing our bad behavior in our face. And the pause has provided a glimpse of a possible correction. Maybe we haven’t completely fucked up the earth. Maybe its not too late.

My friend, Louise, agrees.

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Toad Trill

Two toads mating in Jared's pond
Two toads mating in Jared’s pond

Jared describes the scene in his fish pond each spring as an orgy. When that trilling sound fills the air on a sunny day the toads are happy! They are so sensitive it is hard to sneak up on them. They stop trilling when you’re twenty feet away. But in time they get right back into it. There were at least three other pairs of toads getting it on while we were there. Our neighbors plan to have a few friends over tomorrow to watch the proceedings – at a safe distance of course.

Speaking of rear entry. The Zoom meeting we attended last night, a virtual First Friday art studio tour, was bombed. Full blown. It started with someone writing “Nigger” and drawing swasticas on a white board. The hosts and participants tried to carry on but their voices were being drowned out with all bitch talk. And then the little squares and full screen went graphic. We bailed but checked back after an hour the rude quests had left.

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Wallowing

Ray Tierney in front of his first store 312 North Street in Rochester, New York 1906
Ray Tierney in front of his first store 312 North Street in Rochester, New York 1906

Damn, did I go down a rabbit hole with these old photos of my grandfather’s stores. He had three stores starting with this one at 312 North Street, right where Hudson Avenue splits off. “The first blazer from Main Street corner,” as my grandfather describes it in his memoir. He opened a much larger store in 1935 at 634 South Avenue.

Before my father died he made one of his infamous charts plotting the Tierney Markets timeline against Harts Grocery and Wegmans and he showed the second store at “639” South Avenue which would have put it across Hickory Street on the wrong side of South Avenue. Peggi used her Newspapers.com subscription to track down a front page story about the 1939 fire which forced my grandfather to move to his final location, 999 South Clinton. I mention the discrepancy because I am finding out how easy it is to make a leap based on someone else’s hunch or typo. Some of the dates on the original photos have question marks next to them. I made a few leaps myself in identifying the photos on my Tierney Markets page.

My mom’s cousin brought some photos to a family reunion years ago and I scanned them. Her photos all had identifications on them. My father left all these old family photos on his computer and I’m still sorting those out. I had list of questions for my aunt, the youngest daughter of the man pictured above, but I found out last night that she had been taken to the hospital with Pneumonia. She will be tested for Coronavirus.

After I rounded up my Bloomington photos, a few weeks back, I sent the link to our old friends. Joe emailed back that if he had all those old photos he would wallow in them. Isn’t that what old people do? I think might have to do with how fast time moves as we get older. Too fast for you to savor the moment.

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My Pandemic Birthday

Jeddy and Helena wishing me a happy birthday behind masks
Jeddy and Helena wishing me a happy birthday behind masks

It was supposed to be warm today but it barely made it. We walked to down to the Sea Breeze pier without any close encounters. We had the small beach to the left of the pier to ourselves. Guess everyone was in the park. The lake was still. It was beautiful but kind of strange.

Our friends, Pete and Gloria, stopped by to wish me a happy birthday. They were the first friends we’ve had over since the pandemic. We had coffee out front and resisted the urge to touch.

Our neighbors (and friends), Jeddy and Helena, stopped by to sing happy birthday. We stood in the driveway and they stood in the road. Helena was playing some reggae on her portable sound system. But all I could think of was Ornette’s “Friends and Neighbors.”

Phil did a version of “Harry Irene” for me on Facebook live.

Our good friend, Louise, dedicated a blog post to me.

Kathy walked over from the last traffic circle and texted us that she was out front. While we were out there Rick and Monica stopped by and Rick asked how we were going to make horseshoes work.

It was a perfect pandemic birthday.

Gloria and Pete stopped by to wish me a happy birthday
Gloria and Pete stopped by to wish me a happy birthday
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Dipping Our Toes In

Three 6x6 entries, Untitled, Oil on wood 2020
Three 6×6 entries, Untitled, Oil on wood 2020

We had not driven anywhere in weeks so everything about the trip down Culver Road was weird. A lot of people, mostly women, were out doing yard work. Peggi and I had been in the basement all day working on art projects. A young couple was sitting in lawn chairs out by the sidewalk, maybe six feet from it. They weren’t wearing masks. They looked desperate for interaction.

A man and a woman were having coffee out in front of Dunkin Donuts. The woman had a mask on. Two twenty somethings with masks on were taking a selfies in front of the Vape Shop. A man on Webster Avenue was moving the lawn with a mask on but we saw quite a few young kids playing and teenagers hanging out without them.

Our mission was a safe drop-off of our RoCo 6×6 entries. We parked in front with our trunk open and Jess came out with a mask on. Ideally she would have picked up the artwork and disappeared but I complicated things because I lost one of my entry forms. She told us to roll down our window and she would come back out with a basket. The basket was hanging on the end of a long stick. I took the form and filled it out and we drove down East Avenue where even joggers were wearing masks. The outing was somewhere between a zombie movie and an acid trip.

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Wincing

US mailboxes old and new
US mailboxes old and new

As the tediousness of the pandemic threatened to dull our perceptions we found a way to reinvigorate our routine. We get out of the house before the second cup of coffee, before we have read the news and opinion pages. The streets are quiet, the dog walkers aren’t blocking the park entrance and the trails in the woods are nearly empty. While the rest of America sleeps in we have been turning in earlier and waking at dawn.

The City or County has put signs up in the park reminding visitors to stay six feet apart. The signs aren’t ugly, they don’t shout, but the message is hard to read from a distance and the tagline are hard to read when you’re on top of the signs. They make a former graphic artist wince.

There was an article in the NYT this morning about how during the Great Depression the government put thousands of artists to work under the WPA . Examples of beautiful murals, posters and signs were cited. In Trump’s world funding for the arts is non starter. So who do they hire when they want get something done? The signs in the park look like they were done by an eighth grader. Who did the Cuomo’s hideous highway signs?

I’m still steaming about the Post Office”s move in 1999 to replace the distinctive logo that fit perfectly on the outdoor boxes with some sort of italicized, speedy like Fed Ex, abomination. The new logo makes the fifties’ styled boxes look like they’re falling over. The old logss are still there under the bigger parallelograms. Maybe we can steam them off.

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Fun Stuff

Downtown Indianapolis 1973
Downtown Indianapolis 1973

Can’t remember why I was in Indianapolis in 1973. I had a few friends who lived there, Kim, Laurice and Jeff, and I visited all of them at some point. Bloomington was about sixty miles to the south and we hardly ever left. I know I saw Hendrix here but that was 1969. As I remember there was a building behind me with mirrored glass and the reflection lit this whole area. I found this photo on my hard dive, one of the last ones to filed away in a folder called “Fun Stuff”. When it comes to files on my computer I am one organized son-of-a-bitch.

I created a page today for my ongoing notebook project. I’ve only posted one of the eighteen I’ve finished. The book format doesn’t work so well on the phone but I’m happy with the way it looks on the desktop. Maybe that will be my next pandemic project.

I took another photo that day in Indianapolis and I used it for the cover of Margaret Explosion’s “Off The Corner.”

"Off The Corner" by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.13.13. Peggi Fournier - sax, Ken Frank - bass, Jack Schaefer - bass clarinet, Bob Martin - guitar, Paul Dodd - drums.
“Off The Corner” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.13.13. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Jack Schaefer – bass clarinet, Bob Martin – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.

Listen to “On The Corner”

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Outskirts

Are You Sure To Execute It? screen capture from 2002
Are You Sure To Execute It? screen capture from 2002

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I’ve been cleaning house on my computer. I tend to procrastinate so I get really stubborn when I finally take on a task and don’t stop until it’s finished. I found this screen capture from 2002. I was obviously taken by the prompt that had popped up. “Are you sure to execute it?” It looks like it was activated by something I did in the CDR Updater, whatever that is.

The capture is interesting for few reasons. I see aliases to early versions of Photoshop and Quicktime on the desktop. It looks like my hard drive is named “Farm” and and my external hard drive, named “Outskirts,” hardly has anything on it. I wish I could twirl the mp3 folder down because I had just added something the day before. I think I was raiding Napster back then.

I see I was using a Kodak DC 4800 camera, something my father bought for me at the Kodak Store. Earring Records was preparing to release Pete LaBonne’s “Glob” cd. And that “WandaBobKathy” file is a photo of the three principles in a virtual company that we had just begun a long relationship with. Yeah, I am sure to execute it.

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Pandemic To Do

Bench in Duran Eastman overlooking Lake Ontario
Bench in Duran Eastman overlooking Lake Ontario

We wore masks today, the ones Peggi made. They match. And we timed our walk to avoid the forecasted rain but then realized we would have been better off to wait and walk during the rain. The park is almost getting too crowded to be safe. Many of the seldom used paths are clogged with people and their dogs. 

My pandemic job jar is full with projects, the biggest of which I am knee deep in – organizing my computer and back up discs. I thought my father was bad. I have turned out to be much worse.

Our days are all dreamlike with long walks and long conversations with friends and relatives in far off places. We learned that Eric Goulden has tested positive. So far his wife, Amy, is a negative. And at 1pm Pacific time we had a Zoom meeting with three parties. Peggi’s sister in LA, our nephew in northern California. and our nephew Miami whose new restaurant was going great guns until this. I just can’t imagine that stress.

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Better Than Six Feet Under

Six Feet Saves Lives sign on Lakeshore Boulevard
Six Feet Saves Lives sign on Lakeshore Boulevard

The warmer it gets the harder it will be to stay six feet away from others. The park is more crowded than ever for this time of year. They’ve taken down the barricades that closed the roads for the winter. Cars stream up Zoo Road from the lake and loop back down Pine Valley and the Magnolias won’t even be in full blossom for another week or so. The cars above are parralel parked before the parking lots even begin! We ran a zig zag pattern today, got right down on the beach for a few minutes and then crossed Lakeshore Boulevard and went up Horseroad Road, across the golf course and up Hoffman Road.

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Green Tuft

Green tuft of grass on a brown lawn on Wisner Road
Green tuft of grass on a brown lawn on Wisner Road

The owners of this house on Wisner planted a different kind of grass, something that goes brown in the Fall and only comes back when you think it never will, like the early days of Summer. And then every Spring there is this green tuft of ordinary grass right in the middle of it all.

One of the holes at Durand Eastman in Spring
One of the holes at Durand Eastman in Spring

We can’t walk to the library anymore because its closed. And we used to walk to Wegmans but we do Instacart pick-ups now. When its below forty we walk in the woods and usually work our way up to the lake at some point. Above forty we are weary of brushing up against ticks so the golf course at Durand, which is closed due to the virus, has become a great place to walk. They still haven’t put the tee markers in or the flags in the holes. If you spot someone a hundred yards away you just change course. Sometimes we’ll hug the perimiter and sometimes we’ll get right out in the middle.

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