It is surely cleaner to burn natural gas rather than wood but we have a lot of free wood around here. It falls from the sky. Our neighborhood is seventy years old and the trees that were left when the houses went up continue to mature. They grow toward the light which is often right over the house and they become lopsided. Conscientious homeowners prune them and are left with the wood, perfectly good fuel if you have a fireplace. But it takes some real effort to cut, split and stack the wood so it can age before burning.
And that is where we come in. Instead of walking we’ve spent the better part of this week out by the wood pile. Our neighbors took down a big tree that was hanging over their house. They contacted us while we were in Spain and asked if we we wanted it. Of course we said yes and when we came home we found these huge pieces, better than 30 inches in diameter and much longer that the 21 inches that fit in our hydraulic splitter. I watched a YouTube video on how to split large logs. This guy made it look easy. His method works but falls apart when you have burls and limbs going in all directions. We worked our asses off out there but have three face cords aging and a fire fire going. We are going to seed but not there yet.
Giant cannoli at Rubino’s on East Ridge in Rochester, New York
We walked along the river this morning from Ford Street to Elmwood and and back on the other side. I found a plastic protractor near UR and over on the west side a piece of paper with handwritten proverbs. “Even a fool is thought wise if he holds his tongue” caught my attention.
Some friends of ours have a yearly holiday gathering. It is centered around wine. Everyone brings a bottle and sets it on a table near the front door and the place is so crowded we hardly get to talk with the hosts. But it is a great opportunity to get together with people we only see a few times each year.
Maybe ten years ago some people brought their guitars and sang a few songs, folk songs like House of the Rising Sun and the Pogues Christmas song. It felt spontaneous and festive. As the years went by more guitars come out earlier. The first few songs grabbed everyone’s attention, I especially liked a former Chesterfield Kings’ version of “Dead Flowers,” but when a boisterous Johnny Cash tune drowned out the conversation we were having in the other room I groaned and said something about originality.
A small group was playing Cat Steven’s “Wild World” when we left and I was thinking about our generation. Outside we couldn’t hear the acoustic guitars, only the voices, and Peggi told me I should keep those kind of comments to myself. She is right. I sound like an old man. I plan to work on that. Besides, “Even a fool is thought wise if he holds his tongue.”
Peggi and Paul at “This Is It” show at Community Playhouse in Rochester, New York. Shot taken from monitor of performance video by Duane Sherwood.
Working with Duane Sherwood in 1984, Personal Effects started planning a multi-media show for the Community Playhouse on South Avenue where Swillburger is now. We had seen Emmy Lou Harris perform there and a few other shows and the small playhouse with the big deep stage was perfect for back-projecting on a scrim. From up in the balcony to way back behind the stage Duane worked both sides of the band with dramatic lights, psychedelic liquid light and projections, silhouettes thrown on the scrim from the front and the back where Jeanne Taylor was dancing behind the scrim. There is a photo of Jeanne on this 80’s Polaroids page. As creative and production manager, Duane had a brilliant idea for every song even dropping an overstuffed man from the ceiling for our song “Big Man.” Don Scorgie brought his bar to the lobby. Russ Lunn videoed the show and Duane took Polaroid stills of the video. We used them on the back cover of the album we recorded later that year titled “This Is It.”
Which brings me to the behind the scenes documentary of Michael Jackson’s rehearsals for what was to be his last tour. We watched “This Is It” last night with the sound jacked up. The band, an orchestra, sounded incredible. The production of this thing is mind-blowing and you get to see quite a bit of that along with the performances. Where other performers hire dancers to make them look good, Michael Jackson hired the best dancers and still danced better than all of them. You can’t take your eyes off him. Still transitioning at the end, he appeared to be in great shape. “This Is It” is exhilarating and sad.
Personal Effects album “This Is It” on Earring Records 1984 EAR 1
The stone I carried home from the Camino de Santiago. Photo by Peggi Fournier.
It took some discipline to keep our backpacks around the eleven to twelve pound range. A litter of water can push you over. Add a package of figs and oranges or a hunk of cheese and and you really notice the weight. Especially after twenty miles. We had an outdoor wardrobe, if it was below thirty we wore the whole thing, and a set of clothes for street wear. I had a small sketchbook and my iPad but that was it for extras. So when I found this stone on the second day in, a stone that felt so comfortable in my hand I didn’t want to let go of it. I really had to think hard about whether I was really going to bring it home.
It wasn’t just the shape, like an organic hand warmer or a bar of soap, it was the combination of stone, the milky white and the earthy orange brown. I carried it in my hand for hours and then shoved to the bottom of my pack when we stopped. When we got home Peggi noticed this little arrow etched in the stone, an arrow like the hundreds we followed on the Camino de Santiago. I’m thinking this is a miracle.
Beech-Nut Packing Company East Main Street, Rochester, New York
Warren Philips framed a print for us. He called to say it was ready for pick-up so drive over there this afternoon and found him sitting in the window of shop, eating lunch with the lights while listening to Christmas music. From the looks of what was left it was a healthy lunch, both fruits and vegetables. We got a total cost from him and then walked down East main from his shop near Goodman to ESL at Winton and Main to pick up some cash. The five mile loop took us though our old neighborhood and brought back all sorts of memories.
About half the houses on the North side of Main have been torn down and there’s a lot of new buildings like Auto Zone. The giant Eckerd’s that put in where Kadri’s gas station was is now a Dollar Store. The Comic Book Store is gone. East High was letting out when we passed. Amazing how much energy those kids have. I found a Trump playing card on the ground near the school, the queen of diamonds with “Melania, Supermodel” on the back. We used to get a Friday Fish Fry at My Brother’s Place, now Club Soda where the bikers and cops hang out. Economy Paper is still in business. We had a salesman from that place call on us at 4D. Eastern Printing is still cranking. We did many jobs there.
Fleckinger’s Meat Market is a tax service place. That guy knew my grandfather. Salvatore’s, the original location at Wisconsin Street, has the whole block now. The founder’s father, Fred, owned the grocery store across the street. Bertha’s is gone. It’s a laundramat. We stopped in there to go to the bathroom. There is a Puerto Rican restaurant where Mooney’s was and Effinger’s German restaurant before that and Jamaican place across the street. Carroll’s Irish Bar painted their place dark grey for some reason. Fam’s disco is a teen center. The greenhouse is a coffee shop for recovering alcoholics. Mustard Street, where French’s used to be, looks as bleak as ever. Nobody remembers any of this stuff.
Personal Effects “Silver Finger Nails” from “90 Day In The Planetarium” 1987
The last time I saw Julian Schnabel he was wearing what appeared to be pajamas as he and his lady friend left the Sculpture Pavilion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I say “the last time” even though I only saw him one other time, when Rochester’s Ingrid Sischy brought him to the MAG for a lecture. This was during his smashed plate phase.
Schnabel’s “Basquiat” was embarrassing. His “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” was beautiful but an awful lot like “Johnny Got His Gun.” His “At Eternity’s Gate” is brilliant. Maybe just because the subject is so. But William Defoe is too. Because the movie was done by a painter I expected a more painterly dialog. Instead we have Van Gogh’s personality, his intense relationship with the world, his social ineptness, his psychological disorders and his glimpses of eternity on full display. Maybe that is what it took to produce such extraordinary art.
There is some choice dialog, probably taken from Van Gogh’s letters. “Paintings have to be painted fast, made in one clear gesture.” There is a scene Of Van Gogh and Gauguin taking a piss and talking about how they have to start a revolution. “The Impressionists are so boring.” And Van Gogh adds “But Monet is pretty good.” But there is a cringe worthy scene near the end of the film where Schnabel’s Van Gogh, comparing himself to Jesus, while talking to a priest, says maybe he paints “for people who are not born yet. Adding “nobody knew Jesus until 40 years after his death.”
Van Gogh essentially had ten years where he continued to get better and astronomically better as a painter. Like a rocket. Schnabel’s depiction of Van Gogh in his coffin (Defoe made up by an undertaker) and surrounded by his paintings was incredibly beautiful.
“Kalpa,” tree of lights by San Francisco’s Symmetry Labs come alive 5 -10:30pm at Rochester Contemporary
Would you trust a car salesman who primarily types with the middle finger of his right hand? Or one who sells you a car that has less miles on it than it did when you test drove it a few days earlier. We might have been reading the wrong number on the mini monitor, the one behind the steering wheel, where the speedometer used to be. After you’ve been hit in the rear and the guy takes off, the car you love is beyond repair and its title wrongly has a lean attached it is hard to tell who to trust.
I thought by the time we were ready for a new car there would be all sorts of options. And I don’t mean ones that run on alternative fuels. That whole project has been deliberately stalled. I was thinking of shared vehicles, self driving or maybe just a better mass transit system. We have always had only one car so when our fifteen year run with the Element came to an abrupt end, we had to learn about the current options under pressure.
We did most of shopping online. Sadly there are only three types of vehicles out there and within those types they all look the same. SUVs of various sizes, pick-up trucks and your basic car/sedans that all look the same. We were happy with the Element so went out to Honda. First to complain about the discontinuation of the Element and then to look at the options in 3D. The CRV was the next best thing but then there was this report.
Despite the irreparable damage from the hit and run they offered us some money on a trade in but when we looked at the title to our Element, for the first time in fifteen years, we found there was a lien attached. The 2003 Element was our first new car purchase and we did it in cash so we were taken aback. We remember going out to John Holtz (no longer in business) with a cashier’s check and then going in a back room where we were up-sold on an extended warranty package. Since we already had a cashier’s check for the full amount of the car they said we could put the warranty coverage on our credit card and pay it off monthly so we did but the lien was never removed. And the bank that held the lien was bought by Santander, a giant Spanish bank.
We sort of feel like the kid in “Breaking Away” who was so enamored with the Italian bike team until he raced with them and they took him down. It took us a week to get to someone inside the Spanish bank was willing to help.
We were not a customer. We had no account there and the Customer Service phone line was a giant maze where you wait forever on hold with a music loop for the next person who tries to transfer you and then cuts you off. We started over so many times we learned the codes to get through the phone maze. At the first utterance of a recorded voice we pushed 1, and after the next voice another 1 and another and then four zeros to the next level’s four questions. The zeros are not even an option there but they confuse the system and get you to a real sounding person. And then they want to transfer you to the loan department, a separate company, because they find out you are not a customer. After landing over there a few times we learned to plead with the represenative to get us to their supervisor. We dealt with five supervisors and at last found one who was willing to fax a lien release letter to the car dealer, but by then it was too late in the day on Friday. With any luck we will be driving a new car to yoga on Monday night.
Pink clouds over Lake Ontario at Durand Eastman Park
Steve Brown was one of the three original partners in the legendary Bug Jar. Margaret Explosion was playing a regular Friday night Happy Hour there for a few years and he was always behind the bar, off duty from his day job at a big financial firm, encouraging us to invest the little we had. I’m so thankful for that. He’s now a partner, with Tommy Burnett, in Iron Smoke Whisky, a northern New York whiskey distillery of all things. But it is also a bar with a sound system and tonight, the day before Tom Waits birthday, they hosted a Tom Waits tribute.
I like the Rain Dogs period for Tom Waits. Hated The earlier Electra years and then lost track of him. Apparently I am in the minority’s here because the night’s performers mostly drifted to the mopey loungy stuff. Irish Ben managed to bring the house down with a solo, voice only because they couldn’t get his acoustic guitar feed to work, version of a song called Martha, a song he dedicated to his wife, Helen. Teresa Wilcox went for it with “Clap Hands.” And the band sounded like a million bucks, Phil Marshall, Brian Williams, the drummer from Busted Valentines and the keyboard player from Mighty High and Dry.
Madeline McQueen did a great version of “The Heart Of Saturday Night” and someone named Rod Smith did a reved up version of “Downtown Train.” The whole cast finished with a “We Are The World” kind thing with everyone one on stage singing something like “a freeway will never come” over and over. We had a couple Paradox Brewery Beaver Bite IPAs, saw a whole bunch of old friends, and had good time.
Birch tree along shore of Lake Ontario at Durand Eastman Park
“Una invitación para comprender español y para conversar en espanól, lengua expresiva, romántica y musical.” An invitation to understand Spanish and speak in Spanish, an expressive language, romantic and musical. That is my translation of a passage in the intro to “An Invitation to Spanish,” a 1947 book I picked up at a garage sale. As much as I enjoy listening to Peggi converse in Spanish I came back from Spain more determined than ever to learn some of the language.
I’ve been chipping away at the photos I shot and slowly reliving the experience. I just opened one from the cathedral in Santiago of sign that reads, “Culto Al Santisimo.” Cult of the saint? Worshipers of the holy? Adoration of the Holy Sacrament? That last guess is from Google translate. Maybe there is no literal translation. I do enjoy that.
Three camouflaged deer on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
I know I’ve been out of sorts when I don’t find any interesting photos on my camera. It is always with me and I usually start a blog post by looking back at what I have brought home. And then I sort of write to the photo sometimes. Just as often the text has nothing to do with the visuals and that makes its own statement. It is at least a starting point.
It has been a few days and this is all I found. The deer are nearly camouflaged and the photo reminds me of those old Highlights magazines. I remember them in our house but I mostly remember them at Dr. Cleary’s, our family dentist. He had an office on the sixth floor of the Medical Arts building on Alexander Street and my mom would take all six of us, Amy wasn’t born yet, to the dentist at the same time. We usually all needed his attention but there wasn’t a babysitter if you didn’t. We devoured the Highlights magazines and there was always a feature where you had to find a list of things hidden in a photo. I’ve gotten pretty good at it but I could never spot these three deer before they spotted me.
Turns out our car is totaled so we took to the internet to shop for a new one and a few days slipped by. And then there was that whole day we spent looking for the title of old car. If they still made the Element we would already have a new one but they don’t make them anymore. Bob Martin thinks we oughta be looking at panel trucks.
Fran and Paul Dodd jumping off rock in Bloomington Long Hole quarry
Years after this photo was taken an Academy Award winning movie was shot in Bloomington Indiana and this quarry was featured in a scene. My father took this photo when he came out to visit and I love the body language. I look scared and my brother, Fran, looks like he’s having the time of his life. Funny, too, that I took diving at IU as a PE requirement. The teacher was, Hobie Billingsley, the US Diving coach. The first thing he had us do was climb the ladders to the high platform, walk to the edge, turn our backs to the pool and fall backward in a stiff, plank-like position. If executed properly you do a full rotation and land first. If not, ouch. He was building trust.
I just called my brother for some advice. Our insurance company has passed our claim on to the “Total Loss Department” and we’re waiting to hear what they plan to offer us for it. My brother knows cars. I have no idea what goes on under the hood. We love our car but it a 2003 Honda Element and they don’t make anything like it anymore. We moved the contents of our city house to this place in the car. My drums slide in with room for Pete and Shelley. We carry firewood from down below in it. My brother recommended a bay sho and we hope to have them get our car back on the road with insurance pay out. My uncle was our insurance agent in the old days. I don’t know if I can trust these guys.
Inside Sparky’s garage on Hall Street in Rochester, New York
In 1982 our next door neighbor had had enough. We were rehearing in our basement and it wasn’t the band noise that bothered him, it was our guitar player’s muffler. That and the coming and going at all hours. The houses on Hall Street were close together and equipment had to be unloaded at three in the morning. We found this letter taped to our back door.
I couldn’t imagine that we would ever be friends but we lived next door for twenty seven years. I wasn’t even able to tell him were were gonna move so I asked him if he wanted to go for a ride with me. When he got in the car I told him to turn around. The back of our car was loaded with furniture and boxes and took a drive tor new place. He liked it.
Sparky was born in Kentucky and Peggi and I spent a lot of time in Indiana so there was that hillbilly connection. I told him I played in a country band there and he claimed to be in a country band then. I never knew what to believe from Sparky. I knew he had a gun and he sat in the dark in his house on Halloween it nearby. He told us so. He claimed to to have shot a sewer rat out front. And we saw him hosing down noisy crickets at night. He only went to fifth grade and I spent an afternoon trying to teach him fractions. He raked his lawn in his pajamas while smoking a pipe. I started keeping track of Sparky episodes.
After we moved he regularly came to visit and we would stop by to check up on him. At the funeral services tonight we learned he stopped by people’s homes all over town. He seemed to get younger and happier each time we saw him. He bought homemade Polish sausage from a woman in Buffalo and we grilled it in the backyard. Did it really come from Buffalo? It was the best sausage I have ever had in my life.
I was happy to see some of my photos of Sparky on the board at the funeral home and a photo of my painting, “Sparky Goes To A Gig.” A country singer dressed in black with a wide brimmed hat and red scarf sang “The Streets of Laredo” and then a Johnny Cash medley. Sparky was ninety two, an age when all his friends should have been dead but the funeral home was packed. We told his daughter we would send her a link to this video that Peggi shot.
And I don’t mean Brooklyn Academy of Music. The jolt was like the ones you got in the bumper cars at Willow Point Park when your friend slammed you in the rear. We were turning left into Jeff and Mary Kaye’s driveway and we weren’t quick enough for the driver behind us. He/she closed the gap and clipped the right rear corner of our car. Took the whole section of the car that holds the taillight right off. And he kept going into the night. When the Monroe County Sheriff showed up he said, “Welcome to 2018.”
We tried to shake it off and got down to business. Jeff’s stereo was acting up. His amp kept turning off. I plan to bring my old one there next time. He clicked on a Flash update and inadvertently installed something that gave him error messages but it wouldn’t come up while we were out there. His Airport extreme, a device Apple no longer makes, was flashing yellow. I opened Airport utility and updated the firmware. Mary Kaye never got an Apple id when she bought her phone so she was signed in as Jeff and was getting all his work related email. Peggi set Mary Kaye up we with her own id. Jeff’s Pages docs were all showing invisibles.Jeff didn’t know what they were. They look like the old typesetter marks and “Show Invisibles” was turned on. I turned it off. Last on the list was getting Jeff’s photos on his tv. You have to have the Photos app open before you can find them from your tv.
We drove home with one taillight and made it. Peggi installed the Allstate app, took photos of the damage and we expect a quote for repair tomorrow. They cover most of the cost for a car rental so we walked up to Enterprise and came home with a little white thing from Korea.
Not as rugged as the Camino de Santiago but a close second. We walked a Record Store Day circuit today on icy city sidewalks. We parked our car in Wegmans lot on East Avenue and started our loop with a cup of Rochester’s Choice at Canaltown and then headed down Winton and Highland to the Bop Shop. My brother-in-law was there with our nephew and Gary Lewis was spinning records. My brother-in-law had him sign some Playboys records. Barrence Whitfield appeared to be working there. He was looking over my shoulder as I picked up the Eric Dolphy release and asked if I had ever heard “Ezz-thetics” a Charles Russel record with Dolphy, Don Ellis and Dave Baker. Peggi took a Jazz Studies class from Baker at IU when he taught there. I came home with the record.
I saw a Sun Ra record in there but had heard from my neighbor that it was four dollars cheaper down the road at Hi-Fi Lounge, a place we had never been, so that was our next stop. We sat in the back room there listening to an electronica audiophile lp playing through one of the sound systems they sell. I told the owner, Mark, that we still have the speakers I built from parts I bought at Rochester Radio on West Main. He didn’t remember that place.
It was sunny for our walk to Record Archive so we went down Oakdale where my cousins used to live. Archive was packed. Deb was doing sound for a guitar player in the back room and she suggested we buy a beer while we shopped. I bought a few two dollar 45s – Charlie Rich, Stylistics, Elvis and The Carpenters.
Wooden Thanksgiving figures on lawn in front of house on Culver Road
We have been included in a group text of people planning tomorrow’s get-together at Jedi and Helena’s. We’re bringing appetizers and the group is getting bigger. One off topic text came with just a link. It took us to a YouTube demonstration of a phone app that keeps robocallers on the line thereby eating the time they would have spent bugging other callers. We assumed it was what she intended to send us but it was just an especially long ad that played before a favorite song of hers. When the song started our phone rang and it was a robot caller, a group that has called before. An unbelievably cheery voice starts with, “Hi, This Is Jennifer.” I slammed the phone down.
Monday was our first day back to yoga class since we walked across Spain. I have always felt like Jeffery’s class flies by. I tune into his command and apply a concentrated effort to properly hold the particular poses and the two hours disappear. This time was different. I could not surrender. I was unable to hear all he said so I would miss a movement and then hear an instruction to move in a way that was impossible because I was still back on a previous pose. I was somewhere between daydreaming and antsy. Coming back was a bit of a shock. Here we are responsible for more than the contents of our backpacks. It will take some adjustment.
Dumpster, ongoing series of dumpster photos by Paul Dodd
When we were doing websites for a living we used a number of servers. We always had a new favorite and we had sites scattered all over the place. PopWars wound up on DreamHost and only when we decided to update the blog portion did we have to contact their tech people. We did that via chat and weren’t even sure if the problem was on their end. I suspected it was something we did. I was using the original WordPress theme. Anybody remember Kubrick? I updated it for years and then switched to AutoUpdater but it stopped working. After eleven years we installed a new WP version on the root level and switched to a new theme. My internal links went haywire and Google sent me a chart that plotted the errors their auto crawler found. Through the roof. The Dreamhost representative said they would pass our case on to their WP expert and at nine that evening he emailed that he had corrected the problem. This is a recommendation.
I would like to move my web content into pages on the blog. I’ll need a few plugins to get it looking the way I want. I found one that restyles the audio files into a nice looking player and I’m playing with the gallery display options. I started with this collection of Dumpster photos from a few years back. You can click the photos for enlargements or just watch it go by.
Fall is still out there but it was rudely interrupted with this snow.
Speaking of interruptions, We just learned of Mike Kaplan‘s circumstances. I didn’t know him, he was a good friend of our bass player’s and we were asked to play at his memorial this afternoon. We did it as a three piece and played incidental music at four points in the service. The sound in the room was just perfect and we were able to push our minimal sound to the furthest extremes, somewhere close to pristine emptiness. It was an honor to play for his family friends.
We’re Abundance Food Co-Op members so we make a point of doing a big shop once a month for our 10% off. Before going in the store we walk down Averill to the river where we get on the River Path. We walk toward UR, formerly the UofR, and the path just keeps getting prettier. The campus is dreamy and I usually find myself wondering what it would be like going to school there but I snap out of that pretty quickly. There are three or four options for crossing the river but we usually cross on Elmwood Avenue and then come back toward downtown on the west side. The west side is wilder, less developed and a little lonelier but it is even prettier than the east side.
Don Hershey designed our house with with a very slim roofline. The one story structure has a low 2/12 pitch and as the roof is pitched down the four foot overhangs have a slight pitch upward. The facia board is very narrow and there were no gutters. A previous owner added a gutter around two sides of the garage and to get enough pitch for the water to roll they had to replace the facia with a wider piece of cedar. The gutter prevented ice from forming near the door but over time the the corners leaked. I patched them a few times but it didn’t last and the corners were especially treacherous in the winter. I thought there had been an innovation of some sort and gutters were were now made without any seams so I asked around for a contractor to replace ours.
A guy came out to give us an estimate and he was very professional. He told us a crew would do the work and he scheduled the job. The forecast called for rain that day so they rescheduled. They called the morning of the new appointment and said they would have to cancel again because of the rain. I said it wasn’t raining here but that didn’t matter. We were given a new appointment, a month away, when we returned from Spain. It was raining that day but they showed up anyway.
There were two guys. The foreman told us the other guy was new and he didn’t speak much English. I told him Peggi could speak Spanish if that helps. He bent over to pick up a tool and I noticed he was wearing flannel boxer shorts with cartoon characters on them. I went in the house and they started work. About five minutes later the main guy rang our bell and said he had to go to Urgent Care because he smashed his knuckles with his hammer. He had his blue stocking cap wrapped around his hand.
They came back out the next day but this time there were three of them. The new guy seemed sharper than the others but he kept his cell phone in his pocket playing music the whole time. They cracked the facia board ripping the old gutters off and used long screws to attach the new gutters. They came out the back of the facia board and are visible if you look up. I came out to check up on them and the lead guy showed me the pitch by holding a six inch level along the bottom of the gutter. My neighbor has a six foot level. This looked like a toy. When they left we found scraps of metal and nails in the driveway and I noticed a long sections of the new gutters wasn’t even screwed in. They did me a favor. I’ll do that with shorter screws.
