A lovely haul

Posted on October 5, 2022 by ksedinger

One thing I forgot to mention the other day (aside from citing a visit to a specific Barnes&Noble) is that a big part of our Ithaca vacation each year is a book binge. I save up for quite a while and then…well, here’s what happened this year. This is from three different bookstores: the afore-mentioned B&N in Pittsford, and Ithaca’s Odyssey Books and Autumn Leaves (the latter being a wonderful used bookstore).

And then what did I do on Monday? Why, I went to the library and checked out five books! Because, well, it’s what you do.

Time to do some reading before vacation ends….

 

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Posted on October 4, 2022 by ksedinger

I suppose we’ll just go ahead and make “Autumnal Classical Music” the theme of the month here, since I’ve already done “Spooky or Scary Classical Music” in previous years. There will probably be a little overlap, but I’ll try to avoid it.

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) was a Finnish composer, likely the most prominent Finnish composer since Jean Sibelius. He was a prolific composer, writing many orchestral works, operas, chamber works, and other pieces, often in a “neo-romantic” style that at times borders on pure mysticism in a way that reminds me of Alan Hovhaness.

Today’s work, “Autumn Gardens”, is a three-movement work for orchestra that reflects Rautavaara’s passion for gardening and how he saw gardening as a metaphor for composing. In his words:

“I have often compared composing to gardening. In both processes, one observes and controls organic growth rather than constructing or assembling existing components and elements. I would also like to think that my compositions are rather like ‘English gardens’, freely growing and organic, as opposed to those that are pruned to geometric precision and severity”.

“The title is derived from a passage in the libretto of my opera ‘The House of the Sun’: ‘…like a butterfly in the garden of black autumn…’ The motif to which these words are sung is used as the theme for the variations of the first movement. It’s texture grows and becomes denser by degrees. The second slow movement, rhythmically and dynamically placid, follows without a pause. The third movement starts off vivacious and brisk, but autumn is a time of leaves falling, of colours, and death, and so soon becomes a solemn dance, perhaps a sarabande in honour of the dying splendour of summer, or as T.S. Eliot said, ‘late roses filled with early snow’.”

The piece is stormy at times, tranquil at others, sometimes warm and sometimes quite cold. Not unlike autumn itself.

Here is “Autumn Gardens” by Einojuhani Rautavaara.

 

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“Well, I’m back,” he said.

Posted on October 3, 2022 by ksedinger

It’s Monday! And as promised, The Wife and I are back from our too-brief (aren’t they all?) weekend getaway. After the general shit-show that was Summer 2022 for us, we really needed a nice getaway. And that’s exactly what we had. The focus was the Ithaca Apple Festival, with a few stops here and there along the way.

I really love Ithaca. It’s by far my favorite place in New York State thus far in my life.

I always plan on taking a lot more photos in Ithaca than I do! It’s weird, really. I just get caught up in people-watching and looking at all the wonderful stuff that I don’t get my phone or my camera out much.

Now, Taughannock Falls? That’s where I take a bunch of pictures. Here are a few from this year.

Lots of raptors on the wing at the falls. I assume these are turkey vultures, which are amazing to watch in themselves in places with high cliffs, like here and at Letchworth.

A lovely couple! Hopefully next year we can walk the ravine trail below and finally see the falls from below. The Wife’s surgically-repaired ankle isn’t quite up to that yet, but we’ll get there!

We stop at Taughannock Falls every year. It just doesn’t seem right to visit Ithaca without stopping here. There’s something about all the streams and water and waterfalls and rocky gorges and deep verdant forests in this region that add up to it being my spiritual home.

Starting now, of course, there’s also a bittersweet quality to this place. We brought Cane here several times, while on our winter winery trip. I’d like to think that he had some hand in making this year’s visit almost perfect, with the beginnings of the autumnal crisp in the air and the perfect golden light.

We also stopped at a winery that had a great view! The wines weren’t to our taste, but the view sure was. (Nothing wrong with their wine; they specialize in dry wines, and we generally prefer the other end of that spectrum, being more into fruity and vibrant and sometimes outright sweet.)

Part of the magic of the Finger Lakes is that from atop the ridges you can see for miles and miles, and in many spots you can’t see the deep lake that lies between you and there.

On Sunday we set out for home, with a couple stops along the way, including the Barnes&Noble in Pittsford. This is the most beautiful B&N that I have ever seen:

What a store! An employee asked me at one point if I needed help finding anything, and I laughed and replied, “No, I need help NOT finding things!” Good thing I only go to this store once a year, really.

Of course, we ate very well on this little trip. We always plan our meals, partly because when we’re traveling we want to eat well, but also because The Wife is celiac which always requires some extra planning. Luckily we’ve found a bunch of places all throughout the region that have gluten-free offerings…though sadly, one of our favorites, is closing for good in a few weeks. Ithaca’s Waffle Frolic has been a beloved stop of ours for almost as long as we’ve been going to Ithaca at all, but the owners have decided to move on. We’ll find other options, but a special shout-out to all the times we stopped there for fried chicken and waffles! I remember when I first heard of that combo and thought it was the weirdest thing ever, until we tried it at Waffle Frolic and…suddenly, we got it.

I think this winter I’m going to have to figure out my own version of it.

I won’t subject you to pictures of all the food we had, but just a couple things:

That’s a Cuban sandwich from the Broadway Deli right here in Lancaster, NY. We love to start our road-trips east with a stop here for lunch, before we exit the 716. They have a wonderful sandwich menu, and yet somehow they’re never mentioned in local “Best Sandwich in Buffalo” rankings! They’ve got my vote, though.

We also love getting breakfast on Sunday morning at a place in Pittsford called Simply Crepes. (There are several locations around Greater Rochester, by the way.) They have a terrific menu, lots of GF options, and…well, if you’re looking for hearty-and-filling-and-not-exactly-healthy in your breakfast (and you absolutely should look for those things in a breakfast, maybe not all the time, but once in a while), you should look no farther. Here is my “Crepe Madame”, a crepe loaded with cheese and ham and smothered with white sauce and topped with a fried egg and served with two pools of bacon jam:

Ate this around 10am. I was not hungry again until dinner.

I really love places like Simply Crepes. There’s something about local breakfast joints (they’re not just a breakfast joint, to be fair), the kind of place where you go on a cold fall morning to cup your hands around the coffee mug before the food comes. It’s the kind of place that fills up first with kind-of bleary-eyed people mostly clad in soft flannels and their hair in messy buns, the kind of crowd that you can watch wake up as they drink their coffee and eat their breakfasts. The mood shifts later on, once the post-church “Sunday Best” people start showing up. The new mood then isn’t bad, per se, but it’s more formal and less patient.

Simply Crepes, Pittsford, NY.

Simply Crepes is located in Schoen Place in Pittsford, which is an old industry and trade center right on the Erie Canal. I imagine barges laden with goods used to arrive here, or empty barges arrived to be laden with goods; there’s a grain elevator down the street that has been converted to office space. The area has a terrific vibe that I think Buffalo is trying to capture with its inner harbor area.

Coffee in glass mugs.

I think that my favorite New York region, after the Finger Lakes and Buffalo Niagara, is the Erie Canal corridor and the old rail corridor that runs sometimes alongside the Canal and at other times ten to twenty miles south of it. All those old towns along the Canal and the once great railroads have such wonderful age and character to them, with a sense of weathered history connecting all of it. You can see plainly that in a lot of these towns the boom-times are long over, but you can also see that the people still there are working hard to keep their towns stubbornly alive. Yes, there are a lot of empty buildings in states of decay, but there are also lots of said old buildings with obvious work going on and “Coming Soon!” signs in the windows, announcing new businesses. There are a lot of people who are unwilling to give up on New York, and I salute them, each and every one.

Let’s see, what else? I got a little writing done this weekend, in the hotel room. Not much, but a little. As long as the words keep trickling, it’s fine.

Also, it was a great weekend for my new fashion concept of the last year or two, the “Renfest Cottagecore” thing I’ve been working on.

There were a lot of people in Ithaca wearing overalls, so I can honestly say that they’re finally back! Their banishment during the 2000s and quite a bit of the 10s made for a “lonely soldier assigned to a solitary remote outpost” feel for me during a lot of that period. I hope they stick around now that they’ve recovered from their banishment during that mostly-ugly era of form-fitting, show-every-curve period of fashion that was really pretty unpleasant.

At the bookstore. Maybe a future author pic!

The Universe actually gave me some direct confirmation of my fashion concept yesterday: an employee at Trader Joe’s complimented my shirt, and then, half an hour later, an employee at Barnes&Noble said, “I love your overalls!”

It’s the little things, isn’t it?

Anyway, we’re home now. I’m not back to work for a few days–I always make my autumn vacation a good long one–but we’re home. Back to a bit of normal life, some of which we actually missed. Which things would those be? Well….

“Well, I’m back,” indeed!

 

Posted in Fashion, Life, On Bib Overalls, On Food and Cooking, On Travels and Adventures | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

This is my LAST POST.

Posted on September 30, 2022 by ksedinger

For a few days, anyway! I’m on vacation and I’m taking a break. See you on Monday!

Meanwhile, here’s a sleeping dog.

 

 

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We interrupt our serious content for something silly.

Posted on September 29, 2022 by ksedinger

Someone called my attention to a quiz the other day: Can you recognize these classic TV stars with their faces covered in pie?

My results weren’t fantastic! A couple are obvious, but several were either process-of-elimination or pure guesswork. Still, it’s a fun exercise! And of course, I feel it necessary to offer up a few additions! Recognize any of these folks through pie-obscured features?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Answers in comments!

 

Posted in On Pies In Faces | Tagged | 2 Comments

Something for Thursday

Posted on September 29, 2022 by ksedinger

Back, at last, to Leonard Cohen, while it’s still September. This time, we’ll look at “Take This Waltz”.

I’ve only heard “Take This Waltz” either on its own or in the context of a Cohen Greatest Hits album, so I didn’t know that it is actually based on a poem by a Spanish poet or that it first appeared on an album comprised entirely of settings of this poet.

The album was Poetas en Nueva York, and it was a collaborative project in which a number of artists, Cohen among them, paid tribute to Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936). Lorca’s short life was likely a difficult one, as he grappled with (among other things) being gay in early 20th century Spain, and he was eventually murdered by the Nationalists.

One of his poems, “Little Viennese Waltz”–which Lorca wrote during a two-year stint in New York City–was translated, adapted, and set to music by none other than Leonard Cohen for the afore-mentioned album, and in this setting Lorca’s poem has achieved a kind of new immortality.

Here’s the poem:

In Vienna there are ten little girls,
a shoulder for death to cry on,
and a forest of dried pigeons.
There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.
There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death,
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris’s darkened garret,

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz.

In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the ehcoes play.
There is a death for piano
that paints little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh garlands of tears.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where the children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this ” I will always love you” waltz

In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with
a river’s head.
See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in a photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons

And here is Cohen’s song. Cohen’s voice lends a kind of surreal gravity to the music and the words, as his gravely baritone seems to rise from the earth, barely conforming to the waltz rhythm at all at first. There’s a dreamy earthiness to Cohen’s setting; I wonder how Lorca might have felt about it.

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A Grab Bag Post

Posted on September 28, 2022 by ksedinger

When one gets home from work to start a vacation, one puts on overalls and pours a Scotch. It’s just what one does.

I like Scotch. Scotchy Scotch Scotch. Here it goes down. Down into my belly.

::  Teevee show you should watch: The World According to Jeff Goldblum, on Disney Plus. It’s a series of light-hearted and fascinating mini-documentaries about mundane subjects, starring some actor named Jeff Goldblum.

::  Here’s a pretty good article about what there is to see and do in the Finger Lakes. It’s kind of a starter article, but as those go, it’s good.

::  An article about the Hardy Boys books and the ghostwriters who formed “Franklin W. Dixon”.

::  Seen locally: a large bobble-head of Bills quarterback Josh Allen. Which doesn’t look anything at all like Bills quarterback Josh Allen!

::  A recipe I might try: African sardine stew.

::  Finally, a photo I took of my street on a dark morning in early autumn, when the sky was gray and the streetlights weren’t off yet. One thing I like about the rise of LED technology is that the streetlights now cast old-school pools of light, like they used to in all the old noir films. I processed this photo through the Prisma app to get this effect.

 

 

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Posted on September 27, 2022 by ksedinger

Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one of the great stalwart works of all classical music.

It’s also a work that…I just don’t like very much. At all. I’ve never warmed to it. It honestly does nothing for me. For years I concluded that I didn’t like Vivaldi, because I have never managed to turn myself around on The Four Seasons. Luckily, I eventually realized that Vivaldi wrote a lot of music that’s just fine and it’s just the one piece I didn’t much care for; this happens. (See Ravel and “Bolero”, for example…and even my favorite composers have works that don’t thrill me much, such as Berlioz’s Te Deum, which is…OK, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.)

But here’s the thing about The Four Seasons: it’s a concept that surely didn’t occur only to Vivaldi in 1718, right? Surely some composer in the three hundred years since has tried to address this concept.

Enter Argentine composer Astor Piazzola (1921-1992), who was known for his skill at composing for the national dance of Argentina, the Tango. Thus his suite of seasonal-based works consists of a set of tangos, as opposed to a set of baroque concertos, a la Vivaldi. (Also, Piazzola’s suite wasn’t even composed intentionally as a suite but was rather four different works gathered together into a suite. Many works of art come from a messy creation story!)

Still, this suite makes for a fascinatingly energetic and refreshing listen as you let Piazzola guide you through his dance-version of the four seasons of his Southern Hemisphere home. Here is The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, by Astor Piazzola.

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Fifty-One

Posted on September 26, 2022 by ksedinger

I’m 51 today! Yay!

This means that I have spent one year alive for every point scored by the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game following the 1990 season. (They beat the Raiders 51-3.)

I have one year in for each point scored by both teams combined in Super Bowl XLVIII (Seattle 43, Denver 8).

My age is the uniform number of Dick Butkus, Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Bernie Williams, and former Buffalo Bills guard Jim Ritcher, who played 16 years in the NFL and was on all four Buffalo Super Bowl teams.

I am as old as Roger Moore was when he filmed Moonraker, and Martin Sheen when JFK, for which Sheen recorded the opening narration, came out.

I’m the age of Hector Berlioz when his great oratorio L’enfance du Christ was premiered.

I’m the age of Steven Spielberg the year his The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad were released.

And I’m two years shy of the age Kathryn Joosten was when, following her divorce, she decided to chuck it all and try acting.

I have completed three sets of 17 years.

I have lived longer than the age of eight US Presidents at the time they took office. (T. Roosevelt, JFK, Clinton, Grant, Obama, Pierce, Garfield, Polk.)

I am now half as old as Ambassador Sarek is in the Original Series Star Trek episode “Journey to Babel”.

Fifty-one sounds like a lot, so why do I feel like I’m still just getting started?

Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!!

 

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“Can you love someone you don’t remember?” (A book review)

Posted on September 25, 2022 by ksedinger

How can love persist in a world without memory? That’s the question posed by author Sarina Dahlan in her debut novel, Reset.

A while back I received an advance copy of a this novel, and I’m happy to report that it’s a very good book indeed, with a premise that is haunting and intriguing.

The setting is a human future, set an indeterminate number of years from now, in which humanity has been reduced to living in just four very large cities after a cataclysmic conflict leaves most of the world a scorched wasteland. In order to keep the seeds of such a conflict from sprouting and taking root again, a devilish new process has become the norm: every four years, everyone’s memory is wiped. Children are not raised by families but rather in institutions. All this was set in place by a single figure, in an attempt to quell the natural passions that are apparently the root causes of the conflict that nearly destroyed everything.

But there are some in this world who don’t want to forget, some who simply don’t forget at all. There are some who are tortured by their dreams and by a constant sense of deja vu, and some of these people are cursed to remember who they loved the last time around.

Reset asks questions like “What point is there in love if you’re going to be made to forget it all?” These are hard questions, and it leads to a memorable and haunting read that doesn’t offer a series of pat answers at its end. The novel explores ideas of memory and its permanence; it’s hard to separate the idea of Reset‘s “tabula rasa” (the process by which all memories are erased every four years), a science-fictional concept, and the very real-world problems posed by neurological conditions that rob people of their memories in a slow and inexorable process.

Dahlan is very focused here on love and the question of how it can endure when so much of our concept of love is bound up in memory. Are we simply going to move from one partner to another the next time around? Is what we feel actually love, if it’s so easily removed like a stone is removed from one’s shoe? Dahlan keeps the focus on the love story and the small cast of characters centrally involved within it, which is probably a wise choice. Some of the standard dystopia-story tropes are here, like the secret society of people who want to defeat the dystopian regime and restore something of the earlier world; at times the novel has chase scenes that put me in mind of Logan’s Run and THX-1138. But those aren’t the focus of the book; the main focus is, in fact, on lead character Aris and her confrontation of the idea that “tabula rasa”, which she has always supported because it’s simply what she knows, might have a dark underbelly to it.

Reset walks a fine line, in spinning a dystopian story in which the people are actually not slogging through grim lives of despair in wrecked cityscapes of bleak filth. The world of Reset is actually appealing in some ways, though I am not always clear on how everything works in this world. It seems to me that an essential part of a functioning society is continuity, and even if many of the underlying mechanistic jobs of society are handled in automated or robot fashion, the erasing of all memories every four years would damage that very continuity. I found the world-building of Reset not entirely convincing, but then…that’s not really the kind of tale Dahlan is trying to tell, in the first place. Her focus is on just a few characters and how they live and confront the issues posed by the very world they inhabit. If you’re looking for the kind of dystopia story in which the heroes lead a revolution against the powerful (or The Machine), this isn’t that book. If you’re looking for a solid love story set within the framework of a cold and rather heartless dystopia, Reset may well be your cup of tea.

 

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