Yours Truly saw two quite incredible imPerfect situs yesterday, both involving trucks if You can freakin' believe this.

1.
Driving down Kenmore Avenue to a gig, minding my own business (of course, You proffer), was suddenly behind a truck behind a city bus that had stopped in its tracks.
The truck pulled around.
The bus was still, flashers flashing.
Immediate Middling City thought: OFCOURSETHATBUSISNOTWORKINGPROPERLY, it's MC transpo.
Passing the stopped city bus Yours Truly spotted the problem at hand - a downed power line at a rakish 45º angle as another truck, an oversized semi, had brushed the power lines and got stuck on them and then sheared the power line's wooden pole in half.
So, being ever-intrepid, sussed out the situ and drove underneath the power lines, figuring that the compactish vehicle would make it through sans worry.
Later, coming back from the suburbs, drove back down Kenmore Avenue to see that police of all stripes had that section of the Avenue blocked off, a number of signifying items in place.

2.
Later, still in the yesterday category, whilst driving with Kennergy to Nature for a Shiney Happy Mag story on Urban Nature treks, witnessed this moment.

YT has actually seen this scene before, where a semi does a crazy swinging around maneuver that looks like a left turn to suddenly crush a car or two on their left sides.
A bummer all around.

3.
In the Old First Ward there is a trucking institute of sorts so there all kinds of hacks, wannabe truckers learning how in h-e-double-hockey-sticks to accelerate, decelerate, BRAKE, and avoid killing innocent motorists and the like.

4.
Driving, ever a source of good old-fashioned adrenalizing moments.
And photo ops.

Love of

Snippets on this Good Friday.

1.
There Yours Truly was, truly minding her very own business, meandering back from a coffee expedition to Grant Street of all places, and heading in a southwesterly fashion. Suddenly it became of immense import to divert to LaSalle Park to make some images of ice on the water, in lieu of preparing the box of tax crap for the nice tax man who YT does not know but who was referred by Dorota and who is now lovingly referred to as YT's tax guru of sorts.

2.
Yesterday after a gig and shopping for some birthday gifts for tonight's SGB birthday throwdown, went to get a pedi at some joint in the suburbs, probably former marshland. As is my workaholic wont, laptopped the entire time. It is important to YT to make productive use of this time in midst of Asian arcana, oversized vinyl chairs installed with rollers and pinchers, curious signage and other women on the g.o. go.
At the end of the pedi the nice man at my feet required my attention, pointing at my large toes. Yes, I said, nice job.
He looked flustered and walked away. To get a dictionary, YT presumed.
He reemerged with a faux nail display with all sorts of strange hashmarked nails - art.
I pointed vaguely at one and he said Flower. Flower, I replied.
So back to work and when he was done he tugged at my rolled-up jeans.
I looked down and lo and behold he'd crafted tinyflowers with toothpicks and sparkles and paint. A tiny triumph.
Quite a master miniaturist of floral pedi creations, he was quite proud of himself.
And then YT proudly showed off her toes at the dinner party last night.
After first inquiring who'd like to see my toes.
NOBODY scowled Liz.
As YT unlaced her bitchin Pumas.
The girls did marvel at the Asian man's handiwork.

3.
Time to make and do, wrap and roll.
Off to fete three at once over birthday dinner, an artist pal's exhibition, some arcade games, some meeting & greeting.
And tomorrow, another visit to Broadway Market to make some stock images of all things sausage, butter lamb, and lily.
Another fine band name.

Love of naming bands.

Above is a festively flowered-up cart at the co-op yesterday and Yours Truly could not - once again - resist buying more hyacinthius domesticus to get full spring sniffs.
I also bought one of these purple plants and left it, with a card, for Robert & Steve, outside their apartment door.
YT is completely numb and heartbroken for them and their families after the car wreck that Steve had on Monday night on the thruway, when his car skidded and went down and embankment. Steve's two children were killed.
YT will be going to the wake and funeral and there is nothing sadder than a funeral for a child.
If I had seen, ever saw, a car near me on the thruway going off the road there is no way in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks that I would simply call and keep driving.
YT, being the consummate big sister/camp counselor type, would have stopped, parked, and made sure I could do as much as I could.
I would never call and proceed.
YT in the past has aided people all over the world in perilous and not-so-perilous moments - and angelic strangers have done the same for me.
One moment that immediately springs to mind is a woman on her bicycle in Amsterdam who slipped on ice and had a head injury.
YT not only stayed with her assuring her that she'd be alright, asking someone to call for help, but made sure that her bags spilled all over the scene were not stolen.
This is Karma, and this is what we're here to do: share our strengths.
∞
YT began epinw on a day of chosen significance, Good Friday, the alleged birth date of Samuel Becket, 4/13.
Tomorrow is Good Friday but it is not the 13th.
Yesterday was the anniversary, 15 years, is that possible, of the suicidal death of Kurt Cobain and YT recalls that moment with complete clarity: where I was, how I heard the news, and the impulse to tell others around me of the horribly shocking rock & roll news.
Yesterday was also the Faux Birth Anniversary of YT, as YT was a year younger than her classmates and that was a social disadvantage. So YT, with the assistance of Loomis, created a lovely faux bit of identification that, when asked, would grant entrée to the public social gatherings of my classmates and the like.
∞
YT has just finished a gig that involved documenting some earthworks of a non-artful sort: a state-sanctioned improvement involving giant holes and PVC pipes. This necessitated the handy standing-on of trusty little Subaru.
YT forgot the SPF 5K so is now a shade pinker.

Pinker, Purple, Gracious Love.

Image from meandering through the newly-improved AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) which has now a capping of Frank Gehry goodness and a Vaticani-reminiscent complicated staircase to boot.
Whereas the AGO of yore was kind of musty with a smattering of good bits in the collection and some curios that you would marvel at for a short while, now it is, as Yours Truly is wont to say, A Triumph.
Inside there are some traveling shows and a Whitney-esque comprehensiveness to follow along the various decades of art making and doing.
What is beyond the Henry Moore which was once the outer wall, is now the expanded facade housing what is called the Galleria Italia, a dreamy space of wood and windows and filled with tree-related art by Penone.
Favoured & featured piece shown is a large tree gutted except for an intra-arboreal work, a small tree.

Time to leave TO, now pop. 2.6 mill.
Cranes and clouds in the sky.

Northwestern Love.

Post wedding gig on Saturday Night met up with Mish & TD at Big Orbit to see some rock & roll - Dear Leader - a gig that ended early to keep the neighbors oso happy.
Rich Wall (below) did his managerial/lighting thing and, as always, eerily resembled lead singer Aaron. TonyC was there, who merrily handed Yours Truly an Amstel Light upon entering the venue stripped of all art on the walls in preparation of rock & roll mayhem. All stayed constrained with some hippie-style girl choogling in front of the stage. Rest of weekend was not rest at all with editing, a jazz show to watch at venerable AKAG, an all-girl brunch at Left Bank, a dinner later at Left Bank, and oso much more.
I did see MikeC (cuz of TonyC) and did inform him I'd be at his resto, Left Bank, twice on Sunday and that I'd like a prize. He said No.


Speaking resto speak, partook in the Middling City's version of Restaurant Week last Thursday, supping a late sup at Bacchus with Heady. Their curious rendition of RW was 1 choice of 5 choices of a glass of vino, 1 small plate, 1 dessert choice. In lieu of that Heady and I opted for a better combo platter. It was a primo night out with the room full and vibrant, but their RW concept was a little weak. My experiences in the Shiney Apple for their v of RW is that most places offer full dinner entrees, limited but full-portioned, and let diners fend for their own tippling/desserting selves.

Fending for one's own dining self, Love.

One image that was floating about the desktop, from the Los Angeles/Beverly Hills/Little Laura foray.
Lest you need anything horn-related in LA.

My Letter to the Middling City News Editor appeared yesterday and got some emails from people giving me e-pats on the back for speaking up regarding an insensitivity matter that several read/see but don't feel compelled to speak out about. Several are employed as freelancers, and depend upon the MCN for reviews and such and don't want to nip at the sole inked-up hand that feeds them.

Just downloaded Andrew Bird's newest, Noble Beast, in preparation for the TO gig Yours Truly will be seated amid on Friday night - Heady's b-day. Gave her a gentle, photon-related nudge about doing her pregnancy portrait: YT loves doing this genre of port, it's important self-documentation that some people let slip on by.

Got a text from a newsboy last night that a kid who was racing out on Beaver Island (about 15 or so miles from the MC, a beachy place of modest proportions, but does include the lovely River Lea) died after his volatile, air-borne crash. It did make YT recall how in her teen-fueled high school days (specifically, that strange limbo of one's senior year) Marie and I would take out her souped-up Chevelle (with a 442, I recall) and just drive muy fast out on that verysame road. And, one late afternoon, another driver (a teen boy) challenged us to a race. We did. To no ill effect. That was one of several racing scenarios of Young YT: the others featured the impromptu race track on Ohio Street and scads of motorheads, including Nick Beat and his Opel Manta.

Onwards to pixel pushing and deadlines of journalistic and artful matters at hand.

Muy Pixel/Portraiture Love.

Traveled with Kennergy to Northampton and another notable North (as in Adams) once again, in the Mass, to make & do, look & work.
As Eremite has sold his big old home we stayed in one of the rooms-for-hire places that I wrote about for my NoHaMa piece for the Shiny Happy Mag.
Image numero uno, the toppermost, is an exterior shot of the sprawling and mind-enhancing Mass MoCA, my second visit there.
There is an incredible installation by photog Simon Starling with ultra-magnified silver molecules, ultra-magnified stereoscopic images of Chinese immigrants who were imported to North Adams (home of Mass MoCA) to work in a factory that stood where the Mass MoCA campus now does.
Upon entering the expansive arts venue, a former factory, had the nice front desk lady remind me what was fabricated there at Sprague.
Capacitors, she said.
I thought to fabricate my own understanding of what in hell a capacitor is but opted for the big Q.
Capacitors, it turns out, store electrons.
And Sprague made the switch for thee H-bombs of H-istory.
Bad H-istory.
∞
The lines and spaces and concepts of Sol Lewitt are gleefully, thoughtfully drawn on nice white walls there, ready to be marveled at.
For your edification see image at right.
Whilst trundling through Mass MoCA came upon an installation and made my way through a little faux grassy knoll replete with music, some Gilligan's Island-worthy benches, some unstrung patio lights.
And, off in a corner, the sleeping artist.
Yours Truly sat there looking about making sense of the jumble before her, including a few computers and attendant circuitry.
After a few moments YT realized that the artist was simply exhausted and the installation was incomplete.
So moseying along was in hot pursuit.


Jubilant round-up of the journey's art sights.
1.
Finally saw Smith College Museum of Art which had Lauren Greenfield work hanging - two of her femmecentric series. LG has a lovely sense of light and her people always feel real. Upstairs had an excellent shoe conversation with a guard guarding a small gallery. She complimented my very new J-41s that I'd had for a whopping hour or so. She said she'd thought of purchasing them in black but couldn't commit because of the contrasting band across the top of the foot. That was the selling point for me, YT stated. Then I went on to point out other lovely features, including map of the Berkshires underneath. She was wearing Pumas. I pointed to the bag in my left hand stating that my own green Pumas were in that very bag. I also found, I told her, the comment of the shoe salesman to be most curious as he said How many pairs of black shoes could someone own. Not enough, YT stated with complete and utter conviction.
2.
Mass MoCa.
Full of wondrous sights - art and architecture. Walking distance from Porches hotel, excellent Gramercy Bistro, and a curious package store selling odd snacks.
3.
Williams College Museum of Art.
Nice compact arts venue full of grandeur and some lovely surprises. Sol Lewitt work makes an appearance here as well - drawn on walls as well as the sculptural pieces.
Nice room of examples of work by workaday photogs. Had a good time reading some of their collection of historical docs, like a copy of thee Declaration of Independence, not the fancy-schmancy copy that everyone signed, but one of 25 copies meant to be passed around to the VIPs and framers. Here they have a piece by the femme who invented cyanotyping, who used the ironific process to document flora.
4.
Clark Museum in historical Williamstown was another newbie surprise to YT. Some more surprises on the walls. The Singer sewing machine fortune translated into thousands of purchases, including some Toulouse-Lautrec prints and what made it all bigger and better and best was the inclusion of some historical documentary photos from thee place, Le Moulin Rouge, the ladies, and some work by other artists of the same era capturing the effervescence.
∞
Today/night documented the wedding of two favoured people, two I've known for a long time. One I've known for three decades, the other two.
YT went up to Niagara-on-the-Lake to capture the vows alongside the lake under the sun, a happy gathering. Onwards then to a dinner to celebrate but not before reaching the Peace Bridge with my very brand new pocket-sized birth certificate to show to the border patrol person in his booth. He was not overly impressed. He also wished to see my driver license. YT had just noted that this semi-impressive new card (all black and shiny with hologram of the Middling City's seal upon it) was not on thee list of acceptable docs to present in such circumstances in the near future to not be hauled off for further questioning and possible tears.

Onwards and Onwards Still.
Artful, Loveful Love, Love.

Snippulations.

1. Yesterday whilst perusing the Middling City News and multi-taskingly having tea and kissing dogs chanced upon a theatre review. In most usual circumstances YT does not read theatre reviews if the play under the microscope was not sat through by YT. But it was a production by Buffalo United Artists and YT is a pal of founder Javier Bustillos.

There, amid the dissection and such was some phrases that oozed ethnic stereotype, the last remaining unchecked sort - Italian American bashing.

The reviewer, who has been noted as having made other blunders of ethnic stereotypical proportions, stated that the onstage action was "strained and repetitive even for the often heedless passions that can run rampant in Italian households."

YT did a stop, and restart of this phrase. And then immediately stopped the onhand multi-tasking that was truly just a bit of R&D for the pieces YT was about to write for the Shiny Happy Mag. YT fired off a letter to the editors of the MCNews and then sent the article in question (offensive sentence highlighted), along with my letter, to a list of media friends, writers, and others of Italian-mix.

Today YT received a call from the MCNews to verify not only my whereabouts but my heretofors and ID. Yes, it is YT, I stated. We will be printing your letter within the week, YT was informed.

And, for Your edification, here is my letter to the editor.

I had to reread a phrase in the Sunday, March 22 edition of The Buffalo News, a review of the Buffalo United Artists play “In Gabriel’s Kitchen” by Colin Dabkowski. The phrase in question was a jolt in an otherwise innocuous piece.

In this short piece, that glowingly announces the new home of BUA on Chippewa Street, and in the very issue in which News editor Margaret Sullivan states, rightly, that “newspaper journalism protects our freedoms and guards our way of life,” Dabkowski pens a phrase dripping with troubling ethnic stereotype.

While mentioning that several moments of “In Gabriel’s Kitchen” could have used some deft edits to shorten some onstage arguments, he goes on to say that these dramatic arguments “seem strained and repetitive even for the often heedless passions that can run rampant in Italian households.”

“Heedless passions?” “Italian households?” Oh my. In our historical era of both democratic revamping and change, as well as ongoing international wars and lines drawn for tribal reasons, it seems that most journalists would be more careful to pen such a careless sentence. This sentence could be easily read over, but it does much to re-instill generalities.

Onward.

Seems a little sensitivity training might be in order here.
A pal was asked to attend such a genre of meeting of minds recently for a dissimilar reason and she did inform me and some other femmetastic pals of some facts and concepts gleaned over those several hours. I asked her for a recap today, as I recalled there was a handy acronym. A very forgettable acronym, apparently.

She emailed back that it was EASY.

She writes:

E.A.S.Y. is as follows:
E.xpress (example: "Nancy, when you throw strawberries at me it makes it difficult for me to work.")
A.ddress (example: "my clothes are getting stained, it's a waste of good berries, and i like blueberries better.")
S.ay (what you would like to have happen) (example: "I'd like you to stop throwing strawberries at me while i'm working."
Y. (ask a Yes or No question) (example: "Can you do that?")

Oso handy.

Love of the Sensitive, Love.

This is abso-freakin-lootly my fav image that I crafted during the Saint Patrick march down Delaware Avenue this past Sunday, which Yours Truly watched with pals Jen, Jamal, Sherry, Annie, Alan, and Liz.
Sadly, YT was only armed with a cam and a dream, no silly string.
This parade can be oso much more, have another dimension, when there is a can of day-glo green silly string to be squirted in madcap high-five fashion.

Today is Saint Joseph's Day so therefore a call was made to YT's pops - my main Joe.
After a schmmmooozzee for pro photogs, off to a Saint Joseph feast at 888.

Viva San Giuseppe Love.

Yonder image is art, an ongoing series of found numbers of note.
10 being one of the magic numbers.
10/10 being the day of my emergence.

Yours Truly is oso elated as Shepard Fairey has become an art star.
YT met Fairey on the dark and historical streets of SoHo one late night on the way back to the Broome Street loft and talked about his work as he was busy wheatpasting Andre the Giant posters on late night walls.
At that time he gave me two Andre the Giant posters and a handful of stickers.
And who, You ask, is Shepard Fairey.
Well, I shall tell you.
He is thee artist who created the Obama Change/Yes We Can/Yes We Did portrait in reds and blues.
He also has a retro in Boston at Institute of Contemporary Art.
His work has aura, as does he.
Something a starspotter such as YT could tell all those years ago on the SoHo streets.
Yee ha.


Fairey/Andre Love.

Yours Truly has been enjoying the local transpo.
For that is where you actually talk to denizens; in a taxi you get the often-skewed landscape observations of the cabbie.
The 720 has been a trip fav of YT, a good solid all-purpose bus.
Met a security man from the Getty Center waiting outside the Getty and talked with him and a gang of 20-somethings.
I forgot to ask for a transfer, or did not know that I would be needing a transfer, so the nice Getty security man gave YT a token, Compliments of the Getty, he said.
The bus wended through UCLA, through Westwood District, then at my intersection of Change noted the Armand Hammer collection so perambulated through there.
Where some two-story high bamboo was observed.
A triumph.
Yesterday bussed to Culver City from Beverly Hills (where Little Laura and I rest our end-of-night weary heads) and saw the Thomas Beale show (image at toppermost, my fav of the show) at Kinsey-DesForges.
Another triumph.
Absolutely delightfully constructed and joined pieces of shell and wood.
He's the genius behind Honey Space in Chelsea so had to visit this show.
The other galleries were so bizarrely all over the arts charts - some really jawdroppingly awful undergrad-style painting, some wondrous paintings, an artist who loves John perhaps as much as YT and entitled his show I Am the Walrus.
Inquired as to the price of one of his pieces made from the distinguishable popular port of John with added googly eyes.
Size: 8x10.
Price: Four thousand five hundred, the gallery girl stated.
Reaction: Oh.
∞
Today back to the Museum of Tolerance as yesterday they would not tolerate one single more human in their large space.
So back to the street and the bus and the map.
A fellow bus rider day numero uno instructed me about the joys of 1-800-COMMUTE here and when you phone a nice lady listens to where in hell you desire to go and your preferred arrival time. Then, miraculously, she tells you your buses, times, everything.
Coming from the Middling City this is a marvel.

Today will be seeing Jodi at Museum of Contemporary Art.
Yesterday night ended the night at Viper Room, a small dark hovel where a hiphop band was taking the corner bar, and barworkers were oso friendly.
And, most importantly, the doorman, Dave, let me and Little Laura in pro bono as his guests, stamping our wrists and opening the special side door, really the front door on Sunset.
Tonight more fine dining, more adventure.

Adventured Love.

+ +
Stuffed alligator in the Beverly Hills showroom front windows of Nieman Marcus.
Gate 1 in Culver City, that curious industrial, wide boulevard string of good and bad.

Yours Truly looks at this image of Cali mountains and sees nothing but cowboys on horseback, lumbering along with rifles at rest, sure-footed horses wending their way around rock, and wild lupine.
As their enemies lurk somewhere along the unmarked trail.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe and aussi ce n'est pas en gai Paris but at the LACMA, where Yours Truly totally did not mind her - or anyone's - business but spent several hours loving art to its maximus.
There was also an installation of the Fabiolo collection - the flea market saintess collected by an artist. All there.
YT had read about this and was shocked - shocked - to see it there, in LACMA.
YT thinks how the name LACMA sounds too much like lachrymous and there is oso nothing to cry about in LACMA - except that it's far too far away from the Middling City.
YT needed to see such expanses of art and this wild sunshine.
Little Laura and I dined late last night on prosecco and sushi and organic chix broth under some palm trees at the BevHills Hilton on the terrace.
She is absolutely radiant in her new gig and YT says More prosecco to LL and her new fabulous chapter of consulting and traveling.


A view whilst leaving LACMA on way to points beyond.
Was happy to see Lee Krasner amongst the Broad Fam's holdings - go, Lee.

Western Love.

Yours Truly, ever minding her own business, found herself in Heady's car this fine morning, bright and early.
Then, still minding my business, 2 planes + 1 shuttle + 1 city bus later, ended up in Beverly Hills, having a late lunch outdoors at LACMA (art world code for an art museum) replete with a California white vino (thankfully low on FQ - pesky fruit quotient) whilst looking at some spindly palm trees over yonder.
Somewhere in this sprawling urban situ is Little Laura, who YT will see later.
Sherry Burns posted a link to the Channel 2 self-promoting vid/commercial featuring YT et al.
I would be the one in the rain with the flattening hair holding a sign that they added text to: something about what in hell is Albany doing for us.
I need to email Sherry to inquire if they digitally changed the tone of my lips from crazy lady searing red to a more muted kind of mauve.

Searing, rambling Love.

Nature is truly a wondrous thing, even when captured, killed, skinned, stuffed, and with faux eyeballs added.

Above is a red fox that never actually roamed Tifft Nature Preserve but probably a similar nearby community.

The dusty fox, with paw pointed toward prospective dangers, is up out of harm's fingertips at the visitor centre of Tifft, where Yours Truly visited today for a story for the Shiney Happy Mag.

Had a gig today documenting girls investigating the possibilities that science might be their chosen path to happiness. In one group they were stringing together marshmallows to represent monomers which, when joined with the marshmallows of their peers, became one big happy polymer.

Foxy Love.

The Governor came to the Middling City, where he announced that he and other legislators and administrators from BigU's and SmallC's are providing all children of crash survivors with scholarships to college for four years.
Excellent, Yours Truly says.
And then he sped off to speak to other constituents about the handling of other matters like the asinine fee to cross the Grand Island Bridge, and the cigarette tax being repealed for the Native population.

I admired the Gov from the moment I met him whilst documenting the Dem Convention in the MC several years ago, when he received the party nomination for Lieutenant Gov. Back when Eliot knew how to better manage his Affairs.
Today YT read that Eliot is going to move to real estate moguling in D.C.

Below is an image YT made last week during the opening for Ani Hoover and Saya Woolfalk's ultra-vivid scene shows.


Ultra Vivid Love.

*toppermost sidebar*
Above photo made chez Rice during the André Watts home concert.
Mme. Rice had lilies and hyacinths filling the rooms with their Perfect perfumes.

vignettes.

1.
Saturday's gig included making some hi-festive images of children running amok on a schoolbus. General merriment, bouncing down aisle, screams of joy, checking iPhones, and the like.
Before the youngsters boarded had a moment to talk to the schoolbus driver, who is a regular M-F driver.
I asked her about the radio. Was there one.
No, she said. The older buses had them but the newer models do not.
She reported that some drivers Abused the radios.
We then discussed that concept.
Yours Truly did proffer up the fact that YT has, seemingly, fried out one of the Subaru's non-mighty speakers by listening to music on 40. I think it's 40.
She said that drivers bring on their own music-playing devices but she does not.
The children were boarding so our conversation ceased.

2.
Arrived at the small chapel/church with the grotto this morning for Bonita Z's funeral. On the way in noted - of course - (being both an ardent photog and caffeine booster) that there was an idling coffee wagon at the corner of the lot.
YT is familiar with this coffee co's wagons as it is the same co that supplies hot bevvies and snacks to worksites, and to Guru Tom's business.
YT wondered how this wagon would be doing any business in such a lot, at that auspicious hour, at that location specifically.
As YT approached the bank vault-resembling front doors three funereal workers were leaving, chatting in a mid-workday voice.
Then one made it clear that he was on his way to the coffee wagon, asking if the other funereal workers cared for anything.
He did know their orders.
So, voilà.
The coffee wagon operator knows that pallbearers, and handlers of hearses will be in need of a mid-morning energy boost.

3.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

4.
YT has decided that this is one of her most fav items. Ever.

This is from the giftshoppe at George Eastman House.
YT wanted it.
Her mother/Fats purchased it for her.
YT was most thrilled.
The monkey's eyes glow an evil LED blue and he chatters an evil monkey chatter when a little button is pushed.
I worry about what will happen when its circuitry wears out.


Mid-day, vignetted Love.

So apparently the world is still crumbling and a newsybits type just said that the economy of Japan is Falling off a cliff.

On a much lighter note.
With much laser-focused intention that is the moment of looking through a camera with such ferocity to document something - anything - of great import, hit the laptop running adrenalized to acquire Band of Horses tix to the acoustic gig at Carnegie Hall.
The dreaded message of huge traffic kept things from big fruition and 20 minutes after the BoH tix went on sale It finally worked.
They are performing the last day of Bonaroo and really that would have been a solid Plan B, and Myrtle Beach's House of Blues may have been a good Plan B-2.
Oh, thoughts now drift to the merch.
YT has been known to zoom to merch tables the world over to acquire t's before their possible sell-out.
Yours Truly may be a (laugh) wizened pro photog adult with an incredibly huge rock & roll archive of images she's made all over the place but the thought of plopping my arse down into the Carnegie Hall's pitch-perfect ambiance to hear one of thee finest bands in the world makes my eyes all swimmy, my heart all tinkly.
Dined with Arts Mentor last evening and insisted that he will not only accept some copies of BoH discs, but Love them.
Ended the evening at 888 where YT walked into some political tumult, as some customers had just left in a dizzyed-up manner and there was much buzzing of how cabs were shunned and such.
Liz pointed out that some Middling City cab co. had a big barn fire (barn fahr, as the relatives out yonder would utter) so perhaps this explained the dearth of cabs.
Now, really.
Anyone in their right mind does not expect to take an MC cab in a timely fashion.
YT has posted about the lame-assed state of MC cabs altogether.

Onwards.
Backwards.
BoH and their loveliness.

Was told that Bonita Z has passed into the big art studio in the sky.
Some people pass and you cannot visualize them fully any more, some just the opposite.
I see her face Perfectly, its round jublilance.
I hear her growls of delight, feel how in Love she was with her beau, how they laughed together in their Love bubble.
Her pomes, her boobalicious art work.
Passed into a quieter place.
Bye, Bonita Z.

Love of all that is green, passed, and sonically restorative.

+ +
And hello to GFS, who hides behind the lyrics of the song that I listen to at this juncture, track 3.

At left is pianist André Watts during a concert privé at the Rice Residence on the one-blocked Tudor Place.
Watts, with the warmest eyes and sparkling personality to match, did the concert for a benefit for AIDS Community Services in the Middling City.
Yours Truly was asked to doc the event, allegedly they'd have no other.
YT also is a past arts auction chair for ACS's now-defunct Cause! for Celebration, and an arts donor for several years.
Watts' programme included pieces by Mozart, Ravel, Chopin, Beethoven with commentary by him between.
What YT has always referred to lovingly as Inter-Song Banter - ISB if You will.
I had a moment to make some lovely ports of Watts with the Rices in the concert room (formerly their living room), and told him that I'd like to make some images of him from behind to show the 100 or so in the room, and make some in the beginning - sans flash, of course.
He, for a musician of that genre, was so agreeable and gracious.
It was so packed in the room that YT found a Perfect seat in what I dubbed The Cinderella Box Seat - in the fireplace.
It was enough room for me and my gear and for me to stretch out my legs.
YT has never sat that close to a concert pianist and was quite surprised to hear that they - or at least this one - growls and hums along to his playing.
The concert ended with Chopin, and a large surly growl from the pianist.

Growling, hand-fluttered Love.

There Yours Truly was, minding her own business. In Rochester, in George Eastman House, specifically and for GPS or geocaching purposes.
YT's mother was also minding her own business.
And, in an adjacent room on the GEH second floor, YT's father was minding his own business, too.

As is my GEH wont, I like to tell whomever I am with there that thee George Eastman, a perfectionist of frightening proportions, committed suicide in the house, with a gun, because he was in pain with spinal stenosis.
So this fact was regaled to YT's mother as a slight and well-coiffed woman was eavesdropping.
First it should be mentioned that YT's mother had been searching for any documentation of GE's secret lover, who she knew by name.
I suggested, wrongly, that the family photographs be pored over.
This is perhaps why the slight and well-coifed woman began to listen.
She was floating ever closer and asked what stenosis is.
YT's mother, who suffers from this painful affliction, told her.
The woman asked if she is in constant pain and she said Yes.
The slight woman, speaking in a southern (sutthern) accent asked if she might do a laying-on of hands on my mother as she is a Prophet.
What can one say.
My mother said Yes.
So there the three of us were in a small upstairs GEH room, no longer watching the informational vid on display as the slight woman is appealing For a MIRACLE for ...
she then asked my mother's name
... for ANNETTE.
Then she kissed my mother on the cheek.
My mother, Professional People Person, gave the woman one of her most beatific smiles and thanked her.
I asked the slight prophet's name and we were then informed that she has a television show, that she's published books, and has a website.
I Googled her the instant she was out of the room and lo & behold, there was this slight lady - and her spouse - in all their sutthern and prophetic glory.

Onwards.

Had luxe dinner at The Social down the avenue from GEH.
Highly rec.

Highly rec Love, Love.

A newbie for the Accidental Frame Series, entitled Valentime.
This was made at the out of town and out of sight Valentine Wedding which, to my humble op, did not include enough red.
Did note that both moms in attendance, and a gramma, had on red.
Long live trad.

So FB is all in throes of figuring out how to navigate between online accessibility and privacy - it's more than the appropriation of one's posted party shots of pals and the like, but the ability for FB administrators to share a user's email address, or other contact information.

As an early FB user I was appalled to discover that my visits to epicurious and Pandora were being documented on my FB page until I fixed that prying little wagon pronto.

Speaking of red and all its bawdy connotations, it is time once again for Yours Truly to construct yet another lovely lively interactive photo booth for charity. I have a list of fav causes and one that perpetually has made the cut since the org's inception is Squeaky Wheel and their Peep Show.

This year 'twill be Nunzia's Boudoir Secrets Photo Booth with naughty shopgirls to assist customers with the selection of a perfect secret to hold aloft to document one's likeness.

Last night there was a man passed out at the wheel of his idling automobile blocking the drive of my property. I pulled up and blared the horn for some time to no avail. He was slumped down.
In these strange and armed times it is not advisable to rouse a sleeping man in a vehicle when it could result in an odd and punchy reaction.
Another person noted the slumped man and they called the authorities who knocked and sent him on his way.
One night out with Elba, we were returning to the Shiney Apple from a snazzy party in Brooklyn, we discovered a man in sports car slumped and snoozing. We did get out (that was indeed a different era, less armed) and noted his breath.
I at that time was driving what I drove in my salad days - a functioning wreck.
Light on looks, but dependable, with working radio. Critical.
So we discussed the possibility, for hi-jinxal exercise purposes, of removing the man from his sportscar and placing him instead in the wreck and making off after the swapping.

Had to abort plans to hike down into Shale Creek this fine afternoon as it was icy and on the driest summer day can be slippery with all that prehistoric shale and all.
Wished to show Kennergy the joys of the eternal flame, the methane that leaks up between the rocks.
Another day, another trek down, another match to mysterious gas jets to ignite what is truly a recommended and lovely site - compliments of Nature.

Gas-jetted Love.