In our approach to HNL, the pilot, a proud native judging by his accent, pointed out “the tallest mountain in the world if measured from the ocean floor.” I was thinking that puts a new spin on how we measure things. It felt right flying United, the airline featured in nearly every episode of the original Hawaii Five-0. Matthew and Louise picked us up at the airport and just minutes later we were looking at the steps of the former palace that Steve McGarrett charged down in the dynamic opening of that show.
In Honolulu it feels like we’re halfway in an Asian country, Asians and Asian culture is everywhere, lots of exotic birds and flowers for iNaturist to figure out. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant, ate seaweed and chatted the night away.
We went to the windward side of the island in the morning. Hang gliders floated above us as we and the surfers played in the turquoise water. I taught Louise “the dead man’s float.” She wasn’t convincing though. Peggi was worried the lifeguard would be alarmed but it felt so good getting thrown around by the waves.
Back in the condo the four of us watched Barcelona beat Real Madrid 3-2 in the last minute of overtime in the Copa del Rey.
Psychedelia is in the air on the Mill Valley-Sausalito Pathway, our main line between Rich and Andrea’s place and our hotel room, Good Earth Natural Foods and Blithedale Avenue in the other direction. Black-necked stilts, snowy egrets, Pride of Madeira and wildflowers line the low lying waterways. And then under the 101 (above!)
I wore my Trout Mask Replica shirt to the exercise room this morning. I’ve found CNBC to be a good workout partner, equal parts interesting and annoying enough to move the routine along. Rich, Andrea, Peggi and I all bought t-shirts at Ameba. Rich’s Motörhead shirt looked so good on him and Andrea looked perfectly at home in Lou Reed’s Transformer motif. Peggi found a “Love Will Tear Us Apart” shirt that makes her look like she’s in the clouds.
Just putting my shirt on brought most of “When Big Joan Sets Up” to mind.
”I’ll sit up with you Big Joan I’m too fat to go out in the daytime I’ll stay up all night If you promise not to talk about your hands bein’ too small”
Rich has a new band, a three piece, and the drummer left her kit at Rich’s so I had a chance to check it out. Made by Alesis, each piece is a black plastic disc wired to a module and a small amp. I couldn’t get much out of the hi-hat and ride but the crash sounded great and the drums sounded so melodic it was scary. It made me want to play like Sly Dunbar. Rich played a variety of instruments and with his e-sax we got into a snake-charm thing that I could see working as a subway act. That ambience when the car doors open and you hear music but you don’t know where it’s coming from.
It felt like the Waymo car saw the four of us standing there. No need to flag it down. There was no one behind the wheel when we unlocked the doors with our app. It was exhilarating watching it stop at red lights, turn ever so carefully, even slow appropriately for the speed bumps. And when the thrill wears off you are free to play with your iPad, stare out the window, even space out if you like. I am so ready for self driving cars.
Atletico Madrid vs Alaves at Metropolitan in Madrid 2023
I took this photo at the Metropolitano in 2023. That’s Morata coming off. He doesn’t even play for Atletico now. Cholo, on the edge of the box in black, is still there though. And I think Atletico is still our favorite team. Barcelona has just been magical for the most part and it is hard to compete with that. They play dangerously with a high line, they start youngsters, and they thread the ball from the back with ease. They deserve to be in first place.
All three of our favorite teams have lost some big games recently and a funny thing has happened. We don’t mind rooting against any of them if their opponent is playing better. Celta Vigo‘s Borja Iglesias scored a hat trick against Barca! We were pulling for them but quickly changed sides when Barca came back. Las Palmas avoided relegation by defeating Atletico. Good for them! And Athletic Club held Real Madrid to a 0-0 draw until Federico Valverde scored in stoppage! It is like we are rooting for the game now.
We watch a match a day or so late on ESPN or Paramount and when we are all caught up I check the standings online and search for the upcoming matches so we can take them down in order and and not spoil a result. The three teams are (or were) all in La Liga, the Champions League and the Copa del Rey so I’ve been in the habit of searching for “upcoming matches Atletico Madrid,” “upcoming matches Real Madrid” and “upcoming matches Barcelona” to round them all up. It occurred to me that this task, which takes me about twenty minutes could easily be handled by AI.
At R and A’s place yesterday Rich did exactly that in his version of Chat GPT. He generated a chronological list of the upcoming matches of all three teams in all three leagues in seconds.
Rooftop of Antoni Gaudi’s “La Pedera” apartment building with Gaudi’s “Segrada de Familia” in the distance 2012
Just yesterday we read that Pope Francis signed a decree recognizing Antoni Gaudí’s “heroic virtues,” putting him on the path to sainthood. Should two people pray to him and have their wishes granted he will be confirmed. Since I don’t believe in miracles (not even yesterday’s big one with the Easter bunny) Gaudi is already a saint in my book. Today we read Max Romeo’s and Pope Francis’s obituaries. First we listened to “Chase The Devil” from “War ina Babylon” and then we looked at the photos we took in Barcelona of Gaudi’s Catalan Modernisme masterpieces.
I gave up on religion a long time ago but I am still drawn to the rituals and I had a soft spot for the Latin American Jesuit, Pope Francis. We loved Wim Wenders Pope Francis movie, “A Man of His Word.” Francis never came clean on sexual abuse in the ranks but he pushed the world toward old school, progressive change. His defense of migrants was a cardinal principle. He called Trump’s bashing of immigrants a “shipwreck of civilization.”
It is fitting that the Pope’s last visitor was J.D. Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism. J.D. has a lot to learn. His interpretation of “Ordo Amoris” (order of love) misses the whole ball of wax. Using the medieval concept to defend deportations J.D. says “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
In response Francis sent a letter to US bishops that read, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. The true ordo amoris is open to all, without exception.” Francis for sainthood.
We have only been to Tinseltown twice. Once for “Shine a Light,” the Martin Scorsese movie about The Rolling Stones and on Thursday for Neil Young’s new movie, “Coastal.” If we can believe what Neil says in the movie, these were his first live dates in four years. He has gotten older and he is not afraid to show it. The movie moves at an old man pace. But the songs, all gems, sounded better than ever.
We walked through the park and then along the lake before turning around and coming back the same way. We usually construct some sort of loop but the blossoms were so pretty we need a double dose. The scent of the magnolias is heavenly. Today it was mixed with ganja, coming from a parked car.
I constructed playlists of my current favorite 45s (scratchy records) in two streaming services, Apple and Spotify. I subscribe to Apple Music and not to Spotify so there were a few hurdles. I had to download a Spotify desktop app in order to rearrange songs but every time I searched for a song Spotify was there to recommend another song based on patterns from other users likes. I didn’t take advantage of that this time, I was on a mission, but I can see how this would be great for constructing sets on the fly. Apple had every one of the songs I was looking for. Spotify could not come up with a copy of Edith Piaf’s “Sudan One Vallée.”
Click this photo for 45s2go playlist in Apple Music
Sam, who lives down below, told us he bought a book on the history of the Durand Eastman Park. There is section in there that talks about how the area we live in was supposed to have been part of the park but it was sold to developers in 1920’s. He told us he bought the book at the brew pub up on Titus. We made a note to stop by there. He also told us he heard a big tree come down in the woods behind his house. So Peggi and I tucked our pant legs in and walked through the woods to the park today. There were so many big trees down we couldn’t determine which was the new one. The last time we were down here we were on skis. Climbing over the debris I was remembering how effortlessly we moved through the woods on skis.
Out on the golf course we saw they had one of the fairways all torn up. Plastic drain pipes were laying in the bottom of long trenches. One full day of sun and the white magnolias were popping in the arboretum. There was a creepy pick-up parked along Lakeshore with a bumper sticker that read “Gun Control Is Hitting Your Target.” The workers have opened the roads in the park to car traffic. I like it better when they’re closed but it is not my park.
I took my pole saw down to Jedi’s around noon today. He was still in his pjs when I rang the bell. I told him I was going to cut the white plastic bag down that had been trapped in his tree all winter, sometimes billowing at full sail as we walked by. Jedi told me he had tried to get it but he couldn’t reach it. I suspected it bothered us more than it bothered him.
The plastic fitting that allows the pole to extend was locked so Jedi, outdoors in his slippers, hung on to one end while I pulled on the other. Like a tug of war I pulled him into the pachysandra before we got it free. I cut the bag down and went home to fix the pole saw fitting. While I was in the garage Rick stopped by to borrow a wrench. He was getting his his bike ready for spring. I told him I had cut the white bag down that was in Jedi’s tree all winter. He didn’t know what I was talking about.
I didn’t have the right wrench to fix my pole saw either so I went down to Jared’s. He was outside talking to John and I showed them my problem. We went into Jared’s garage where he found a “thin walled” socket that did the trick. I told him I had cut the white bag down from Jedi’s tree and he said he had never noticed it.
Joe Ziolkowski at his photo show at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
I remember Peggi’s father wore a bright orange hat in retirement. We have friend who wears an orange hat in NYC so we can keep track of him. Joe Ziolkowski’s hat looked particularly striking against his cyanotype cloud photos (we bought one, out of view) in Colleen Buzzard’s Studio.
It is warm and sunny today with clear blue skies. The beach looks nothing like this. This photo was taken yesterday. This creek on the beach is the overflow from Durand Lake (across the road to the right.) It flows into Lake Ontario on the left. Depending on the rainfall, the wind and the roughness of the big lake, this creek is always different. It is constantly rearranging itself and then sometime in the summer it just disappears. When it gets warmer we take ours shoes off but often we just turn around. I was able to get across on the log this time. Peggi decided not to try today.
PBS’s “We Want The Funk” was fantastic. They could have subtitled it “Give It Up for James Brown!” He was rightly featured in a full two thirds of the one and half show.
8-9 PM on Wednesday does not work for us. We’re usually watching soccer. So we catch up with “Magic Records,” our brother-in-law’s’ WAYO show, on Mixcloud. Blondie’s “Dreaming,” June Tyson’s a cappella “Astro Black” and Suicide’s “Rocket USA” sounded better than ever! We tuned in to Kevin Patrick’s WPKN show just in time for a live version of Kraftwerk’s “Radioactivity” and listened all the way up to Dr John’s “Right Place Wrong Time.” Made plans with my neighbor to head leave for the HOG at 8:30 tomorrow for Record Store Day.
I think Margaret Explosion had a pretty good night last night. There were five of us there (last week was a just a trio) and Phil Marshall was in the crowd. The first set was a little messy but things began to gel in the second set. And there was a bunch of young people there who had never seen the band. So good to hear from them after the set. We met Nacelle from self-described krautrrock band Ellaar and streamed some of their songs on the way home. Particularily liked the song called “Kim Gordon.”
I had a short circuit in the first set, started a beat and then stoped before anyone else had come in. Peggi laughed and asked if I was all right. I didn’t like what I was playing so I stopped. Might have been an age related move. We’ll listen to the recording after we walk.
I don’t follow baseball anymore and it is not just because the designated hitter rule. A long time ago I was a rabid fan. Eddie Mathews was my favorite baseball player. That’s not his autograph, it was printed on the card. An antique dealer, who we did some work for, gave me the card. It is so off register it is not worth all that much. Mathews played for the Milwallkee Braves (before they moved to Atlanta.) He batted third and played third base (my position.) I had a hat just like his. It is hard to see but the underside of the brim was a restful green (like the background of the card.) The Braves were my favorite team. They beat the Yankees in the 1957 World Series.
Jason Wilder is working on a baseball project and he sent me an outline so it got me thinking about the game. My mom told me she got Stan Musial’s autograph when he was with the Rochester Red Wings. I thought that was pretty cool. I used to love going to the Wings games. Rather park in the parking lot my father would drive up and down those small streets that run off Norton and pick out a parking spot on someone’s lawn (for a small fee, arranged with the owner.) My father would buy me a scorecard and I’d keep score, working those little diamonds. Mostly, I love the billboards in the outfield, all the local brands, the hole in the sign that paid a bonanza if someone hit a ball in there. I remember my brother getting a hole burnt in his jacket when he leaned back on a guy who was smoking a cigar behind us.
When I was seven or eight an older kid down the street gave me a stack of cards from the fifties. There was a corner store near our house on Humboldt Street called Fessner’s and I bought my first cards there, a nickel for five random cards and a stick of gum. My family moved to Webster when I was ten and I inherited a paper route from a kid who was moving. With all that disposable income my collection grew enormously. So did my tally of cavities.
I was thirteen, at the peak of my buying power, when I lost interest in playing with them. My cards from 1963 remained in mint condition. (I had three of Pete Rose’s rookie cards.) When I moved out my mother said, “Take this shoebox of cards or I’m gonna throw them out.” A few years later I saw a sign for some sort of baseball card convention. I took my shoebox and showed them to a guy who turned out to be my high school math teacher, Mr. Setek. He said, “I will buy these and I will give you a fair price but I can’t do it here. I’ll come to your house.” I can’t remember the total but he gave me enough for us to take a week long trip to Cartagena, Columbia. At the time it was the cheapest tropical destination.
Margaret Explosion at Little Theatre Café 7-9 pm – photo by Jason Wilder
“Radiant” by Margaret Explosion from recent release, “Field Recordings”
Before you click on the video above notice the old downtown Rochester Public Library Building. It is still part of the library but a new, much larger building sits across the street from it now. The streams of water coming out of the building are old races, running off the Genesee River, left over from the days when Rochester was know as the Flour City because of the many mills. And the double decker bridge to the left used to carry the Erie Canal across the Genesee.
I raided Peggi’s hard drive for the footage in this video, her sweeping panoramas of river downtown, the beach in Costa Rica, the psychedelic swans and the guy playing bagpipes in the park. If anybody knows who that guy is I would like to credit him for his performance.
I expect to wake up one day and Trump will have made slavery legal again. So the “Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus,” Alexa . . Please Change the President,” “Impeach the Beast,” “Just Stop Fucking Everything,” “Follow Your Leader” (pic of Hitler shooting himself), “Know your Parasites”, ” (3 pics, dog tick, deer tick, luna tick) and the 4000 fellow Rochesterians protesting the administration in Cobbs Hill Park was a site for sore eyes.
Rolanda JW Spencer work entitled “Mothers – Witches” at RIT City Space
John Gilmore stopped by on Friday afternoon. He snuck in while Peggi and I were playing the basement and he spooked Peggi when she came upstairs. We planned make seven First Friday stops and we got a late start. We ran into Boo Poulin and Joan Lyons twice so we knew we made the right choices. We had an opportunity to tell Joan how much we liked her piece in MoMA’s Robert Frank retrospective.
I particularly liked Rolanda Spencer’s earthy, sensual “yami Aje: Mothers + Witches” installation at RIT’s City Space.
Steve Piper Photo At Lumiere Photo show “Souvenirs, Visits to America’s Agricultural Fairs”
We hardly had enough time to study all the photos in Steve Piper’s “Souvenirs, Visits to America’s Agricultural Fairs” show at Lumiere. Later at Colleen Buzzard’s we saw Jon Gary leafing through a book of Steve’s photos from the show so purchasing a book sounds like the ticket. Steve’s photos are black and whites with the entire grey scale well represented. The ordinary situations are multi-layered. There’s humor in the melancholy.
Ron Giel defending goal for RL Thomas, Webster 1967
I wish I had finished my soccer deep dive a little sooner. Ron would have loved it. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since one of the early reunions. I sent a link to a few of my former teammates and just a week later one of them let me know of Ron’s passing. Ron was a sensational goalie. His family held a celebration of his life at place in Webster called “The Filling Station.” I imagined the place might be where Finn’s Garage was, the Texaco station operated by Andy Finn’s father that I remember for their nickel Coke machine and bicycle pump. It turned out the sports bar was right next door, across the street from Barrett Law Offices where Joe’s father and two of his brother’s worked. Ron apparently spent a lot of time in here.
I rode out to Webster with Jeff and he turned out to be the only other member of our team that was there. We met Ron’s son and gave him our condolences. Three other member of our class were there and we all stood near the back of the bar and talked about the old days. We never did get a drink or partake of the chicken wings.
I had not seen Jim since high school. He was easily the best athlete in our class, center on the basketball team and quarterback on the football team. He had told us about a crazy motorcycle accident he was involved in where a kid pulled out in front of him. Jim was scooped up and flown via helicopter to the hospital where he got two new hips and a long metal rod in his leg. Still bowls he told us.
We all lost a mutual friend by “friendly fire” so Viet Nam came up. Jeff had driven Rex to the physical while unsuccessfully trying to talk him out of going. Bob had a sports injury where his shoulder would go in and out of its socket. He was able to disengage it while in line for his physical. I was classified 1A at the time, having dropped out when college when it provided you a deferment. I was saved buy a high lottery number.
Jim had the best story. His birthday was number one in the lottery. His brother was already serving and Jim didn’t want to go so he called the Selective Services office to see how close he was to being called up. The woman who answered kept trying to get his name and Jim didn’t want to identify himself but he finally he gave in. She looked up his name and told him he was 4F and he could forget about getting drafted. No further explanation.
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down the cost of living for American families, to unleash American energy, to bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.“ – Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency
I was really enjoying “Severance” for the first season. I loved that there was snow on the ground when the characters were in their “outie” stage. The two episodes we watched each night felt like a disorienting but pleasant drug experience. More surreal than sci-fi. I loved the four primary actors and the sets were fantastic. The color choices were sensational. The plots were good enough to keep me awake but relaxing. Then came the season finale where my confusion felt frustrating. Peggi had a Severence dream that night where she was trapped in a B&B in our neighbor’s house.
Pete and Gloria came over with their brand new car, a Honda. We got in the back seat and they took us for a ride in our neighborhood. In fact we drove the same route that Peggi and I had walked earlier. We pointed out where we picked the pussy willows, the flowering Red Bud tree, the eagle’s nest and the marsh which is coming alive with irises and red winged blackbirds. In the back seat it was like we were in our “innie” stage but getting glimpses of our “outie” lives.
Tom Orsini painting at estate sale on Turk Hill Road
I like this bird’s eye view of a house on Turk Hill Road. Us humans get to look up at it on a hill. Peggi was alerted to the sale by our friend, Kathy. She saw the listing described as a Don Hershey house. Peggi has been cataloguing the homes that Don Hershey built in this area on her website, DonHershey.com, and she did not have this one. The previous owner did this painting of his house. An $800 item, it was my favorite piece. This arrangement below was the only place in the house where I could rest my eyes.
Items at Turk Hill Road estate sale
Practical things were pretty expensive here and the unpractical items were as loud you can imagine. Lime green and purple walls, lots of glassware, a tabletop display of sun glasses you could imagine Elton John wearing, extra large tropical style shirts, dozens of unopened packages of cute cocktail napkins.
