Not sure why this popped into my head, but it’s always worth revisiting Mr. Martin’s thoughts about art and commercialism.
Something for Thursday
Tina
Damn.
I never knew that Tina Turner was just a few months younger than my father. She had a life full of triumphs and enormous difficulties, and she leaves an enormous legacy of music. I salute her.
(image: via)
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Tone Poem Tuesday
Notes from North of the Border: A Travelogue (days two and three)
A couple of weeks ago The Wife and I enjoyed a weekend getaway to Toronto! I’ve already documented Day One; now here’s a brief rundown on Days Two and Three. (By ‘brief’ I mean…not very brief.)
After the difficulties we encountered in getting around Toronto on foot on Saturday, I reworked our plans slightly for Sunday, eschewing the GO Train to Union Station and a subsequent jaunt to the subway for simply driving a bit farther from our hotel to an actual subway station near the Yorkdale Mall, which we rode into downtown proper, thus cutting out one entire mode of transport and need to walk from one station to another entirely. Our plan here was to go to a taco joint we’d read about for lunch, which had a location very near one of the TTC subway stops, and then to proceed to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which was a few blocks away. This we’d be able to reach using transport, if necessary, via Toronto’s street-cars.
Well, here was our first hiccup (and really, thankfully, our only hiccup of the day): it turned out that the taco joint we had planned to visit is in the food court of a really big downtown Toronto hospital, and the hospital entrance that’s on the street we were on was actually closed for construction, so we’d have to walk all the way around the hospital to the other entrance to get in. At this point, The Wife was still really tender from the overly-strenuous walking of the day before, so we bailed on that plan…which is how we ended up in the downtown of one of the world’s great cities, eating lunch at a Chipotle.
Sometimes, that whole “Any port in a storm” thing is very, very real, folks.
After that, though, everything went very well. We walked down to the streetcar stop, boarded, and rode it the five blocks or so to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which turned out to be a wonderful museum just packed with amazing art. Here are just a few samples:
Not only did we love the art, but it was also more comfortable for The Wife, as I actually rented a wheelchair for her to use (rented is the wrong word since they’re free, come to think of it) for the duration of our time there. Plus, after the hectic packed-with-children atmosphere of the Ripley’s Aquarium the day before, it was lovely to roam the halls of a more quiet art museum. There were lots of people there, but it wasn’t noisy. Art museums are a delight, once you get to the point in life where you know how to enjoy them.
After the museum, we took the streetcar another few blocks down the street to a restaurant called Almond Butterfly Bistro, which is (a) gluten-free and (b) delicious. It’s a lovely little place and we had a great time there.
By the way, this particular restaurant is a good example of something I noticed in several places we visited on this trip: there were restrooms for patrons, but none of them were gendered. There were simply several separate washrooms, and that was it. No “men’s room”, no “ladies room”, just washrooms. This seems to me one of the more obvious ways that we should be dealing with the whole folderol about gender in public places: simply stop making it an issue that doesn’t need to be, in any way. Obviously this would be a big shift for lots of existing places, but I’m thinking more and more places should adopt this approach moving forward. Our current model of “a big room with stalls” labeled by gender seems increasingly out of step, to me.
Oh, what did we have? She had fish-and-chips, I had a grilled cheese. Both were terrific.
After dinner it was back to the hotel to use the pool and relax; and then the next day it was Monday morning and time to start heading for home.
On Monday, we rose and checked out of the hotel and headed for home…with a few stops first, like a big shopping mall with a big bookstore and a really nice anime-and-comics store and a few other places for The Wife, where among other things, I picked up books and a few gifts:
That Funko Pop of Daryl from Letterkenny was my gift for The Wife on this trip. I usually default to jewelry, but I never really saw anything that caught my eye. As we are both Letterkenny fans, this is perfect for her!
Note that yes, he’s holding a f*ckin’ Puppers.
We also stopped at a grocery store, because we wanted to see what a good Canadian grocery store is like. It was a Loblaw’s, and we did buy some stuff, mostly some snack items that are hard to find in the US.
After the grocery store, we started for home, driving westward down the QEW (that’s the Queen Elizabeth Way, the main expressway connecting the cities of the Golden Horseshoe, as the Canadian region around the western end of Lake Ontario is often called). We stopped for lunch at a taco joint in Burlington, Ontario, and then we stopped at a winery near Niagara-on-the-Lake (a charming old-timey village) where we picked up a few more souvenirs, before finally heading for the Lewiston Bridge to the United States.
The winery was a bit more pretentious than we are generally used to; the Finger Lakes wineries we tend to visit are usually more laid-back places (though they take their wines seriously!). This place really played up its “connoisseur” air, with our server discussing the finer points of the glassware and the styling of the labels on the bottles. I don’t want to make it sound like this was uninteresting and unwelcome, though! I actually found the idea of glasses for sparkling wine, with nucleation points for bubbles actually etched into the bottom of the bowl, pretty interesting. We have already consumed the one bottle of sparkling wine I bought from there, and it’s on my list to stop and pick up more when I can.
Niagara-on-the-Lake feels a bit curated, if that makes sense; the town feels a bit hand-crafted to be touristy and quaint. But in all honesty, I have zero problem with that. It was a nice place to wind down our Canadian weekend.
Returning to the US made me sad. I can’t lie here: it’s not just that the trip is ending and you know it’s over once you’re past customs and you’re measuring in miles again. In all honestly, I always find that Buffalo feels rather small and provincial after a trip to Toronto, which is, after all, the fourth-largest city in North America by population.
We’re going back, someday. A hell of a lot sooner than twelve years.
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Scenes from amongst the lilacs (and a bit of Rachmaninoff!)
The warm months of the year, for us, tend to be bookended by two specific festivals: the Rochester Lilac Festival in May, and the Ithaca Applefest in October. Lots of stuff happens in between, but those are the markers of “outdoor stuff” season. So, yesterday we were off for the Lilac Festival!
Which was, this year, well…we’ve been enjoying gorgeous weather recently. Today is sunny and wonderful. The days leading up to yesterday were also mostly pleasant and nice. But yesterday itself was…a soggy rainfest that started before we even left for the day. Here I am, staring existentially out the back window at the gray rains. (More specifically, I’m waiting for my water to boil for coffee.)
We got to the Festival and tracked down our favorite food truck for poutine, which we were lucky enough to eat out of the rain in a big food tent. So that was nice. Poutine is always lovely.
But then we were out into the rain to try to see some of the lilacs and the various trees in Rochester’s Highland Park.
We didn’t walk around nearly as much as we usually do, because it was raining. I had an umbrella, but it’s on the small side, and The Wife wore a coat that she believed to be waterproof. (This turned out to be incorrect, so we stopped into a tie-dye clothing vendor at the Festival’s art sale and bought her a shirt just so she’d have something dry to change into. Some years, the anniversary gifts aren’t as romantic as others, I must admit.) I stayed mostly dry, thanks to my umbrella, but I have determined that I need a larger umbrella, probably one of those gigantic ones that some folks carry around. I concluded this because it turns out that the sleeves of a poofy shirt can actually exceed the coverage provided by your small umbrella, with dampening results:
Not one but two wet sleeves. Oh well, live and learn. Onto the shopping list a bigger umbrella goes.
Later on we went to The Chicken Coop in Webster, NY for fried chicken. We love this place and it’s a favorite destination of ours now when we’re passing through that particular part of town.
So, the day was something of a mixed bag, alas.
Up in the title to this post, I mention Rachmaninoff. There is a tie-in here: specifically the lilac flower. In 1902 Rachmaninoff wrote a song cycle, 12 Romances, one of which is a setting of a poem about lilacs. From this sprang an odd gesture of appreciation from one of the composer’s fans, as described here by Bertensson and Leyda in Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music:
It was about the time of his return from America that the mysterious activities of the “white lilacs lady” began. Rachmaninoff could give no concert or recital without a bouquet of white lilacs among the floral tributes. Bouquets of white lilacs were also delivered on every birthday, every saint’s day; and if he happened to be abroad on those dates, the white lilacs would just as surely arrive at his hotel or the compartment of his train. The notes accompanying this tribute were always brief and tender, congratulating him on his birthday or wishing him success in the concert, and the only signature was the Russian initials of “White Lilacs”; the song “Lilacs” in Op. 21 appears to have inspired this extraordinary labor of love. Rachmaninoff appreciated the lady’s incognito as deeply as the simple, warm words of her notes, though sometimes the gift was a little flamboyant–especially when the everlasting white lilacs arrived on schedule in the depth of winter. Not only did bouquets, wreathes, and other ornamental florist’s designs arrive with these flowers but the gift took other forms, such as an ebony conductor’s baton engraved with a design of white lilacs and Rachmaninoff’s initials. The giver’s identity remained hidden from the composer and all members of his family.
Fortunately, the mystery did not remain so. From the footnote in Bertensson and Leyda:
It was not until 1918, after the Rachmaninoffs had gone abroad, that “White Lilacs” was identified. Sophia Satina [the composer’s niece] tells of this: “As I walked to my laboratory one day I heard a horse galloping behind me: I turned and saw a cabman whipping the horse frantically, with an elderly woman standing in the lurching cab, clinging to him with one hand and waving to me with the other. When they came up to me, this woman, breathless and agitated, said, ‘Thank God! How happy I am to find you! I am White Lilacs–my name is Rousseau.–Where is Rachmaninoff? Is he alive?’ She was overjoyed to hear that he was well and working abroad. When Sergei Vasilyevich heard about Mme. Rousseau, he offered to help her to leave Russia, but she preferred to stay in Moscow with her daughter.”
Apparently when it became clear to Mme. Rousseau that Rachmaninoff would not be returning to Russia at all, in the wake of the Revolution, she ceased the gifts of lilacs. I do not know what became of her after this, but I do wonder if Rachmaninoff missed the constant presence of white lilacs in his later life…perhaps not as a reminder of a specific admirer, but as one more way his beloved Russia of old was gone forever.
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Sadly, we had no canoli….
Tonight for dinner, I made a dish called “Godfather Pasta”.
It’s a dish of pasta with a cheesy garlicy sauce, also stirred in with cured Italian meats, banana peppers, roasted red peppers, and olives. It’s freakishly delicious.
After we ate, I ventured next door to sit with my father for a while. When I got over there, Wheel of Fortune had just started, and the first puzzle was:
“Make an offer you can’t refuse.”
I like it when the world synchronizes.
(If you’re curious as to how to make Godfather Pasta, I used this recipe in my Instant Pot. I modified the recipe to add a small can of sliced olives, and a second pile of banana peppers in addition to the ones that actually cook in the pot with the pasta.)
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Something for Thursday
Speaking of our anniversary yesterday, this song reminds me of…us. So many of our best memories involve getting in a car and going…someplace, and this song captures that feeling perfectly for me.
I wanna take you somewhereIt’s all I know to doI need to feel your freedom,Come on darling, say you will goNorth to the lights to watch the snow fallEast to the city, we can see it allSouth to the ocean, west to the mountainsIt doesn’t matter where we goAs long as we’re together, what we don’t knowWon’t stop us now, I’ll take you anywhere but here!
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Twenty-six
The Wife and I were married twenty-six years ago today.
The years keep presenting new challenges, on and on and on…but they also keep producing memories, more than a few of which are happy ones.
I used to note that I could imagine a life without her, but it was worse in every way. Now, in what I’m taking as a blessing, that part of my strong imagination is losing its power…or it’s simply saying, “I don’t want to imagine this.” Either way…I’m fine with only imagining this life, with her.
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Tone Poem Tuesday
It’s a tone poem by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, a Russian composer whose music has fallen into unfortunate and unfair obscurity over the years since his life. This tone poem is notable for featuring a soprano voice in addition to the orchestra, and it’s a rich tone painting of…something. In all honesty, I have found scant information about this piece so far. I actually sometimes like it when that happens because it means I can attend on the music alone, without any preconceived notions of what it is about or what it means….