Foundation Revisited

Back in November of 2006 I had gotten all the way around the house in my efforts to repoint the foundation and bury some insulation against it. I dug a little ways under the porch but knew I'd be rebuilding the stonewall on the other side eventually so didn't do the last few feet.

Foundation Revisited

When I decided to rebuild the eyesore under this side of the porch this week I discovered I had left the repointing of this corner for just such an occasion. It was in the forties so I think the mortar set up OK, and I had left a piece of insulation there back in 2006. Funny, I don't remember doing that.

Foundation Revisited

Here's how it looks now. I wish I'd come across the heart-shaped stone before getting started, then I could have placed it in the wall. Maybe I could dismantle and....

A Soft Hand

Here's a picture that has just been recovered. It's of my grandma's hand in mine moments after she died. That's Mary Ellen's arm on the left with the watch, and grandma died holding the yellow duck. I took the picture with a cell phone but couldn't get it until now. Check out the archives, January 2008, to see more about Mildred and her 102-year, 10-month life.

The Commute

My favorite magazine, Orion, has a story in the current issue about commuting by bike. I decided to document my commute and share it here. This is the pedestrian bridge at the bottom of our block. Not only are cars not allowed, but it eliminates about a half-mile of sharing crowded streets with car/bus commuters.

The Commute

"Our" creek, Six-Mile Creek. I like to refer to it as the best state park in our neighborhood. It is preserved as a Natural Area for three miles upstream, and you can see how close it is to downtown by the building at the top of the picture on the right.

The Commute

Here are the views of Cascadilla Creek from the Stewart Ave. bridge. Upstream is Cornell, down is Ithaca and in the distance, West Hill.

The Commute

Stewart Ave. is one of the only streets left in the city with a brick surface. They last quite awhile, but are tough (and expensive) to fix when the time comes. Most just get paved over.

The Commute

This part of the trip is beginning to change. That's the Ithaca Gun factory which is in the process of being demolished. It's a very difficult job considering all the lead pellets, the industrial chemicals in the ground, and tons of asbestos to be removed. But Ithaca had a good industry for awhile, people made money, and tens of thousands of guns are available. The lake is visible just over the top of the roof.

The Commute

This is the view of Ithaca Falls from the bridge over the creek. How sweet is it that this is my last view before reaching the (always full) parking lot or the first view as I head home? The falls are just over 100 feet high, and I've dropped, or have to climb, 259 feet in less than half a mile.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

Gail and I returned to Newfound Lake in NH awhile ago to get together at our friend Tii's family house on the lake. There are some fifty cousins who keep this place going and Tii invites friends up to play tunes and visit every year. Views of the house from land and water. There are several other houses/cottages, plus a sauna, boat house, woodshed....

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

People drop their instruments in the front room. A hazard of getting there early is it gets to be impossible to get to the far side of the room after awhile.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

The fundamental difference between banjos and bass: one ends up on the couch after vigorous hammer-ons, the other gets the floor and is hammered on.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

Gail had a nice hike with old (and young) friends Geoff and Andrew. Andrew almost got up to the honeycomb Geoff wanted him to steal out of this tree.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

A big house has multiple jams going on at once. The kitchen and living room were going full steam Saturday afternoon. There were people out on the porch too.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

A bunch of hikers went up the local mountain to get some exercise, fresh air and the honor of meeting and visiting with Tii's aunt at her cabin. They enjoyed nice views, walked Aunt Mary's labarinth and took time out to reflect on things with Aunt Mary.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

One of the great parts of playing, of course, is getting to play with people I've admired since before I started, and in a space I heard people play in before embarking on this musical journey. In this session with Tii in the attic I got two-in-one.

Tunes at Newfound Lake 2008

The weekend had a sad shock at the conclusion. Tii's Aunt Mary had a stroke Saturday night and had to be taken to the hospital Sunday morning. She died soon after, surrounded by dozens of family members singing the songs she had taught many of them. She looked feisty and inspiring in this shot from Saturday, a fine life right to the end.
May we all be so fortunate, and loved.

Twenty-Fifth Annual Caroline Walk-About

OK, so it's only the ninth one, but we've had twenty-five years worth of fun. Back in the day it was a twenty-six-mile walk (for real), but these days we do just under 20.
Hard to tell from the happy faces that the cutest dog in the world had just had a brush with death, or breakfast.

Twenty-Fifth Annual Caroline Walk-About

Starting out, Ed Cope points out his house in the distance to Gail. That's my shadow on the ground to the left.

Twenty-Fifth Annual Caroline Walk-About

This is the top of the first hill. You could say we followed the command of the sign and stopped for a view of where we came from. There's the dog that wanted Bean for a snack.

Twenty-Fifth Annual Caroline Walk-About

These rocks seem to just like to be in this formation, and I like putting them there.

Twenty-Fifth Annual Caroline Walk-About

We never tire of this view from high up on Bald Mountain. This is looking east towards where we started and will end. Click on the photo for a better look.

Left for the Crows

This buck had been hanging out in our neighborhood and I got some pictures of it in the neighbor's yard at the end of August. I didn't see it again until a few weeks ago at the beginning of hunting season and was glad it was still a city-slicker like me and would hopefully make it another year. Sadly I learned today it stood in a neighbor's yard for a few hours with an arrow stuck in its neck, the neighbor didn't know what to do. So when the deer collapsed, he and his son dragged it to the nearby woods and left it for the crows.

More Great Music

At the end of the book, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, he makes a point about how radically our society has changed since the start of the 20th century. He does this by mentioning that at that time or a little before, 100% of the music people heard was live. Today it's less than one percent.
Which brings me to this post's point: More amazing live music within walking distance to my home (and some pretty good stuff right from the couch). As a previous post reported, Steve Earle did a great show at the Historic State Theater and at the time I figured it would be quite awhile before I experienced anything so fine. But there we were again, almost in the same seats just a month later, for a night with Billy Bragg, and we left with the same sense of awe and good fortune. You could say they are birds of a feather.
Bragg was inspiring, whimsical, topical, very British, and challenging. Politics have played a central role in his music over the years, and they were front and center at this show being just before the presidential election. And his music was mighty fine. Thanks to Dan Smalls for putting this show on. Here is a link to read what he thought of it and see Billy's performance of Woody Guthrie's "I ain't got no home in this world, anymore."
This past weekend our cake got some more icing when Ruttabaga Boogie brought Eilen Jewel to town with her band. Eilen writes some smooth songs, has a great selection of covers, plays a nice guitar and has a voice that goes so well with the styles of songs she does; but her band kills. Dropping jaws wherever he goes is Jerry Miller, whose been around awhile, and I'm glad he still is.
As for me, I'm going to grab the banjo now and keep my live to recorded music ratio up around 1:1. That's fifty percent for you struggling in Algebra this year.

Seeking Attention

Here's one person's way to "get the attention" of a neighbor.
This happened at 5 am and resulted in two calls (only one by me) to the police about a disturbance. I met the police when they arrived so they would be sure to go to the right place as I had given the wrong information over the phone. As we heard a loud bang it was clear they could find it without any further assistance from me and I went back into the house. The officers left after speaking with the guy for a few minutes, he was throwing pebbles at a window when they approached him and he admitted he'd had way too much to drink and should go to bed so he wouldn't bother anyone any more.
He's had our attention since he moved in back in August with his frequent screams of obscenities, now we're wondering to what degree he might go to get the attention of his next door neighbor.

Tis' the Season

It's fall, the time when you've got to work fast and diligently to get some food put away for the winter that will hopefully come and put and end to the growing season. This is probably the favorite at our house, canned peaches. The freezer's almost full too.

Tis' the Season

A new feature in our food production is a dehydrator. We've done a few batches of tomatoes, and one batch of Thai peppers. The first person to contact me with the number of peppers in this pile can have a tablespoon of powder (a year's supply).

Tis' the Season

Not everything ends up dehydrated. I've just finished a "root cellar" under the basement stairs. Fortunately there are still potatoes to be dug.

Porch Fest

Ithaca's second best neighborhood recently held the second "Porch Fest" where lots of stellar musicians play music on the front porch and people go around and listen. It's great to see the streets blocked with people and the porches overloaded with talent. I bet there's a few dozen bands that have toured the US and Europe represented in these two photos. What's in the soil down there in Fall Creek?

Porch Fest

Not everybody played music on the porch; Karen, Jessie and Red just drew a crowd by sitting at Amy's and having drinks and snacks. Kevin displayed the best way to get around to the 30-some bands who were playing.

Porch Fest

Occasionally a band didn't fit on their porch, or in this case it wouldn't have made much sense as it's an enclosed one. JazzHappens did a great job turning the day into "Front Lawn Fest."
Gotta know how to improvise if you're going to play jazz I guess.

Porch Fest

Here are the Aceto Brothers playing with their dad, he's in his 90's but can still sing like a bird and play a sweet mandolin.

Three Day Bike Trip

Looking way back, Gail and I took a little three-day trip on our bikes with overnights at Mt. Irenaeus in Allegany County, and a B&B in Hammondsport on Keuka Lake. Three nice rides but quite a bit of up and down between Hammondsport and Ithaca. Stopping for garlic knots in Watkins Glen didn't help the hardest climbs from there to Ithaca.

Steve Earle at The State

This week I finally got to a Steve Earle concert after listening to him for almost twenty years. It was at Ithaca's Historic State Theater and like a few other shows I've been to there, it goes on my all-time great concerts list. I'll leave the review to the professional writers, but I've got to say he said it best when he said he "is a miracle" after all he's been through. And yet he keeps writing great songs and doing shows like the one the other night where he plays for over two hours, giving it his all to the point he's drenched in sweat after the first fifteen minutes.
In reality it wasn't the first time I'd seen him live. Gail and I were in Saratoga Springs for a one-day festival this summer and he performed for about an hour, but it was just a taste and he was too far away in the big venue and tough to see/hear, it was enough to increase my anticipation. Another time I was in Washington for a rally opposing the war that still rages (even if we don't hear much about it anymore), guess we haven't been singing loud enough, and he was coming up on the bill but the buses were heading back to Ithaca and I had to leave before he came on. I just spent half my morning with him on Youtube, and came across this song from that show. I thought it was brilliantly used for the radio advertisements for his Ithaca show.

Tense times on vacation

Gail and I took a nice trip recently to the Adirondacks and Vermont. Our first stop was Piseco Lake in the southern section of the Adirondacks where we visited with Geoff, Kristi, Ann and Chips at their "camp." We had some great time on the water with kayaks and the lightest canoes any of us had ever lifted. Gail and I rode our bikes around the lake (with two near-collisions) and pictured here is Chips and first mate, Kristi, heading out for the sailing races. The boat was tipping pretty far at times in the strong but shifting winds. Ann feared a tip-over was imminent.

Tense times on vacation

Geoff and Gail kept an eye on the situation with much concern.