WELCOME TO ROYCROFT

Today was sort of a travel day, but only from Buffalo to East Aurora. We arrived here at about 10:30 but rooms weren’t available until later (which turned out to be 3 p.m.). We took a little walk downtown. East Aurora is a place that is known because of Roycroft and Elmore Hubbard and the founding of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and is also the birthplace of President Millard Fillmore. However, there isn’t a lot here now. They obviously have made an attempt to make the place a tourist attraction, mainly by repaving the main street with bricks. It looks quite cool, but I wonder how bricks will hold up with snowplows. The biggest store in town is Vidler’s five and dime which is sort of like an old Woolworth’s or something, but has more modern products. I took a picture of a sign on the back of the store that looks like it sticks out from the store (a trompe de l’oeille). I thought it would be entertaining to make a video of the sign so you could see what happens to it as you come around the sign. Well, of course, I was so busy looking at the sign in the viewfinder that I stepped into a puddle rather spoiling the video and soaking my shoe. DUH. We looked in a couple of other open shops, but they don’t have much open on Sunday here, so we ended up eating lunch for something to do and a chance to sit down. This place was a big coffee shop called, I think, the Grind. It’s one of those places with comfy chairs, menus on chalk boards, and a wall outside covered with huge murals. We came back at 2:30 and our room still wasn’t ready, but at 3:00 we checked into our Exploritas (aka Elderhostel) and met some of the people. We are apparently from the furthest away, and seem to be the only people who didn’t come by car. Turns out not all the stuff we will be doing is going to involve buses, so we will have to carpool with other people for some parts of it. I hope we don’t get stuck with somebody who’s a scary driver. Anyway, we finally made it to our room. The rooms are wonderful but they are COLD and you can’t turn off the AC. They have two thermostats in every room, but they set the range downstairs of about 6 degrees and you can only move it up or down from that. You can’t turn it off, Right now we have the windows and the door open which is probably just making the AC work harder to try and cool off the hall (which is about the right temperature as far as I’m concerned).
Our welcome treat today was a Syracuse cake made by local lady who was a real hoot. Think Betty White personality vs. appearance. Dinner tonight is Ahi tuna with sesame seed crust, hoisin sauce, pickled ginger & wasabi horseradish over soba noodles and Asian vegetable salad. Can’t tell you how much I need some vegetables. Tomorrow night we have a slow food dinner from whatever is available at the morning farmer’s market.

Art in Buffalo

Buffalo has a very vibrant art scene, no doubt because it’s really cheap to live here, which is something artists always like. There seem to be about 6 colleges in the town of Buffalo, including University of NY, State College of NY, Erie Community College, Canisius College, and a couple of smaller liberal arts colleges. The town must have been very prosperous at one time because there are many giant houses here, lots of neighborhoods full of them.

Today we saw part of a very interesting artwork.
In 2006 Buffalo had a freak winter storm (I’ll leave it to the imagination to decide what a FREAK winter storm would be here) which blew down hundreds of large old trees in Buffalo. A number of artists used those fallen tree trunks to make a number of approximately 8-foot high sculptures which they have installed in various places around town


This morning, we saw a number of those sculptures in front of the Presbyterian church. Apparently the statues have sponsors.
The poor buffalo doesn’t yet have a sponsor. Many of the sculptures are of important people from or in Buffalo. This guy with the water is Dewitt Clinton, the engineer who designed the Erie Canal. The guy with the book is Darrell Anton, who became a famous composer and who wrote the song Over the Rainbow. The amusing part of the fish picture is that it’s near the door of a church that has what appears to be a program to feed the homeless called Loaves and Fishes, but you can’t read the sign in the picture.




The rest of the day we spent at the Albright Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield Penney Art Center at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). These two museums are right across the street from each other. Albright-Knox is kind of an all purpose museum with a fairly large proportion of modern art, but plenty of older stuff, though no old masters. Seems to start more or less with the Impressionists. It was a really nice gallery, but they had it freezing cold inside, even though it was pleasant enough outdoors.
We only went to Burchfield Penney because we didn’t have much time left, but it was more interesting. For one thing, it had an Arts and Crafts room, with a lot of stuff from Roycroft and other American A&C. It was almost wholly devoted to the works of Charles Burchfield, who is a local guy .

We really had a relaxing day. Finished off with dinner at a place called Saigon, which had Thai and Vietnamese food and was crowded even before 6 p.m. It was quite different from the Thai food in Sacramento, sweeter and with different vegetables (mostly string beans here, probably reflecting that there aren’t many veggies out yet).. We considered going to the place across the street, Pano’s because every time we have driven by, there have been people waiting outside, but in the final analysis we didn’t want to stand around. We did go look at the menu and discovered that they had a variety of Mediterranean dishes – Italian, Greek, and Spanish.

Our final stop of the evening was just to go up and see the Theodore Roosevelt inauguration site where he was inaugurated after the assassination of William McKinley. It was too late to go in, so we just took a picture from the outside

NIAGARA FALLS WITHOUT THE HONEYMOON

We drove up to Niagara Falls today. It’s very easy to get there, good signage, and the park on the U.S. side is very nicely laid out, plenty of parking, etc.
We walked down to the edge of the falls and looked at the Horseshoe Falls first (which are actually on the Canadian side). Then we walked over and looked at the American Falls and watched the Maid of the Mist wending its way around near the edge of the falls with passengers wrapped up in their blue plastic raingear. Across the river we could see people in yellow raingear doing the under the falls walk on the Canadian side and the Cave walk on the American side. Both seem to basically be ways to separate you from your money while you have fun getting wet.

It was sometimes pretty hard to actually see the falls because there is so much mist from all that falling water. But it is impressive. Probably the most interesting thing we saw was when we were waiting to go on the Maid of the Mist and we could look up and see the edge of the American Falls almost right over our heads. And as a bonus, there was kind of a sun dog over the top. Then we went on the Maid of the Mist trip.

They give you a plastic bag with sleeves and a hood and then pack you on the boat like sardines. It’s really quite a bit of fun, especially at one point near the Horseshoe falls when the boat comes around and you get a face full of mist and water.
When we had finished our Maid of the Mist ride and had lunch, we decided to drive over to Canada. (And I remembered to bring the passports today) The weather was a little overcast today, and by the time we went over to the Canadian side it was quite overcast, so the pictures are kind of drab.

After we walked along the Canadian side (where the views of the falls really are better) we decided to drive back to Buffalo by way of Fort Erie which is on the Canadian side. John, of course, didn’t want to do this, because we didn’t have a map for the part of the trip that started in Canada. Once we arrived back in Buffalo, we had a big fight because I wanted John to tell me which way to go (I took the wrong freeway exit) and he wanted to tell me how the city of Buffalo was laid out. Anyway, after a certain amount of yelling on my part, at some point he started beating on me with the map saying “what happened to happy, happy, happy?” It did turn an argument into a laughfest.

For dinner tonight, we decided that we shouldn’t come to Buffalo without having Buffalo Wings. We found a place that has pizza and wings so we drove out to it. Turned out to be a converted gas station in a sort of iffy-looking neighborhood, but the wings were good. The place is one where you order your food and find a place to sit. One of the more charming features was the fact that there was a sink in the dining room so you could wash your hands after you got them covered with barbeque sauce.

We had no idea how big an order of wings was, so we got two. I wouldn’t have said we could eat them all, but we did. They come with a side order of celery sticks.

16 Miles on the Erie Canal

We arrived in NY this morning at 6:45 a.m. I didn't really get to sleep on the plane because we left about 10:30, far too early for me to fall asleep, and when I finally did, around midnight (Sacramento time) I only slept for an hour before the man by the window wanted to get up and go to the bathroom, and then I had to stay awake to wait for him to come back. They were a very nice couple, but I really only got about an hour of sleep. Then when we arrived, we decided to go to Lockport (a really charming town near Buffalo, and maybe take a boat trip on the Erie canal. It was a good idea, but I was pretty tired to be driving in unfamiliar places. The hope was that we could just relax on the boat trip, but we didn't count on the travel part being rather complicated. Anyway, we went out there, walked around and then took a ride on a boat. It was very nice.

Here it is. The Erie Canal, famed in song and story, an important part of history and a miraculous engineering feat. President Jackson refused to get the federal government to pay for the canal, because he said it would bankrupt the nation, but New York went ahead and built it themselves. When the railroads came in, they built bridges across the canal everyplace they could, and they built them as low as they possibly could to obstruct the travel on the canal. This bridge was once 30 feet lower than it is now.

These pictures are in reverse order, but they're all taken from the same place on the boat as the boat is rising in the lock. The yellow sign is at the top of the lock. Takes about ten minutes, and there are two locks together that each raise the boats about 30 feet or so. It goes very fast.
The boat trip was interesting after having learned about the Erie Canal in 6th grade and then actually seeing it. Of course it's been more than 50 years ago. There were classes of kids here seeing it while they were learning about it.


The Captain of our boat, toward the end of the ride, showed us two steeples. One was the Catholic church, important because it was the tallest spire in NY at the time or something, and about the lone Irishman who climbed up and installed the cross on top, after which he "danced a jig on top of the cross." Later he was killed in a car accident. I couldn't tell if this was just ironic, or if he was being punished for dancing a jig on top of the cross. More interesting to me, was the church across the street, the Presbyterian which has eight Tiffany windows. There is a very large one (two windows together) of Jesus and the disciples, then there are 7 around the sanctuary, plus 9 more that are meant to look like Tiffany windows. The differences are subtle, and I don't think I'd have grasped them without the handy-dandy earphones they give you to explain about them. They are all wonderful. I can't believe I never realized how much Tiffany was beholden to the pre-Raphaelites. But once it was mentioned, I can see it. They allowed you to take pictures in there, but I didn't realize the battery in my camera was dying until it was dead, so I didn't take any. This picture was taken from the web. It is the best one in some ways, because it really looks as if the lantern is lit, and the light showing on the other areas of the picture is so painterly.

Driving back from Lockport was more of a challenge than we expected, mostly because we didn't have a map that actually had Lockwood and Buffalo on it, though I could figure out where the match was, but John insisted on continuing to use a tiny map where the area in question was about an inch square as opposed to the map I had where the area in question was about a 12-inch square.

Dinner tonight was at a wonderful Greek restaurant near our hotel. I was so happy not to fall asleep in my food that I ate almost everything on my plate, which included a half a chicken, two giant potatoes, a salad with a pound of cheese on it and surprisingly a side of cole slaw.

Harp Retreat at Occidental

This is perhaps my favorite weekend of the year, the Bay Area Folk Harp Society retreat at St. Dorothy’s Rest in Occidental. This is an area that was once set aside for a lot of camps and stuff, back in the early 1900s. This particular campground (which isn’t camping at all) is owned by the Episcopal church. So they’re laid back and don’t care if we drink wine. This is a picture of "our" house, Lydia house. Usually other groups are using the facilities while we’re here, and often they want to come hear us play and we usually invite them.

I have always had a campground view room, but I was the first one here this time and snagged a room that looks out over the valley. My room looks out over the hills across the highway. It is beautiful over there -- a green pasture on a hillside, surrounded by stands of trees, a path going up the hill, a house nestled in the trees to the right, with a garden area and a big square plot of land in the enclosure. Closer to the road is a hippie-colored bright pink little house. But the most fantastic thing was that when I went to bed, I could look out the window and see the stars. LOTS OF STARS. Because it’s dark here. On the other side of the building there are trees around the room and some lights for safety. This side is dark. Furthermore, during the night, if I’d wake up, I could see that the stars had moved through the sky because my window has a grid pattern and you can see where the stars are in the grid.

Friday night is a casual evening where we just basically have a harp circle after dinner. We started by going through our books and picking out songs, then sort of graduated to anything anyone would start. There is always a big mixture of people here in terms of levels of skill. John Mentras plays the cross strung harp which allows him to play all sorts of chromatic things that can’t be played on a lever harp. Mitch plays lever harp and can play all sorts of pop music because he can flip levers at the speed of light. Patrice Hahn is another wonderful player who seems to have the ability to make everyone feel that she is just one of us, although she is way better than others. Natalie Cox is a harp teacher and professional who also plays a lot better than the rest of us.

I always pick out those few good people, but then I’m always surprised when we have the Hoolie and some of the people who don’t act like particularly good players play some astoundingly well-prepared piece.

Saturday morning after breakfast (bacon, frittata, cereal, fruit, English muffins, homemade jam, cereal, etc – in other words, anything you wanted) started with Meghan giving us instructions in a chi gung program called Eight Pieces of Brocade, which I think I will actually be able to follow at home. Following that, John gave a class in Latin music, gave us a lot of ideas for bass parts for various types of South American pieces, then let us try putting familiar tunes against those pieces.

And then, it was time to eat again. Once again, a lovely spread, broccoli salad, chips, crackers, any kind of sandwich fixings you were interested in and juice. Then we have free time to work on our performance piece, take a walk, take a nap, think deep thoughts, whatever, until our 4:30 class with Patrice, who gave us a lot of good information about harmonizing Irish tunes.

I brought the hurdy gurdy so I don’t have to play the harp for harpists. Right now I’m sitting in my room before dinner watching a bunch of hawks circling across the way. They don’t seem to be hunting or anything, just riding the thermals for fun. I had expected to see some deer in the pasture over there, but I haven’t yet.

Saturday night was a yummy dinner of enchilada casserole with Mexican salad and string beans. The food here is really good. AND we had chocolate cake with chocolate chips topped by ice cream for desserts. Our hoolie was lots of fun and a number of people who are here on other retreats came down to listen to us. This always happens when people know we are here: they love to come listen.

Secrets of This Old House

I think we have a pretty house. It's not really fancy, but it's inviting and colorful and can look pretty fancy when we get everything cleaned up and sort of staged for company. Here's how it looks then.

And now, for the rest of the story

Electrical outlets are always an issue in old houses. It's entertaining when we have a rehearsal here and we have cords and lamps dragged all over the living room. We have the old knob and tube wiring, which is really quite safe as long as animals don't chew on it and you don't get too fancy interrupting the old stuff. So this basically means, you can't go around the room putting in a lot of electrical outlets which you might like to have for modern life. This is a picture of just one of our many lovely outlets.

With the advent of digital TV we of course got one, since the television is the most important piece of furniture in our house. But as the last people on earth not to have cable, we have used a variety of of indoor and outdoor antennas to get reception, both pre-and postdigital. Since digital started, the picture is better, when we get it, but the antenna thing is really quite adorable. This picture shows the channel 6 position, which is the cord hanging over the top of the tv. Most of the other stations are more or less okay with the cord in a reasonable place, like say, the floor.


The bathroom is the place where we have the most of these half-assed things. So we're back to the electrical issues. In many rooms of the house, overhead lights have pull chains. However, when we decided that we wanted a brighter light in the bathroom -- and this one is so bright that you could do surgery in there -- it also needed a chain. But this light fixture is sort of like a flying saucer (we're going for an Art Deco look) and you can pull the string straight down, so you have to pull it sideways. So when we have company, I have to put a sign on the string so nobody will pull it straight down and then not be able to turn it off again.

This is my favorite half-assed "repair". Now the thing is, the bathtub is old so instead of tearing the bathroom apart and removing the tub and everything, there's an aftermarket thing where they come to your house and put a kind of a paint finish on it and bake it. It looks pretty good but you can't let it stay wet, because in the final analysis, it's just paint. So, from time to time the shower head leaks and then the bathtub is wet 24 hours a day. So I discovered that if I tied this string onto the shower head that the water would run down the string and into the drain without keeping the tub wet.

Then there's just this little tiny leak under the sink, it leaks only about a half inch in the bottom of this margarine tub in about a month. Unless you don't put the tub there, and then in awhile the tile on the floor is all white from the hard water. It's one of those things that we could get a plumber out here to fix it, but it's just old plumbing and when you fix one thing, another one goes bad.

Well, now that I've finished this, I realize I have a bunch more stuff, so maybe I'll put a few more in next week or so.

Four Concerts and a Rehearsal (in one week)!

No, I didn't play four concerts, I just went to four concerts.

The first concert this week was Sunday afternoon. I only discovered this one, thanks to a nice article in the Sacramento Bee, on Friday. I went with one of my friends from harp circle. It was a nice trip to Grass Valley, and the concert included a nice pre-concert talk with the artist, harpist Bridget Kibbey. She's a pedal harpist, so unlike many concerts, I didn't feel that I needed to come home and practice til my hands fall off, because there's no chance of arriving at that level in this lifetime. But she was delightful to listen to for an afternoon. Here's the article that was in the Bee.


Tuesday's concert was Richard Goode, the final performer on the CSUS New Millenium series. I haven't been to a piano concert for a long time -- don't really know why, because I love piano music. But his was wonderful. He could make the piano sound like a bell and the soft passages made you just want to jump on the stage to really get into them. He played a program of Bach, Haydn, Brahms and Schumann. Edward Ortiz wrote a much better review than I can.

Wednesday afternoon John and I went to the regular Music at Noon series at Westminster Presbyterian Church. This week's group was Passamezzo Moderno, a group from the Bay Area who played Baroque music. They were fantastically good. I actually can't figure out why a group that plays that professionally will schlep all he way over to Sacramento to play a noon concert, but I'm glad they did. I think this is the second time they've been here.

The last concert I went to was the CSUS Symphony with my friend Chase, aka Charles Spruill IV, playing the Butterfly Concerto. This is a really interesting piece, which I've never even heard of, but which was written in the 50's. It is based on a Chinese folk tale of a more or less Romeo and Juliet story, girl pretends to be boy, then admits to the object of her affection that she's a girl, he returns her love. They want to marry, but both have had arranged marriages already planned. He kills himself rather than not share his life with her. On her wedding day, his grave opens up with great thunder, and she throws herself into it. The couple then fly out of the grave as a pair of butterflies. The music is an attempt to marry Chinese and western musical traditions. Chase did a fabulous job -- as he always does -- and it was such a pleasure to watch him in his final performance at CSUS. The piece has many duets between the solo violin and various instruments in the orchestra. You could see that Chase was enjoying the whole experience as well as the music.

On Sunday we got together to have a rehearsal for Baroque and Beyond -- our group that is putting on a concert on April 11 in Davis. It really went well. I'm feeling quite good about how that concert will go.