There were rumors about Brother Heathwood when I was going to school at Bishop Kearney. I had a friend who was in plays there and I remember him laughing about how Heathwood , the drama teacher, chased after the girls. There is nothing funny about sexual abuse so severe that it robbed a former student of the ability to conceive. I lasted two years at Kearney and find it telling that my favorite memory of the place was when Dave Vercolen stood up in class and punched the abusive Brother Levy right in the face. Heathwood’s order, the Irish Christian Brothers whose local members lived on the top floor of the high school, went bankrupt paying off victims who successfully sued. Yet the Catholic Church is still above water.
We were having dinner with my sister at Vic & Irv’s (aka Lakeside Hots) and I heard the the guy sitting next to us tell the waitress, “The only reason I come in here is to read the paper and listen to the music.” There is always a newspaper on the counter there, just like a Spanish place, and that day’s had a picture of a smiling John Laurence Heathwood along with an article about the abusive Sister Janice Nadeau (“Hawk”) from St. Margaret Mary where my cousin went.
Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” came on the sound system. We had just read the reviews of “Leaving Neverland,” which was being aired on HBO that night, and as much as I love that song I didn’t want to hear it.
Peter Monacelli “These Are My Rivers” at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio
“I have revisited the ages of my life. These are my rivers.” – Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1888-1970, was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. Peter Monacelli is an Italian modernist poet, artist, musician, critic and academic. He had a second opening on Friday for his mini retrospective, “These Are My Rivers,” at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. It takes at least two visits to take this show in. This time I was blown away by this cluster of nine exquisite pieces. Pete’s wall tag was the recipe and icing on the cake.
“These are my Rivers. A symphony in three movements.
1st Movement: Searching For Home For that place we knew before we were affected by the world, before we gave up our innocence too cheaply.
2nd Movement: Escaping Extinction Religions promise of an afterlife: Informed by 1950s sci-fi movies.
3rd Movement: The River The river is a symbol for Gloria. After the rain.”
Our neighbors have someone staying at their house while they are down south and I saw him out brushing his car off this morning. He said “I’m sick of this stuff.” We were headed out skiing and loving this stuff.
We had about six inches overnight and it was about fourteen degrees so the snow was light and fluffy, fluffy enough for us to risk skiing down the steep hill behind our neighbor’s house and into the woods. Out on the golf course we got on one of the groomed trails. We saw another neighbor out there skiing with his wife. He said this was the best day all winter. The sun was out and it was so beautiful we did a lot of just stopping and standing around.
Tomorrow we start the official countdown to Saint Patty’s, the unofficial first day of Spring.
Photo of Lucia’s Supper Club in Olean, New York 2002
Matches for Lucia’s Supper Club in Olean, New York. Found on the sidewalk in Rochester, New York.
Many years ago we found a book of matches from Lucia’s Supper Club, a restaurant in Olean, New York. I don’t remember where we found them but they made an impression. We wrote a song about Lucia’s as we imagined it. If it was a supper club, there surely was more to it than the food, so we came up with a fictional band that took the stage after dinner. We recorded a song, “Lucia’s Supper Club,” for the album “It’s Different Out There” I did a drawing for the cover of the lp picturing what we imagined Lucia’s Supper Club looked like .
Personal Effects “It’s Different Out There” on Earring Records 1985 EAR 3
In 2002, on my birthday, we decided to track the place down. We weren’t even sure where Olean was but thought it was closer to Rochester than it turned out to be. The restaurant was still in business but but it was not as glamorous as we had pictured it. We had dinner there and when the waitress pronounced the name of the place she said “Loo-chia’s” instead of “Loo-cha’s”. Oh well, too late for that detail. I posted a piece about our visit in the Refrigerator and Lucia’s granddaughter spotted it and sent us this note.
“Hi, I was browsing the Internet this week and came across your info on the web. What prompted me to write to you is that I am Lucia Bardenett’s great-granddaughter. She was the “Lucia” of Lucia’s Supper Club in Olean. Oddly, this weekend we are celebrating my grandfather’s (Lucia’a son) 87th birthday. Nonna (as we called her) died in 1986, so my grandfather is really the last of the restaurant’s founding immediate family. My grandfather was her only child. He had 6 children who gave him 15 grandchildren and 2 of those have given him 3 great-grandchildren. I am the oldest of the 15.
So there’s a little info for you. I didn’t want to go on and on, but anyone who would be so intrigued by a pack of matches to write a song, design an album cover, and make a trip to Olean would probably be interested.
I am forwarding the link to your website to all of my family members (as you can tell from the above is quite a few). Could you tell me how to get a copy of that song? The mp3 version on your site won’t work for me. If you have a chance, could you even send me a copy of the lyrics. We’d be interested to see what you imagined about our family’s old restaurant.
By the way, I can guarantee Nonna would have gotten a kick out of your album cover; she was such a character!”
-Marie Rakus, Olean, NY
Here’s a ratty live version of Personal Effects “Lucia’s Supper Club” from Idol’s in Rochester, New York. Bob Martin plays guitar, Paul Dodd plays percussion, Peggi Fournier sings and plays keyboard, Robin Goldblatt Mills plays bass.
Funny how my eye doesn’t pick up the color shift but the camera does. I feel as though I’m flooding the work area with incandescent light but the daylight from the southern exposure window to the left brings shifts the temperature.
I watched these two in person. She was pacing with her phone and he was talking to someone else on his device, using the free library wifi. She was strung out. He looked like he could give a shit. Next thing you know their mugshots were in the news. Today I surrounded them with garden foliage. I’m doing them as Adam and Eve and hope to begin painting tomorrow.
“Badlands” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre Café on 11.08.17. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Phil Marshall – guitar, Paul Dodd – drums.
Peggi with backpack under 250 year old old tree on Culver Road
There is no way this tree, in front of the Church of the Transfiguration on Culver Road, is coming down in the windstorm that is currently howling outside. It has been here since before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The sidewalk which was already moved is being shoved aside again. We’ve walked by this tree three days in a row now, on trips up to Wegman’s, the bank and then the library.
We had the 1959 movie, “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” in our Netflix queue for months and there is still a “Very Long Wait.” They must only have a few copies. I found it listed in the collection at our library so we headed over there. We’re always looking for a walking destination. I remember really liking the opening number by Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall. And the Monk performance in the movie we just watched was so good I need more. Once we got home with the dvd I found the full movie on YouTube.
The temperature was up in the fifties earlier but it is dropping fast. An inversion that may cause gusts over 70 miles an hour. We’re planning on going out to hear Kahil with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at the Bop Shop tonight but if a tree drops on the power line we’ll be babysitting our neighbor’s generator. PopWars will go dark.
Red ice-fishing tent on Durand Lake in Rochester, New York
These lakes in Durand Eastman are so small. I can’t imagine what kind of fish people pull out of them in the dead of winter. There must be something else to this ice fishing sport. I picture some incredible homemade soup and black coffee from a Stanley steel thermos. Maybe the guy in this red tent is reading the morning paper.
When Peggi’s parents came up here for six weeks one summer we bought them a temporary subscription to the Democrat & Chronicle. At the time we were subscribing to the afternoon paper, the Times Union, but we picked the D&C for them because it leaned to the right. Well, they found it too left wing so that did’t work out. And the golf course in Bristol, near where they were staying, was closed most of the summer because it was the rainiest on record. The Times Union disappeared and I don’t want to see the same fate for the D&C.
Did anybody see David Andreatta’s column on the former Monroe County Supervisor? I know print is dead for most people but we can’t just tune out. I worry that many of my neighbors already have. Why else would we have paid Maggie Brooks for 23 years at the public trough? How about Steve Orr’s reporting on the abuse and coverup at McQuaid? While newsprint slips away the local team here is working harder than ever in hopes that enough people care enough to pay a few pennies a day for online access to keep them informed. Don’t be a dumb ass. Give it up.
Another perfect day for cross country or “Alpine Skiing” as Ann our yoga buddy from Jeffery’s summer classes at the yacht club. We ran into Ann on the course and she tried to give me a hug. I leaned over on my skis and almost fell over. She is the high school ski instructor and she was happy to be skiing on her own while the kids are off for President’s Week. We skied out the ridge to the lake and back along the western edge of Durand Lake. I spotted this cross on a tree on our way up out of the woods.
I was talking to my cousin over the weekend and he asked about our Camino trip. While explaining the centuries old significance of the destination, we found ourselves deep in a religious conversation. In no time at all he was talking about he recent Democrat & Chronicle exposé on the priests at McQuaid, the same priests that kicked him out of McQuaid for disturbing the other students. As if that wasn’t a worthwhile pursuit for a high schooler. Yet these guys sexually abused their own students, covered for one another and acted all pious.
My cousin recommended “The Keepers” to us, the Netflix series on the murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a popular nun at Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School. He said he thought it was more powerful than “Spotlight.” Even though we had just started “The Ted Bundy Tapes” (I fell asleep in Episode 1) we watched the first two installments of “The Keepers” last night. It is devastating and hard to watch. In this case the evil starts in the school and is covered up by the whole city.
This week Pope Francis meets with the church hierarchy in a last ditch effort to turn his ship around. Unless they seriously clean house, assist in the prosecution of rapists in their midst, open their doors to people of all sexual persuasions, allow women to be priests and roll back the bone headed, 12th Century edict on celibacy they might as well start selling their statues.
Leo Dodd watercolor Statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington Square Park, Rochester, New York
Historic Brighton celebrated their 20th year by serving cake and punch at the conclusion of their annual meeting. My siblings and I were invited because they were presenting an award in my father’s name. He was one of the founding members and he would have been thrilled with the turnout on Sunday. This year’s Leo Dodd Award went to Betsy Breyer, who had a fatal heart attack on the way to last year’s meeting. She was a longtime editor of the newsletter and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her book on George Eastman.
Michael Lasser, host of WXXI’s Fascinating Rhythm, was scheduled to give a talk entitled, “The Songs of the Suburbs,” but he had to cancel. Grant Holcomb, the former director of the Memorial Art Gallery filled his slot with a presentation on “The Image of Lincoln in American Art.” It started with traditional, historical paintings of Lincoln in action, signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and then wandered into fanciful portrayals of the young Lincoln and Lincoln pennies. Grant could have stopped at Leonard Volk’s life mask of Lincoln. What a face!
I was thrilled to see a couple of Horace Pippin paintings with Lincoln in them but when we approached modern times, Grant sort of went off the rails. David Salle’s painting from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with a miniature Lincoln medallion floating above a woman’s breast, got lot of screen time and we did’t get to see Dali’s tour de force.
Frederick Douglass plastic statue in front of his former home on South Avenue in Rochester, New York
We were out walking and Peggi had to go to the bathroom. There was a library across the street so we ducked in there, the Frederick Douglas Community Library. They had a big display of books for Black History Month and I picked up “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and read a few pages detailing a slave master’s demeanor while dispensing a whipping. I think I have a digital copy of this and I keep meaning to get to it.
While we were in the library my watch gave me a news alert that the NFL had reached some sort of settlement with Colin Kaepernick. Maybe they’ll make him Commissioner.
Next door I noticed School Number 12 is now called Anna Murray Douglass Academy after Frederick Douglass’s wife. And just a few steps more down South Avenue stands a historical marker, planted in 1984, Rochester’s 150th Anniversary year, that reads “DOUGLASS HOME Frederick Douglas, abolitionist and editor of the the North Star hid many fugitive slaves at his home on this site.” The plastic replica of the statue in Highland Park (above), one of many around town marking the 200th anniversary of his birth, was standing near the sidewalk . His birthday is celebrated on February 14th, yesterday.
The temperatures had dropped below freezing and the sidewalks were a mess but we soldiered on and walked around Highland Park where the real statue of Frederick Douglas, overlooking the bowl, looked magnificent.
Busted Valentines performing live at Record Archive in Rochester, New York
Does anyone remember that gag gift store on Clinton Avenue, right next door to Jay’s Record Ranch? Probably not. They used to sell things like garlic gum and fake puke. Record Archive sells all that stuff today in addition to records. Thank god. I found some cool 45s over there yesterday, KC, Get Down Tonight, Elton John, Bennie & the Jets, Peggy Lee, Fever, a couple bucks each all while sipping The Kind from 3 Heads. We also caught a couple of bands.
Morgxn, that’s how he spells what sounds like Morgan, did a special afternoon in-store at Record Archive in conjunction with 94.1. All we knew about him was what Spevak wrote and that he was on the same label as Rochester’s Joywave. We assumed he would sing to backing tracks but he performed with only a keyboardist and minimal electronic drums. To our ears he sounded better than anything we heard on the Grammys. After his show Alayna told the crowd that “Morgxn is about to explode.”
Frank De Blase, performing with the Busted Valentines has a very different “idea of what a man is for the twenty first century.” – to quote Spevak. But then Frank wears so many different hats. Music reviewer, non-pareil, for City, pulp-noir author of several books featuring Frankie Valentine, pin-up photographer, the chief Frantic Flattop and puts all this together masterfully when he performs live with Busted Valentines.
Back on our living room couch we cued up Chasing Trane, the next item in our Netflix queue. Coltrane sounds so good he could fix all that is wrong with this world.
Nancy Wiley Generation Z portraits at Main Street Arts
Clifton Springs is only 55 cents away on the NYS Thruway. Our passengers, Pete and Gloria, paid the toll and provided the kind of conversation that makes time fly. The shows at Main Street Arts, in the center of this restored town, are consistently good. “Perception of Time,” a group there now is a case in point. I liked Nancy Wiley’s loose, painterly Generation Z portraits, particularly the second one in from the bottom right. Wiley apparently likes this one too because she shows it in the catalog for the show along with this statement. “I have been struck by the struggle many of them go through to be authentic and honest about who they are as individuals, often challenging old social norms.”
Sam Rathbun, an artist in residence for the month, was working on ideas for an upcoming Glens Falls show in the the studio space on the second floor. She had covered a wall with large, fluid India ink drawings on paper. She told me she grew up on a farm near Naples and is influenced by the equipment her father uses there.
Kurt and Judy Feuerherm have a fun little show up there as well. Kurt was my Fine Arts mentor at Empire State and his work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, Albright Knox and the MAG. The small assemblage sculpture and painting/collage pieces here create an idyllic winter garden.
Burning bushes on hill in Durand Eastman, Winter 2019
FFThe only bobblehead doll we have is Barry Bonds, back from before the controversy, when he was chasing Hank Aaron’s homer record. I’m not counting the plastic, solar-powered, Trump bobblehead that someone gave us for Christmas. I plan to throw that away. I was thinking about bobbleheads long before the article in Sunday’s paper on the bobblehead museum in Milwaukee. Amy Rigby’s “Bobblehead Doll,” from Eric and Amy’s 2009 double A side single, has been stuck in my head for weeks. The 45 has been on heavy rotation our house.
I still visit “So Many Records, So Little Time,” even though it is not getting the attention it deserves – from its owner. Kevin called around New Year’s and Peggi helped him reclaim the domain name after it had expired. The website is still a goldmine. If there is nothing new on the front page I just scroll down the long list of artists in the right hand column, like I did this morning, and get lost in Kevin’s spin on Bootsy, Alan Vega and Heart.
I’ve been cleaning house myself and am in the process of moving the Margaret Explosion site to PopWars where all the content now flows from the database. I’m re-building the virtual 45 page with live tracks from our performances. In honor of Peggi’s birthday here is a song from those vaults. That’s a photo of Peggi on the cover.
“When We Were Young” “Contemplation” by Margaret Explosion. Recorded live at the Little Theatre on 11.20.13. Peggi Fournier – sax, Ken Frank – bass, Bob Martin – guitar, Jack Schaefer – bass clarinet, Paul Dodd – drums.
We celebrated Chinese New Year last night with my brother’s lady friend and her family. We rang in the the Year of the Pig sitting around a long table with bowls stacked with fresh ingredients plates of rice paper wrappers and two hot plates as centerpieces.
My brother tended the hot plate nearest us and I marveled at how adept he was with chopsticks. He carefully demonstrated how to roll a proper spring roll, how to start with the ingredients close to the edge and roll it snug, tucking the ends in midway. “It’s just like rolling a joint,” he said. Of course, I continually made the same mistake I did with that exercise. I kept trying to put too much in the container.
After dinner red envelopes with gold embossing were spread out on the table. We each took one while our host explained that only three had a two dollar bill inside, a sign of good luck in the new year. I was one of the lucky ones but the others each had a five inside.
I knew something was up when I saw our neighbor, Jared, coming back from the corner with his noise cancelling headphones in his hand. We were still reading the morning paper but we waved to Jared and he came up to the door. He told us his wife had gone out for coffee and had to drive under the power lines that were stretched to the max under a fallen oak.
Jared said Spectrum TV was down there and a “cute little reporter” had interviewed him, inquiring how residents were impacted the storm. He said he told the reporter he likes a good storm. By the time we got down there the power company had stung yellow tape across our street, sealing us in. They cut the power and tree surgeons were preparing to go to work. When the power came back on we found Jared’s interview online. He told us “they cut out all the good parts.”
We walked up to Wegmans with our Yak Tracks on. The temperature is right at freezing and the rain we had overnight froze on every surface. In the produce aisle we ran into Steve Greive and he showed us photos he took of ice covered trees in the marsh near his house. This particular Witch Hazel (above), which blooms in the dead of winter, smells like a rich butterscotch but the scent is trapped inside the ice.
Liberty Tax Service on Hudson Avenue in Rochester, New York
Ken Frank has a dance song, one he did under a pseudonym, called “Lady Liberty.” First thing I thought of when I saw this place. I like the contemporary lady out front, something the owner apparently wheels in and out each day. He leaves her strapped to the cart.
We gave Duane a call while we were out walking. He was out walking too, in Brooklyn. He was over by the Brooklyn Museum when reached him. We covered all the bases, politics, race relations and the stock market.. He arrived at back at his apartment just as we reached our front door. Both of us did about six miles.
Peggi has been been doing our taxes the past few days so I’ve been fielding a lot of questions. “What did we get at “Ship To Shore?” MX-80 Out of the Tunnel on blue vinyl. “Why did we pay so much to Dropbox?” I went Pro. That reminds me. Duane put a bunch of dub Reggae remixes in a shared folder for us.
A low scoring soccer match can have you on the edge of your seat with non stop action. Just saying. There was only a few minutes left in the big football game when my brother’s LG TV threatened to shut down. This happened a few years back and because he had rearranged all his furniture to accommodate the family he couldn’t find the remote for five minutes or so.
It wasn’t just the game that lacked excitement. No one took the knee and the halftime show looked like a Trump rally. I did like the CBS ad with the animated double eye logo mimicking old CBS shows. Bud Light body slammed Coors by calling attention to the corn syrup they put in their product. And the vintage Warhol “EatLikeAndy” Burger King ad was so ordinary it was startling.
My brother is a gourmet barbecuer and I would pick him as the Super Bowl MVP.
Hill in Durand Eastman on a beautiful February day
Peggi’s sister called from LA during the cold snap and Steve Hoy called from Charleston, making sure we were ok. Both times we had just returned from skiing. We had to get out early today, before the temperatures warmed. All this snow will be gone tomorrow.
Todd McGrain and Fola Akinola’s video “Eclipsing the Sun/A Biological Storm at Rochester Contemporary Art Center is amazing. I won’t spoil it for you.
Peter Monacelli’s show, “These Are My Rivers” opened last night at Colleen Buzzard’s Studio. Curated by Anne Havens and Colleen Buzzard it is a tour de force of paintings, drawings, collages and sketch books pulled from a lifetime of art making. Pete’s work is graphic, tangible abstractions of meaningful elements of his experience. He presents you with gifts that come straight from these influences.
I love this art space. Like the loft jazz, performance spaces in the seventies it is an old fashioned, DIY scene. Conversation is up a few notches here. And since Colleen’s studio is just behind the gallery you have the big bonus of peeking in on her endeavors. Pieces in all stages of development spring from every nook and cranny of her studio. It is an idea factory.
I put this video up last night and then reconsidered it. It was too easy.
We walked Horseshoe Road in Durand Eastman with the camera on. I stuck the video, with no edits, on a song that we played last year at the Little. The song was slightly longer than the walk so I slowed the video down and they end together. It was far from a steady cam so I stabilized it 100%, a move similar to going overboard with auto tune.
I remember riding in our family car when my dad drove this road. It is still just as magical but it’s been closed to car traffic for over forty years now. There are so many weeds growing up through the pavement that the park workers mow it. And there aren’t many park workers left.
I took the song down and even though it is all one take I put some splices in and added color filters to the various sections. The beginning and end are still as they were. I jacked up the transition time as far as it would let me go. I’m happy with it now.
