Face the Face

[captainsblog]

My name is Ray and my blog violates Facebook's community standards.

Everybody: Hi, Ray!

But don't worry. Apparently this has nothing to do with my actual content, or my recent double-secret probation over there. Nope, as I discovered in a Facebook post from one of the proprietors of the

dwdq and then confirmed in this entry from longtime linkposter andrewducker, Facebook has determined that the entire Dreamwidth domain violates its community standards. So,



NO LINKS FOR YOU!

In the ten minutes since I began this, the banhammer appears to have been lifted from my page and Andrew's, but the temerity of these people in blocking an entire domain on alleged "community standards" grounds is staggering.  Particularly where they've essentially rolled over and played dead for a President* who handles truth about as well as he handles other peoples' money.

So this is not the complaint you were looking for. Move along.

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Eleanor spent much of yesterday working on the framing of the new patio, then had a Buddhist community meeting online, so it was a pretty late night. I finally got around to looking up a t-shirt I'd seen in Wegmans earlier in the day:



Perfect, I thought, except it was lacking one essential time signature. A little photoshopping and I had it done:



While her meeting was going on, I was online with a different kind of difficult time: a livestream from the Towne Crier, a beloved Hudson Valley music venue I got to know a little short of two years ago. I've been on their mailing list ever since, and the pandemic has hit them hard. They tried staying open with daily takeout specials, but without live music, it's been a bear. They're in discussions with the City of Beacon to get permission to host outdoor concerts, but even those won't bring them back to where they were. So last night, some famed nationally known musicians stepped in to lend a hand and a guitar: David Broza, Steve Earle, Leo Kottke & Bill Miller all appeared. Tonight, actor-singer Jeff Daniels will take a turn in a ticketed event to support them.  I donated to their gofundme, and so kin yew:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-towne-crier-survive?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email


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Our Sunday morning dog posse had vowed to get out there by 7 this morning to beat the heat today. That didn't happen, but I was up in time, and we were there by 8. Not a lot of pictures to add, this being our third time in this place, but here are a couple. 

Another of the tableaus: Catwoman in the Catmobile and I'm not sure what else....



And we found a playground hidden in the woods we'd not passed by before:



Of course I went with Paul Lynde to block;)

We'd already worked up a sweat by 9:30 (the app on my phone says we wandered for over two miles), but Eleanor was already well past us in that department. I mulched out front and did assorted aiding in the back while she got two of the four edges of the patio frame in place. We were done by lunchtime and are both pretty sore puppies now, but nothing more is planned beyond lifting the occasional glass.

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Memories regained from this weekend:

We've both been emailing with Jim and Jean, my college roommates and still best of friends. I also heard back from David, the East Meadow and Cornell alum I lost touch with but tracked down after various things reminded me of him (and mentioned here). These converged in the past few days, when I finally heard back from David through Linkedin (my email to him got buried) and Jim's email to me also mentioned a memory of him. Another longtime roommate of ours, Jay, had met David through me. Somehow David offered Jay a ride into downtown Ithaca, a one-time experience: Jay dubbed him the "Cadillac Fiend," on account of that ride in David's beater Caddy. I remember the car: David's dad put him in the biggest boat he could find, on the premise that it would increase his chances of survival. That was more of a consideration on Long Island than it was in Ithaca, with its hills and winding roads and on-street parking.  Jay was a pre-med from our freshman-year corridor, who kept at it and stayed in Ithaca after becoming an MD, still working in a family practice there at last recollection- my sister has seen references to him there. He was something of an absentee roommate for much of our time due to family considerations, which I will have to get around to posting sometime.

My other recovered memory involves lighter fluid, of all things. An online friend posted about the enticing smell of lighter fluid and charcoal briquettes. Like us, he long abandoned them, but for us, the memory is more of people than of tasty food.

 

When I began practicing law in ::pounds chisel with Roman numerals into stone::, there was an older of counsel in my office named Nino Marini. Nino was as old school as it got. One summer, he invited the lawyers, four of us, and da wives, to his Lake Ontario beach house for a cookout. It was cold, raw and ridiculously windy. In traditional hunter-gatherer format, the menfolk huddled round Nino's grill while da wives were left to mingle on the deck, much to Eleanor's great thrills.

At least in his mind, the only way Nino could keep that fire going in that wind was by pouring an entire quart bottle of Texaco lighter fluid on top of it. I have no recollection of how they tasted or even if they got cooked. As they say, police suspect alcohol was involved.

Nino's long passed, and I left that firm more than a quarter century ago, but to this day when I smell mass quantities of butane in the air from a neighbor's grill, I raise a glass and toast the Nino Marini School of Culinary Arts.

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We're getting takeout tonight. No briquettes will be harmed in the making of this meal. And I will post this to Facebook, dammit. Because I can:P