PopWars

It rained all day yesterday, never let up, and it got really windy in the night. It was the first time we slept with the windows closed so we didn’t hear the big tree come down out back. It was hung up, leaning at a forty-five degree angle for the last year. A red oak, it was probably ninety feet tall with very few branches. We were worried it was going to take down the power lines on the other side of the street when it fell but we miscalculated.

It fell toward the road and the top quarter was surely blocking the road. Good thing a car wasn’t coming by at the time. When we spotted it in the morning the town had already cut the top off at our property line and hauled it away. We went to work on the rest of it, cutting it into log length sections and loading them into our car so we could drive them up to our wood pile.

The guy across the street came out. We hardly ever talk and we’ve never been introduced. He asked us if we had seen a wounded deer. I told him we saw the eleven point buck on the back of Steve Greive’s car the other day. Steve is in the town’s bow program and he shot the deer on his property at the end of the road. This guy didn’t know Steve but he said he too was bow hunting on his property and he hit a buck but it ran off. He wanted the rack and asked if it was ok to look around in the woods by our house.

We buy our coffee in bulk at Canal Town. We get two five pound bags of “Rochester Choice” at a time and I don’t notice any drop-off in flavor as we get to the bottom of that second bag. We took a chance and didn’t call ahead this time. They had some on hand but Pete said he was planning on roasting more this afternoon so said we’d stop back and pick it up fresh. I wanted to grab cup of coffee but decided to wait until we got to our next stop.

We had a arranged to meet Shoshannah White in her studio space at Visual Studies. She is doing a one month residency there and we were introduced to her at last Wednesday’s Margaret Explosion gig. She had chunk of coal on a table in front of her and had already taken some beautiful photos of it. She works somewhere between low and high tech. She uses expired Polaroid film and takes photograms by directly placing objects onto light-sensitive paper. But she also photographs with 2 1/4 film and subtly manipulates large format prints. She currently lives in Maine and even photographed Stephen King.

We suggested a cup of coffee but she didn’t have time so Peggi and I went across the street to the Memorial Art Gallery. We thought we’d check out the Bill Viola exhibit while we were there but both the cafe and gallery were closed.

We decided to stop in Fifth Frame which had just opened a few days ago. The coffee shop/brewery is on Saint Paul and the article in the paper about them called the place “Fifth Flame.” A typo in the headline of that story. They describe their coffee with ratios instead of the common coffee names like latte, cappuccino etc., and told us the fifth frame in bowling is the beer frame. We had a couple of 6:2s. Delicious.

Our friend, Pete, was trying to install an update on his iPad and he got part way into the install but couldn’t remember his password. Someone at MCC, where he teaches, tried to bail him out and they restored the iPad to its factory state. But Pete had never turned on his iCloud backup and wasn’t able to retrieve anything. Five years of photos and sketches from SketchBook Pro. I tried to help him get some music on the iPad tonight but his wife had already synced the iPad with her pc so I couldn’t get Pete’s Mac to connect to the iPad. So I went back to the pc and dragged some songs out her Windows Media Player into her iTunes so I could get them n the Pad. As I did each song came up with a little message that said it was converting the files from .wma to .acc. It’s like the Tower of Babel.

Peggi and I tried helping Jeff earlier in the week. He had a related problem. ITunes on his PowerBook would not launch anymore. It froze when he was trying to Restore his father’s iPad. I reinstalled iTunes on his PowerBook and reacquainted it with his media files but it wasn’t easy because Jeff couldn’t remember his admin password. Meanwhile Peggi got on the phone with Spectrum to see an operator would give her Jeff’s father’s password for his email account so we could set up his restored iPad. The operator had Jeff’s father’s password hints on file and she asked Peggi what his favorite song was. Jeff called his father and asked him what his favorite song was. He thought for a minute and said, “the Star Spangled Banner.” Peggi said “Star Spangled Banner” to the operator and she said “No.” We all laughed and the operator told us what the right answer was. “Summertime.”

We were on bikes headed to Staples and eventually Starbucks and we were only a block from home when we stopped at a garage sale. Someone the neighbors called “Harmonica Johnny” lived in the house but we hadn’t seen him in a long time. Sure enough, we learned Harmonica Johnny had died. His sons were selling the stuff and there wasn’t much to look at. I went through the stack of lps on the basement bar (shown above) but most were cornball 1950’s harmonica records. As I walked away from the stack one of his sons said, “You didn’t find any rock ‘n roll records in there did you?” I laughed and he said “I found a Black Sabbath album in there.” I said “And it was probably yours.” He said it was.

He told me he played drums and his brother played guitar and they used to play in a band with their father. “Mostly Ukrainian weddings.”

We’re going to have to stop back and see this white dog under the solar lights.

Our friend, Kathy, made some pillows for us. She made our last batch too but they have all gone soft, like you pick them up and wonder what the heck is inside of these. She is a decorator and that word is not descriptive enough. She brings an artist’s eye to her craft. She is frugal for starters and has a stash of fabric to rival Fabrics and Findings. She mixes and matches them with ease and the results are delightful.

She stopped by this morning with our new batch and she unveiled them one at a time. Each is a knockout. Invisible zippers, the front and back of some fabrics both used to effect and with piping from yet another fabric, designs arranged to create new designs and pick up on elements in our minimal decor. She made four for our grey couch and said she wanted to make more but she said she kept hearing my voice saying, “We only have one couch.” That and the chair my brother, John, made for us and the stump that Pete and Shelley gave us. We need to have a party.