We took an old fashioned Sunday drive along the lake through Pultneyville with its cobblestone houses and further east into the hamlet of Sodus Point where we stopped and walked along the beach. All but one of the buildings here were burned by the British during the War of 1812. Today, it is a dreamy, funky summer vacation spot with cottages and rooms to rent. This time of year the docks in the bay were all empty and the only establishment that appeared to be doing any business was a restaurant called Captain Jack’s.
The sky over the lake changed every time we looked out. I probably should have taken a movie. I read Kodak is bringing back their Super 8 movie camera. Something I never thought I would see. My father brought one of those home from Kodak for me back in the early seventies. I was on my way to Long Island to visit my friend, Rich, and I took my first movie on Jones Beach with Rich running with his dog. Back home I made this movie with three of my brothers and their friends.
Our friends, Jeff and Mary Kaye, hosted a wine tasting at their house last night. Each of us brought some wine and Jeff put it in paper bags, wino style, so we couldn’t see the label. There were ten of us and apparently none of us have a very sophisticated palette because the eighteen dollar bottle of Spanish wine that Peggi picked out won the most votes followed closely by a six dollar bottle of Gnarly Head place second.
Jeff brought a dusty bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild out of a back room and passed it around for us to look at. He didn’t plan to open it but told us it was given to him by an old girlfriend. Sue, who was sitting next to me, scanned the label with her wine scanner app and determined the bottle was worth about 1200 dollars. I was intrigued by the label, a watercolor painting of a ram, that was signed by someone named John Houston. Sure enough, the director of Chinatown was also an artist and this label is said to be his last painting.
Another Jeff, sitting across the table from me, asked Jeff the host what his off-the-record, off-duty,professional diagnosis of the president was. Jeff said he thinks Trump is a narcissist of such proportions that he believes he is telling the truth even when he when he lies. In this morning’s paper Maureen Dowd asked a Trump biographer about the orange one and he said, ““Donald’s manic without being depressive.” Having known a few manic/depressives I would say this one fits but is the condition even possible?
Wet snow and 40 degrees is not ideal for skiing but we had to get out there before it disappears. There was not enough for the woods so we drove to the golf course and strapped on our skis there. We left mostly green tracks in in our wake but managed to get up to the lake and back. The snowfall started as rain and then came down so wet it stuck to every branch.
Tonight’s feature: The only film Charles Laughton ever directed, “The Night of the Hunter” from 1955 with Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. I will report back.
“Alternative facts” entered the lexicon over the weekend and now everyone is talking about whether we are in a post truth world. I keep thinking of our friends, Pete and Shelley, and their preference for fiction over non. After every visit we go home with a list of books, mostly ones on loan from the library. Some of which, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” pretty much layout our current non-fiction state. I get the feeling they think our obsession with current events is silly because fiction so much broader. But if the context for understanding fiction is reality based where would fiction be without non-fiction. And with “alternative facts” and “post-truth” that context goes out the window. Might as well merge those two departments in the library.
Little Free Library Culver Road in Rochester, New York
We walked up to Wegman’s this afternoon and while we were cutting through the cemetery our neighbor, Steve Greive, yelled out his truck window at us, “You’ll be there soon enough.” I had no idea what he had yelled. Peggi translated. On Culver we walked by one torn-out book page after the other. Some high school kid had dropped pages every few steps for ten blocks. I picked up one of them and it was Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue.” I couldn’t believe it. I had photographed that book in the Little Free Library in front of a house Culver Road just a few weeks ago. Sure enough the trail of pages stopped at the library. I thought it would be fun to transcribe one of the paragraphs from the page I picked up but it is too mundane.
We ran into Jan, another neighbor, in Wegman’s and we told her we saw her husband and Dave Pitt, the tree surgeon, down on Hoffman Road this morning. She told us Dave had run out of firewood and he was borrowing some. This made no sense at all and we all laughed.
Speaking of funny. I have not laughed so hard for so long in quite some time as I did to Dana Carvey’s stand-up Netflix show, “Straight White Male, 60.” The Church Lady was never this funny.
Leo Dodd watercolor painting of protesters at Washington Square Park in Rochester, New York
A couple thousand came out on a fifty degree January day for the People’s Solidarity Rally at Washington Square Park, the site the Occupy protests that my father painted, above. I’m glad I went. I felt really proud of our city. The speakers, all from various contingents of the so-called movement, were mostly inspiring. A fiery Mayor Lovely Warren invoked Susan B. Anthony. Brighton supervisor, Bill Moehle, complimented the crowd on the great homemade signs, “Make America Think Again,” “Second Graders Against Trump,” “Free Melania,” “Babes Against Bullshit,” Pussies Against Putocracy”, “Non Judgement Day Is Near,” “What’s Taking the Impeachment So Long,” and then focused his rowing talk on the common bumper sticker, “Think Globally. Act Locally.”
to the Women’s March father’s Occupy Saint Mary’s Church
We had lunch at Han Noodle Bar on Monroe Avenue and came home to watch protest footage like this clip from Madrid.
Trump giving ignaueration speech on tv in Friendly Home Beauty Shop
I thought I might find my mom in the beauty parlor this morning but Cindy, the hairdresser, told me she had just left. I found her sitting, more like lying, in her new chair in the hallway by the office. Kathleen made a milkshake for her, chocolate this time, and she thickened some Cranberry juice in a small plastic glass. I wheeled my mom down to her room and positioned her so she could look out the window, not that she is interested in the outdoors anymore. She was particularly talkative. I only understood a small portion of what she said but when she’d ask, “What do you think?” I pretended and said, “I think that is a good idea.”
Doris came in the room with her walker. I said hi and Doris asked me what my name was. I told her and she said, “I recognize your face but I’m not too good with names anymore.” I told Doris my mom and I were talking and she said, “I remember you dancing with your mom last week.”
Downtown Rochester skyline in haze from Cobbs Hilll Park
I’ve been carrying around this list of shows that I want to see in New York for so long that many of the shows have closed. The dark Rothkos at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim, Max Beckmann at the Metropolitan and Joseph Albers at David Zwirner 537 West 20th.
And I only have until the 28th to catch Philip Guston’s Nixon drawings at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea, a show called “Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975.” From the gallery’s website: “These trenchant works were created at an historic moment, amidst the tumultuous political climate of the early 1970s, as the United States suffered under the weight of civil unrest and social dissent following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Senator Robert F Kennedy, the chaos of the 1968 presidential election, and the enduring violence and brutality of the Vietnam War. In his studio in Woodstock NY, Guston’s distress over the political situation was fueled by conversations with his friend, the writer Philip Roth. The artist and the writer shared an intellectual disposition for the mundane ‘crapola’ of American popular culture, and in Nixon discovered a subject they could each mimic and animate in art.”
Which brings us to the Trumpster. Will the “Bikers for Trump,” “Wall of Meat” be able to protect him?
The February issue of Better Homes & Gardens arrived today with valentines on the cover. We had my parents’ mail forwarded here a little more than a year ago and I know her subscription was never renewed but it just keeps on coming. My mom has lost interest in magazines and most everything else including food. She still likes her milkshakes though. I had the staff make one for her today and they said she had already had two. They’re small but today was special. We talked in her room for an hour or so and then she asked me to pull the curtains closed so she could take a nap. Father Donnelly was up to see her. He says he anointed her but she doesn’t remember it. I love my mom.
Joe Lewis Walker playing live at the Little Theater in Rochester, New York
A blues band doing a Beatles cover (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) with a Led Zeppelin beat fits right in with this upside-down world. Of course Trump defines that world and Alec Baldwin better get a whole lot better if wants to dent that machine. Joe Lewis Walker, performing in Little Theater number one, was a little muscular for my tastes. He hardly put his own stamp on the blues but he would have sounded great if we were in a roadhouse bar. Ironically if they had booked this band in a club no one would have there. As it was we were stuck in the dark, cushy seats starring at an unattractive band.
Joe Lewis had a distinctive, bright, steely guitar sound and his band included Larry Coryell’s son on second guitar. They did a gospel number called “Soldier For Jesus,” Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and Chuck Berry’s “Round n’ Round” with a touch of “Tequila” in there. And strangely, Coryell’s “Let’s Straighten It Out” was the bluesiest song of the night. He told a story of how Jimi Hendrix picked him up as a baby when he was back stage somewhere with his father. He got a song out of that experience, “I Was In The Room With Jimi” and they finished with a “beach hit, “Too Drunk To Drive Drunk.”
We subscribe to a music streaming service but rarely seem to use it. Today we changed that dynamic. I called up some “Systema Solar,” a Columbian party band that we had read something about, then the recently remastered with extras version of Uncle Meat, the 1969 Mothers album that was on the turntable when Dave Mahoney’s stereo was stolen from the little house we lived in that year. I still have the empty album cover. It was intensely memorable because we tripping on LSD and it was no micro-dose. The band was at their peak, I gave up on them after it, and “Dog Breath, in the Year of the Plague” sounded as good as it did back then.
Paul Dodd, Andy Finn and Rick Switzer from the Holy Trinity bulletin
The two paragraphs below accompanied the photo above in a Holy Trinity church bulletin from the early sixties.
“An alter boy’s performance is not all glamour. Parading before the congregation is only part of it. These fellows, thanks most often to diligent parents, get up at (and sometimes before) the crack of dawn and are “in uniform” before 6:45.
Most of them like to receive Holy Communion when they serve. This presents a breakfast problem which they solve very well. After Mass we find them huddled (these mornings) around the new alter-boy-sacristy gas heater enjoying their own chow. In the photo below we see, left to right, Paul Dodd, Andrew Finn and Richard Switzer fueling up.”
Some people may not know that in order to receive Holy Communion back in the day you had to fast from food for three hours before receiving, an heroic sacrifice for growing kids and reason many in my skinny family fainted during the service. The nuns in the convent next door made the hosts and they would stock the shelves of the priest’s sacristy. If we were there before the priest had crawled out of bed we would dig into the bags of hosts (unconsecrated, of course) and swallow them by the handful. As you can tell from the photo, we had a good time. Our main objective became cracking the other alter boy up during Mass. Things like pronouncing the Latin responses so badly that that we would laugh uncontrollably.
Rick Switzer, on the right, lived in Union Hill and his family had a trampoline built into the ground in their yard. Rick sat in front of me. His mom packed a lunch with a macaroon cookie in it everyday. Rick didn’t like macaroons so he would give it to me, often before lunch time even rolled around. We spent a lot of time carving our erasers into tiny bulldozers and street sweeping vehicles. We’d push them across the desk collecting the eraser filings and running them out the side of the vehicles. Andy Finn lived in an old farmhouse. They had a big barn and field big enough to play baseball in. His father owned the Texaco gas station in the center of town and his family rented a cottage on the lake down near Hedges Nine Mile Point. The old folks sat around drinking beer while Andy and I caught carp, big, sluggish fish that lingered close to the shore. He now resides in Finn Land.
Arpad and Peggi mixing Margaret Explosion tracks 2017
Margaret Explosion has a few months off but we’re not just twirling our thumbs, we’ve recorded tracks for a new album and we’re mixing them now with the great Arpad. We spent a couple hours with his one tonight orchestrating the entry of an ambient guitar track, a Farfisa track, the original guitar track and then the bass and drums. The outtro is orchestrated as well but I will spare you the details. The song doesn’t have a name. We improvised all the basic tracks and then assembled files that resembled songs with judicious editing.
All this is 180 degrees from usual M O of live to two track mixes. In this one we pulled out the original upright bass and drum tracks and replaced both with a fretless bass, conga drum and shaker track and Peggi’s Farfisa. Bob added two additional guitar tracks and sent those to us via his Dropbox. The song has no name as yet but because we’ve been watching all the old Twilight Zones on Netflix we would like to dedicate it to Rod Serling.
It is fitting that I can’t remember the word I stumbled over this morning as a read an article aloud to Peggi. It was a common, multi syllable word but I tried saying it without immediately knowing how to pronounce it and it came out like someone just learning English.
We took a walk through the park and spotted ski tracks but no skiers. There was grass showing through the snow. We spotted more tracks from an ATV that looked like it was joy riding through the park, spitting dirt on the snow as it tore up the trails. Not the first time we’ve seen these tracks. The whole world’s going hillbilly.
We cut through the woods and came back via Center entrance, a dead-end that is about a mile long. We were just rounding the first turn and a car rolled down its windows and the driver “Hi. Bruce Lindsey. I haven’t seen you guys in a while.” We had no idea who he was but we played along just like we do at the Memory Center where my mom is. “Yeah. Why is that?” I said.
Matthew’s drone over marsh on Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
The news that the Flash, the reigning National Women’s Soccer League champions, have been sold and are leaving Rochester is totally depressing. I don’t want to talk about it.
Our nephew was in town with his family and we suggested he put his drone up above the marsh on Hoffman Road. He put it way up and grabbed some dramatic shots of our house, high resolution shots that included the city skycap in the distance.
We stopped in the Memorial Art Gallery to see the M. C. Escher show. His prints were so popular back in the day, especially the ones that inverted gravity, and they still look good today even without the smoke. Escher travelled to Spain in 1922 and 1936 and nothing had a greater impact on his work than the Alhambra in Granada where he was captivated by the interlocking Moorish designs of tile work on the floors and walls. I like this quote of his. “I know of no greater pleasure than to wander over hills and through vales, from village to village, feeling the effects of unspoiled nature and enjoying the unexpected and unlooked for…”
Island in Way Pond, 1000 Acre Swamp in Rochester, New York
Democrat & Chronicle contributor, Missy Rosenberry, had an interesting article in today’s paper about visiting 100 parks on the east side of Rochester in the last calendar year, many parks that we had never heard of. She’s posted a photo of a sign from every park on her blog so it isn’t the most interesting thing to look at but she has a brief description of each. We choose 1000 Acre Swamp in Penfield, a gorgeous place even in the middle of January. We walked every trail, most on boardwalks, a total of four miles and I froze my hands taking photos. We stopped at Schutt’s Cider Mill on the way back and picked up a bag of apples for applesauce, another for eating and a gallon of cider.
Our power went out this morning, a quick outage due to the wind. Peggi’s computer restarted on its own, mine needed to be rebooted. I was in the middle of editing songs for our new cd. Guitar tracks have been coming in fast and furiously, delivered by Dropbox. We took a walk after the blackout but stayed out of the woods because of the wind. There were some good sized branches in the street and the barricade on Zoo Road had been blown over. Peggi and I uprighted that. This snowman had a head that fell off a few days ago. It has completely melted body is in good form.
Foxy Divea licens plates at the Friendly Home in Rochester, New York
I’m guessing these plates belong to one of the caretakers at the Friendly Home and not one of the staff, residents or a visitor. You have to have a pretty good sense of humor or at least a healthy dose of self worth to work there. In a perfect world they would be paid a lot more. Peggi had altered a couple pairs of her pants and we stopped in her room to hang them up.
My mom wasn’t in but two other residents were, one asleep in my mom’s chair and the other sitting on my mom’s bed. My mom has been abstracting reality for some time now but the place itself is pretty darned abstract. My mom used to say, “You wouldn’t believe what goes on in here.” She hasn’t carried a purse in years but today she told us she needed a bigger one.
The old Dentico’s Italian Villa in Rochester, New York
585 Magazine has a feature in the new issue on solo dining that is a must read for singles. The piece is written by our friend, Martin, so we are biased but there are some good restaurant tips in there for couples as well.
I first met Martin when he was working for Midtown Records on the second floor of the mall. I loved that store because they had real urban crowd and the 45 racks were well stocked and up to the minute. Martin tells the story of when Lenny Silver brought in a truckload of Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” 12 inches and piled them next to the register in the front of the store. He sold them all. Martin had a long ponytail at the time and he was looking to join a band but he didn’t have an instrument. He bought something he called “the plank,” a homemade bass guitar, before our first practice as the HiTechs. We opened for Grandmaster Flash at the Haunt in Ithaca. They had a song called “White Lines” at the time. “White lines, don’t do it.” They were were doing it.
I’m glad to see Martin is back in the food critic business. He used to do quite a bit of that, anonymously, back in the Refrigerator days. Maybe he’ll comment on this post. I’ve probably mixed up some of the so-called facts. I did a painting many years ago of Martin as “The Eccentric.”
Martin Edic plays bass on Hi-Techs – Subscriptions Are My Prescription
“Fifty Years of Frank” fans filled the parking behind Sticky Lips on Culver Road. It was a celebration for Frank’s fiftieth birthday and his girlfriend, Deb, made sure all his friends were there. Jack Allen’s Big Band was on the bandstand when we arrived and Frank and Deb were out on the dance floor. They set the perfect party mood. Because this was a Frank affair a dancer, above, did her thing when the big band finished while Bob Henrie and the Goners set up behind the curtain, a surprise appearance by Rochester’s best band. It was a swell party.
