MUSIC FESTIVAL IN JAMESTOWN

Crazy gals

Saturday night, we went with the Mc Clure's to downtown Jamestown, a night of music to benefit the Infinity program, which helps and encourages teens to get involved in music.  For ten bucks, you could walk around the downtown and stop into any of the venues, which had music playing, a total of 13 I think.   We ended up going to about six different places and really enjoyed ourselves, especially in a bar called Mojo's, which had a really good rock band called SmackDab,  I think.  And their final number was Psycho Killer, from the Talking Heads, one of our favorites.  We didn't dance, just listened and swayed to the killer sounds.  Some of the groups were teens, also fun to watch, and we got to get inside some of the establishments we had not been in before, like the Town Club.  They even had a band inside of a skate board park, which was pretty groovy.  We ended up eating at Taco Hut, our favorite Mexican restaurant, and as usual, the food was reasonable and plentiful.  There were not crowds of people in the streets, but most of the venues were full.  It was well worth the money and it felt good to go downtown and enjoy ourselves, something we have not really ever done.  It seemed safe, at least where we were and I assume it's that way most of the time.

The Pub

Today was a beautiful day, sunny and surprisingly warm, in the high 70's.  I am back in my gravel mode, picked up four bushels as well as some compost, supposedly, for free, from the rotting of weeds from the lake, at least I think that's what it is.  Evie worked in the garden, the spread my gravel, then we spent the afternoon reading on the dock and in the house. Evie finished THE KITCHEN DAUGHTER, liked it with some reservations about the ghosts reappearing throughout the text.

Town Club

Skate Board Venue

Mo Jo's

SmackDab at Mojo's

Biff

9/11 BRIEFLY REMEMBERED

Those Who Died on 9/11

A few memories from that day ten years ago.  I was teaching a class, in the basement of Ellsworth Hall, when I noticed one of my colleagues was rolling a TV into the hall outside my classroom, turning it on, and people were gathering around it watching.  I opened my classroom door, a bit piqued at the interruption, when I was told a plane had hit one of the twin towers.

I remember rushing home after class, turning on the TV, as what was happening began to sink in to my hard skull.  At first, I thought it was a small plane but clearly, it was either or terrorist attack or we were at war.  I couldn't believe it when one of the towers collapsed; then, the other.

I finally got in touch with Evie, who was in Colorado with Jill, as Hayden had just born.  They were as frightened as I, especially Jill, so at least Evie was there to give comfort, with not only the new baby but also fear of what this might mean for the Army and especially Drew.  Evie flew home a few days later, on an almost empty plane.

I remember the school day continuing on as normal, with an assembly about 11:00, to discuss with the students what had happened, as far as we could tell, and our greatest worry were the students who could not get in touch with their parents.  Fortunately, none were lost.

After this, the day was a blur, as we went to practices, taught our classes, and not much seemed to have changed in our lives though everything changed, unbeknowest to us.

An appropriate poem from The Writer's Almanac today, by Stephen Dunn, one of my favorite poets:

"Grudges"
Easy for almost anything to occur.
Even if we've scraped the sky, we can be rubble.
For years those men felt one way, acted another.

Ground Zero, is it possible to get lower?
Now we had a new definition of the personal,
knew almost anything could occur.

It just takes a little training, to blur
A motive, lie low while planning the terrible,
Get good at acting one way, feeling another.

Yet who among us doesn't harbor
A grudge or secret? So much isn't erasable;
It follows that almost anything can occur,

Like men ascending into the democracy of air
Without intending to land, the useful veil
Of having said one thing, meaning another.

Before you know it something's over.
Suddenly someone's missing at the table.
It's easy (I know it) for anything to occur
When men feel one way, act another.

Names on 9/11 Memorial Pool at Ground Zero

MORE CAR STUFF TODAY

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Another gray day though it may clear up later.  As you can see in the above picture, Evie has spent the past couple of days slow roasting a bushel of tomatoes, then freezing them, to be pulled out during the winter whenever we need some tasty tomatoes.  They take a couple of hours a batch, so it is time consuming but ultimately worth it as they are so tasty.

I spent the morning getting the wheels aligned, radiator flushed, and sitting in Starbucks reading, waiting for my car.  I guess this is money well spent, especially if I don't want to buy a new car in the near future, which I don't.  Now both cars have new sets of tires, are ready for winter I hope.

Mike Cassell stopped over last night, after his golf tournament, and was in a good mood as he shot a 70, finishing 7th in a field of close to a hundred.  Barb and he came in separate cars, so she headed home to be with their son, and Mike stopped and stayed for dinner, pork tenderloin and a mashed potato and cabbage and cheese casserole, yum.  He stayed until about 8:00 then head home.

Tonight we go to downtown Jamestown with Ron and Linda, to a Bash of the Bands; for ten bucks, you get to go around to various venues and hear bands play, probably until midnight even though it starts at 6:00.  It will be interesting to see what kind of a crowd it attracts, whether its fairly homogenous, mostly the underclass of Jamestown, or young and old alike, from all over the area.  We'll have to see.  After we have enough music, we will go out somewhere for dinner, perhaps Taco Hut, Evie's favorite downtown restaurant.

APACHETA (CAIRN) BUILDING AND OBAMA REDUX

Cairn West

As you can see, I have begun my experiment with cairns ( apacheta in South America), have put together two, placing them on either side of the road as you enter our property.

Apachetas( [ah-pah-chay-tah]) are best known in Latin America and have been a part of the Inca culture since the beginning of civilization.  However, the practice of building apachetas is also widespread among native peoples of southwestern and northern North Americaaccording to Stephen C. Jett in his paper “Cairn Trail Shrines in Middle and South America”.  To a lesser degree, apachetas are also found in the Aztec and Mayan cultures.

Apecheta were built by Incas as they climbed the trail up the Andean mountain passes.
  
They picked up a small stone and carried it for a short distance to the summit.  They then added the stone to an existing apacheta located along the trail or left the stone as the beginning of a new apacheta.  Travelers then said a prayer to the gods for luck and protection during their travels and for the elimination of travel fatigue. If no suitable stone was available, travelers would add other objects such as sea shells or coca leaves.  In addition to being a source of spiritual power, apachetas also served as trail markers for the rugged mountain terrain.

The word apacheta means “the source where the flow begins” and refers to either the spiritual flow or the flow of the mighty Amazon River, the source of sustenance for many Inca people.  In fact, in 2008 a stream of the Apacheta River in the Arequiparegion of southern Peru was confirmed by Peruvian geologists and scientists as the beginning of the Amazon River.

As I mentioned, I scooped about 29 rocks from a fairly dry creek the other day, gathered them around the two areas, and began building two towers.  It's fun to play around with them, see how high they can go, how various shapes create interesting shapes.  One of them fell over yesterday, so I rebuilt it, even higher.  I will let them go for a day or two before I rework them, see if I can make them more sturdy and interesting.  It will be interesting to see how they weather in winter, even a heavy rain storm.  I have yet to put any in Evie's garden but I think they would look neat.  We'll see.

Cairn East

Perhaps there is hope, at least, I feel that way, usually, after being inspired by Obama's speeches  but when it's all over, the reality sets in, the Republican intransigence sets in, and I get discouraged again.  It's hard to be objective about the looks on the faces of the right as Obama spoke, a humorless bunch, ready to pounce at almost anything that smacks of helping the unemployed, the poor, the needy, but ready to applaud anytime tax breaks are mentioned.  I just don't get them, nor the people who seem to support them.  They seem so mean, so un christian, intolerant, and inflexible in their beliefs though I know I am being unfair.   There are lots of Republicans who I like, just their beliefs I find incomprehensible.  Who isn't for tax relief?  Everyone, of course, but when you have a huge deficit, a recession on the brink, you need to do something and government has to be involved.  A telling observation from the other night's Republican debate.  When it was mentioned that Rick Perry had been governor during 234 executions, the audience applauded, perhaps the loudest of the night.  This tells me everything about many of the followers...how can you applaud an execution.


We went and saw the movie THE DEBT yesterday afternoon; it sounded like the right thing to do on a cloudy, gray day.  Of course, the sun came out about an hour before we left, so we almost didn't go.  Perhaps we shouldn't have as it was average at best.  It took quite awhile to fit the pieces together, as it involves flashbacks, actions happening in the present that are only explained by the flashbacks.  And though Helen Mirren seems to be on every poster, she's in the film less than a third of the flick, as she's played by someone else as a young woman.  I did not hate it...it involves Israelis seeking to kidnap and bring to trial a Nazi doctor (now living in East Berlin in the 1960's) responsible for many experiments on the Jews during the war.  How they arrange the kidnapping and its consequences are the major conflicts of the film.

A Walk in Dobbins Woods

Birthday Boy

Another cloudy morning, not a touch of blue, just gray lake, gray sky, and an easterly wind and despite the clouds and the weather report, we have had no rain in two days, just the clouds.  Last evening, we could see the rain and mist on the Bemus hills but we were spared the rain, though we need it.  The weekends supposed to be better, perhaps a bit warmer, as today, again, will be in the 60's, great weather for a walk, working out side, or gathering more rocks for my cairns.

We walked in Dobbin Woods the other day, a 60 plus acre preserve about ten minutes from our house.  We enjoy it most in the winter, with its cathedral like pines draped in snow but we decided to see what it was like in the summer.  To our surprise, we seemed to have been the first people to walk it in a couple of weeks, as some of the trails seemed grown over with grasses and weeds.  Still, it was a beautiful morning to walk, despite the clouds, and we enjoyed the quiet and solitude.  Because it's mostly wooded, with various types of trees, there was hardly any color, just various shades of green leaves, bushes, and ground covers.  As you can see, we did find a bit of color, some wild mushrooms and a tiny salamander or chameleon, about two inches in length.  When we tried to take its photo, it would scurry, try to hide, and did not change colors to match the environment, so it was a salamander or lizard.  The walk takes about 45 minutes, and is a nice change from the CI or Lakeside Drive in Bemus.

Mushrooms

Lizard or salamander?

I still am at sixes and sevens, not quite yet at home with all this leisure, days filled with nothing that we have to do.  It's like a hangover from a very busy four weeks; suddenly, your life seems empty, no kids, grandchildren, or friends, and you have to get used to that all over again, until it becomes routine.  It's time like this that we have to be careful as the remedy for  this ennui is often spending money, on almost anything to fill the void.  I can already see me wanting to head towards the Mall....will I resist this or give in?

The Cassells may stop by tomorrow after his golf tourney; we decided against going to it because of the weather around here would have made watching the match difficult.

More Clouds, Rain, Wind

Birthday dinner at Nic L Inn

It's been fall like the last couple of days, lots of gray skies, but little rain other than Sunday night when we got almost an inch.  It's going to stay in the 60's most of the day, in fact, the week or so it sounds.  Rain is forecast for today and tomorrow.  We are thinking of heading up to Niagara Falls Country Club tomorrow, weather permitting, as Mike Cassell, our good friend from Hudson, is playing his second round in the Senior Porter Cup.  We went up around this time last year and it's a beautiful spot, the club's  veranda overlooks the Niagara River.  It won't be much fun, however, if it rains.

Last night, Ron and Linda took us out to dinner to the Nic L Inn in South Valley, just out side of Frewsburg.  Evie and I had been there three or four times but not in the past ten or fifteen years, and Ron and Linda had never been there.  We all loved it, our meals, the ambiance, the good conversation, the ride through this amazing, almost European looking valley.  We all had different dishes, each excellent, so it was a really good night.  We will be sure to go back, especially in the fall, with the colors, and will try to eat in the bar, which has a great fire place.  It's nice to find a restaurant that seems worth paying a bit more for a dinner though I  didn't pay!  For my birthday,they gave me an apron, for my bread making, as well as a few cotton towels, also for storing my bread during its rise.  Cool gifts, as usual.

We kind of vegged out yesterday, after our walk in the morning but it felt good.  Evie's major effort was to continue roasting and freezing tomatoes...I worked on my cairn, gathering rocks but I think it will be always a work in progress.  I will take a picture and put it on tomorrow.

Today, we are more energetic, as Evie may do some painting, of our new shelves, me sanding, and working outside by putting in some of our new plants.  We still need a good overall plan for our yard as each year we end up moving a plant that we had planted the year before.  I suppose that's normal.

I just finished cutting the lawn before the afternoon rains, and Evie's been reorganizing our bathroom closets, a chore no doubt.  We are going for a walk in the neighborhood, down along the lake, up to the new house towards Giarizzo's, then through the woods to the main road.  Let's hope it doesn't rain.

We just finished our walk, ate lunch, salad and fresh corn, read some, watched Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, then headed off to a nearby creek to pick up some more stones.  I came back with about twenty of them, various shapes, some I could hardly pick up.  Fortunately, I did not hurt my back but now I have an array of shapes so I can continue to experiment with my cairns.  I put up a second but neither have involved much thought or aesthetics, if there is such a thing.  

Sixty Eight!

More Plants

It's that time a year when we drive by a nursery, see a 50% off everything sign, stop and buy some perennials, bushes, whatever, like most shoppers, unable to pass by a sale.  This time it was a sign by the nursery across the street from the CI.  It had a huge sign trumpeting an auction of all nursery stock.  How could we pass this up.  We ended up spending about a half hour there, talking with the elderly, stick figure owner, as he took us around, quoting 'deal' prices on various plants we liked.  We ended up with a couple of pink fall anemones, three hydrangeas, lime and pink, and some more Baptista, one of my favorites.  Now we have to figure out where to put them, the problem with spontaneous buying of anything.  They will fit in somewhere, that's for sure, but at this point, we don't know where.

This morning is a quintessential fall day, though it's still early September, the gray sky, lots of puffy clouds, a strong wind, the flag flapping, and cool, 53 when I got up at 7:00.  I am not sure of our agenda for today, as we don't have anything we have to do, perhaps plant a few bushes, maybe gather some more stones, as I have decided to build a couple of cairns to welcome guests to our house.  I don't know where this obsession to with rocks/stones came from, perhaps the cairns I saw in Peru eight years ago although they were not called cairns.  There's something about the shape of stones, one balanced on another, that I enjoy.