Tone Poem Tuesday

Posted on October 11, 2022 by ksedinger

Continuing a series of autumnal or autumnally-inspired works, we have quite an avant-garde work today. It’s amazing how new and striking this piece sounds in my ears, given that it is over 55 years old, having been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967.

Toru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer who was very modern in his sound, and who incorporated many 20th century compositional techniques in addition to his Japanese aesthetic. Takemitsu also evolved greatly throughout his highly prolific career. I’ve only heard a small portion of Takemitsu’s work, never enough, for he was a fascinating musical voice.

November Steps is a work for traditional Japanese instruments and full orchestra. At this point in his career Takemitsu had not done much for traditional Japanese instruments, finding in such music stark reminders of the horror of World War II. He eventually relaxed this stance, but at first–with November Steps being one of the very first such works by him–he was convinced that the Japanese and the Western musical traditions were too starkly opposed to be truly integrated. Hence his juxtaposition of the Japanese and the Western in the pages of November Steps.

November Steps is not a warm work, but it is an introspective one suggestive of the kinds of cold winds that can slice through the November skies which are more gray than blue, once all but the most stubborn of the leaves have fallen and all that remains is the coming of the snow. It is also not a work where Western formalism is taken into account much at all. Takemitsu composes a kind of stream-of-consciousness work here, a sequence of moods more than a formal examination of musical ideas.

Here is November Steps by Toru Takemitsu.

 

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Indigenous People’s Day

Posted on October 10, 2022 by ksedinger

Mine is one of the last generations, I suppose, that was taught all the happy American mythology about Christopher Columbus and how he, knowing that the Earth was round whilst everyone else thought it as flat, thought to sail all the way around, and so doing discovered a land of gold and honey that no one knew about.

“Was anybody here already?” one of my classmates or I must have asked.

“Oh yes, the Indians were here. And there was a bit of fighting here and there but there weren’t many of them and they eventually welcomed us and helped the pilgrims.”

“But,” I wish one of my classmates or I had asked, “if they were so nice and welcoming then, why were they bad guys later that we had to kill and now we play ‘Cowboys and Indians’ at recess?”

Anyway.

Here is a poem by Denise Levertov. It’s an English translation of a Spanish poem, that is itself a translation of a Toltec poem that predates the arrival of Columbus. We aren’t sure how many people lived in the Americas prior to 1492, but estimates tend to range in the tens of millions…and by a hundred years later, colonization from Europe had gutted that number down to a small fraction of what it had been before.

Millions.

Vibrant cultures with trade and complex art and architectures and traditions…wiped out.

The poem:

THE ARTIST

The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist: capable, practicing, skillful;
maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.

The true artist: draws out all from his heart,
works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity,
works like a true Toltec, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents;
arranges materials, adorns them, makes them adjust.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things,
works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.

From World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time.

 

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All aboard!

Posted on October 9, 2022 by ksedinger

Today we took a fall train ride. There’s a train that does scenic rides out of the depot in Hamburg, NY. We did this a year ago and greatly enjoyed it, so we did it again today. It’s an out-and-back ride, covering maybe twenty miles out and twenty back, or maybe less; the train slows way down when going over two trestles that cross the two branches of Eighteen Mile Creek, mainly so people on board can go Ooooh and Aaaaah and take pictures.

First, when going on a train ride, one dresses appropriately. Bring on the hickory stripes!

It was also cool out, hence the scarf. First wearing of a scarf this season!

Also, a couple of the workers on the train complimented my outfit. So that’s two weekends in a row getting compliments on my overalls. Yay! (I really love the hickory stripe pattern, if you couldn’t tell.)

And now, photos. All of these were taken on the return trip, when I got the window seat; The Wife had the window on the way out. WNY is putting on a lovely show so far this fall, I must admit. The stream is Eighteen Mile Creek, which actually has two branches that meet in a confluence a mile or so downstream of each place where the train crosses. The creek is named by virtue of its mouth lying eighteen miles downshore from the beginning of the Niagara River.

I’m told there is lots of good hiking along Eighteen Mile Creek. Cane and I never made it down here. Alas….

If you want to see all of the photos from the ride, plus a video I culled together, it’s all in a Flickr album, here.

Now, photos:

Today was the kind of day when the sun came and went and the clouds moved so quickly you could see their shadows rolling across the fields.

This is just somebody’s yard, but they have three giant willow trees. I love willows. I wonder how the one in front of our old house is doing….

Lots of old railroad detritus on the sidings by the depot.

 

 

Posted in On Buffalo and The 716, Photographic Documentation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Time for a Grab Bag!!!

Posted on October 8, 2022 by ksedinger

Yup, I’ve got a bunch of open tabs, so time to clear out some stuff!

::  Some good discussion (prompted by me, yay!) over on Roger’s site about (among other things) baseball, home runs, PEDs, “real” records, the degree to which people’s distaste for Barry Bonds is racism versus Bonds being a generally unpleasant guy, and more!

::  One of the original Buffalo Bloggers from way back when is still going strong at All Things Jennifer.

::  Caturday, via Cal, who loves cat-based humor.

::  Two from The Atlantic. First, Hollywood Learned All the Wrong Lessons From Avatar. I particularly like this observation:

I’ve always been amused at the ironic notion that Avatar had no cultural impact because nobody can name its main character; maybe that’s because the story hasn’t been crammed down viewers’ throats year after year since its release.

That’s a pretty good observation, isn’t it? The “Name one of the characters!” notion interests because, well, isn’t that true of a lot of big singular hits? I very much doubt if, outside of major franchises driven by lots of sequels, people remember the names of major characters much at all. And really, not even then. Sure, the average movie-goer can name some, if not most, of the superheroes on display in all the MCU movies, but how many can you then name by their real (i.e., not their superhero monikers) names? “What’s Iron Man’s name?” Everybody is going to know “Tony Stark”. But: “What’s the name of the bad guy in Iron Man 2?” “Uhhhhh….”

“Can you even name these characters?” is really absurd, when you come to think of it. I can name only one half of the main couple in Brokeback Mountain, but that doesn’t argue against that film’s impact.

The Wife and I rewatched Avatar a few months ago. I found it as involving and engrossing as I did back in 2009; it creates a fascinating world full of, yes, interesting characters. And it remains as visually powerful as it was then. One point the Atlantic piece makes is that Cameron’s 13-year-old visuals, which should look a little dated due to advances in technology, actually still look better than most spectacle-laden movies these days, for various reasons. I found that to still be the case. (Plus, Cameron has never really gotten his due as an action director. I love the MCU and can honestly say that I haven’t disliked any of those movies (though there are a few that we haven’t seen yet, from the most recent batch), but there are times when the action sequences in those movies get hard to follow. That is never a problem with Cameron, who always makes it very clear who is where and who is trying to do what.)

Finally, out of curiosity, I looked up the current list of highest grossing films by year. Scroll through this list and notice how just about every year the biggest hit is either a sequel, or an installment picture in a larger franchise (look how many MCU movies take their year’s title), or the year’s big Disney release, or the first installment in a film franchise (Harry Potter, which had a built-in audience because of the juggernaut nature of the books). The notable exceptions (setting aside 2020, which was a bad year for movies for obvious reasons)? Avatar, which is still a singular film, though for not much longer, and Titanic.

::  Second: America’s False Idols.

Our nation once idolized astronauts and civil-rights leaders who inspired hope and empathy. Now it worships tech innovators who generate billions of dollars and move financial markets. To justify that adulation, we made shareholder returns the sole metric of success, and so shareholders are the most successful.

It’s hard to disagree with that. Witness the cult surrounding the likes of Elon Musk.

::  The eternally thought-provoking Sheila O’Malley, who is among other things a critic for RogerEbert.com, links one of her reviews with this bit of thought as introduction:

My response to this movie was so strong I had to interrogate it a little bit. What is this bringing up in me? Why such a personal reaction? This calls into question the whole film critic thing in general. Why distrust a personal reaction? Isn’t that the whole deal? The problem with totally trusting your first reaction is sometimes you can get swept away by something that – on a second look – is fairly empty. And so you “relating” to it or something is actually a filter that might have more to do with where you are at at that particular time … and once you move out of that time, the film will reveal all its flaws. Meanwhile, you are on record praising it to the skies. This has happened to me. I have gotten things wrong.

This is why I really could never be a professional critic, i.e., someone required to write intelligently about their opinion of a given work–be it a book, a film, a symphony, whatever–after experiencing it a single time, and quickly, too. I have too many times had the experience Sheila describes above, where I loved a thing at first but later thought “Wait, hold on a second,” and the reverse of this where I dislike a thing at first and only later came to realize how good it was.

Sheila is always very introspective in her writings, which I always prefer in my critical reads. I tend to be deeply suspicious of critics who write in such a way as to erase themselves and their own biases and emotions from their work; this kind of thing tends to feel as if these critics are trying to imbue a sense of objectivity to their work in a field where things are inherently subjective. And few things irritate me more in criticism than the assumption of right or wrong answers.

:: Kurt Steiner is the world’s greatest stone skipper.

Yes, you read that right:

Over the past 22 years, he has won 17 tournaments in the United States and Europe, generating ESPN coverage and a documentary film. In September 2013, he threw a rock that skipped so many times it defied science. This year he hopes to smash records on both sides of the Atlantic, giving him a platform for sermonizing about a sport he believes is nothing short of a means for the redemption of mankind—“a legitimate path to an essential inner balance,” he says.

This is a fantastic article. I’ve always loved the writing in Outside Magazine, and this is a case in point. I was surprised, reading it, that Kurt Steiner’s life unfolded just south of mine, in the hills and wilds of northwestern and northern Pennsylvania. I’ve been through many of the towns and places named herein. The article begins on Sinnemahoning Creek, a stream whose name I remember; I must have accompanied my parents to that stream in our canoeing-and-kayaking days. Steiner is 56, I’m 51.

And ultimately I’m amazed to discover that competitive stone-skipping is a thing.

::  Finally, I learned this week that Josh Allen has a kind of gross pre-game ritual. I can see how this might help calm one’s nerves, but even so…ewwww!

That is all.

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Nature Video Friday

Posted on October 7, 2022 by ksedinger

No, not a new weekly feature, but for lack of anything else to post, here’s a nature video I saw on Twitter earlier, about a beast I’d never heard of before: the grasshopper mouse. These little guys are…scary.

Warning: some of this is kind of disturbing, in that “unvarnished look at nature” way.

 

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Something for Thursday

Posted on October 6, 2022 by ksedinger

I’m sentimental, if you know what I meanI love the country but I can’t stand the sceneAnd I’m neither left or rightI’m just staying home tonightGetting lost in that hopeless little screen….

“Democracy” is my favorite Leonard Cohen song, and in a way it’s almost exactly the opposite of “Hallelujah”: the latter is covered by just about everybody, and the former is…well, I don’t know if it’s been covered by anybody else. If so, I don’t want to know about it. I honestly can’t imagine this song sung by anybody else. For me, “Democracy” is perfectly suited to Cohen’s own growl. His performance of this song is…well, let me get back to that. Because it’s a Cohen song, which means we also need to talk about these wonderfully complex and emotional lyrics.

Cohen started writing “Democracy” after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and there’s some impressive lore about the song’s genesis. Cohen apparently wrote at least fifty verses for the song, crossing out this and x-ing out that, in a messy process that finally resulted in the more-than-seven-minute song that arrived on his 1992 album The Future. In an interview later, Cohen said this:

This was when the Berlin Wall came down and everyone was saying democracy is coming to the east. And I was like that gloomy fellow who always turns up at a party to ruin the orgy or something. And I said, “I don’t think it’s going to happen that way. I don’t think this is such a good idea. I think a lot of suffering will be the consequence of this wall coming down.” But then I asked myself, “Where is democracy really coming?” And it was the U.S.A….So while everyone was rejoicing, I thought it wasn’t going to be like that, euphoric, the honeymoon. So it was these world events that occasioned the song. And also the love of America. Because I think the irony of America is transcendent in the song. It’s not an ironic song. It’s a song of deep intimacy and affirmation of the experiment of democracy in this country. That this is really where the experiment is unfolding. This is really where the races confront one another, where the classes, where the genders, where even the sexual orientations confront one another. This is the real laboratory of democracy. (via)

“Democracy” seems to point out a particularly American pathology: our tendency to assume that we’ve got it all figured out and that the rest of the world is trying (and much of the time, failing, sometimes hilariously failing) to catch up to us. Cohen seems to be pointing out that this isn’t the case, and this song–thirty years with us this year–now seems to be partly a prescient warning about the fact that there’s no guarantee when it comes to democracy. Because, by definition, if democracy is coming, then it’s not actually here yet.

Which may have been Cohen’s point all along. In the very first verse he sings this:

From the war against disorderFrom the sirens night and dayFrom the fires of the homelessFrom the ashes of the gayDemocracy is coming to the USA

It’s awfully hard to call our society a “democracy” when all these populations are hardly free, after all.

Cohen’s lyrics also sum up many of the contradictions that lie at the heart of this society of ours. Democracy is coming both “on a visionary flood of alcohol” and “from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount”; it’s coming…well, here’s an entire verse:

It’s coming to America firstThe cradle of the best and of the worstIt’s here they got the rangeAnd the machinery for changeAnd it’s here they got the spiritual thirstIt’s here the family’s brokenAnd it’s here the lonely sayThat the heart has got to openIn a fundamental wayDemocracy is coming to the USA

We’ve got the best and the worst; we’ve got the “machinery for change” and the “spiritual thirst”, but we’re also where “the family’s broken”. Cohen’s lyrics make clear that America is a giant mess of a place, and yet…democracy is coming.

Lest the lyrics of “Democracy” seem overly chiding–“I love the country but I cannot stand the scene”–there’s an undercurrent of optimism beneath it all. After all, it’s not “Democracy might be coming”, it’s “Democracy is coming.” And it’s not just coming in the large, societal way, but it will also be an intimate thing shared at the closest level:

It’s coming from the women and the menOh baby, we’ll be making love againWe’ll be going down so deepThe river’s going to weepAnd the mountain’s going to shout, “Amen!”

That verse, right there? That wonderful sexualization of the idea of democracy? That’s why I can’t fathom anybody else singing this song. Cohen’s growling baritone takes on just the perfect mix of erotic joy there; you can see him smiling just enough, and maybe giving a wink of his eye. He’s partly singing to an audience and whispering to a lover in a darkened bedroom.

And for all of that, the song seems also to partly look back to Walt Whitman, with the constant refrain of “Sail on, you mighty ship of state!”

“Democracy” is one of those songs that rewards the more one hears it. While I was preparing this post I listened to it more times than I could count, and now I’m going to listen to it again. And so are you.

Here’s “Democracy” by Leonard Cohen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_P4IEr-yd8

 

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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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