'As we lay stone on stone'

Howard has the greatest book lying around the house and today, lying around the house myself in convalescent mode, I took a peek at it. Above is a picture of the first page. When you open the book that is what you see! This beautiful quote.

"See! This our father did for us."

Then it gets better! You turn the page ...

And you see ...

Too great.

This book is copyright 1923. Howard says it has chapters in which it complains about how current houses are made shoddily next to houses of the past. I love that.

Most of all I love the high-minded quote. I love books that begin with high-minded quotes. It is like "The Joy of Cooking," which begins with a great one:

"That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee
Earn it anew, if thou wouldst possess it."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There was this book I read on the art of soap making that began with a quote from St. Paul. I loved that! Unfortunately it had to go back to the library so I cannot quote it.

I will have to find a splendidly high-minded quote with which to begin my book on Leonard Pennario.

Suggestions are welcome!

Steinway Hall Welcomes Pennario Biographer

Another thing I did in New York before my bug descended was go to Steinway Hall and meet with Steinway and Sons about Leonard Pennario who was an esteemed Steinway artist. I went there after going to Mass and confession at Leonard's church, St. Paul the Apostle.

Steinway rolled out the red carpet for the Leonard Pennario biographer!

I was there for something like two hours! Plus they let me and my friend Lizzie tour the basement and everything. That is where the great concert artists such as Pennario go to select their concert grands.

But yikes, my hair was so frizzy. I am looking at the picture above and wringing my hands. When I was in New York I was out in the rain something like three days in a row, zut alors. One reason I came down with the plague. There I am in this picture, unaware that this cold was mutating inside my body, thinking of nothing but Leonard Pennario and his history with Steinway, la la la la la la la.

To the right of me is the one, the only, the great Irene Wlodarski, the National Coordinator of the Concerts and Artists Department. She remembered Pennario personally and she recognizes his greatness, a most excellent and erudite thing in a person.

Ms. Wlodarski was nice and even allowed me to bitch when I walked into the main atrium of Steinway Hall and sniffed at the big portrait of Billy Joel.

"Leonard should be there instead," I informed her.

She showed me through the Leonard Pennario file which was fat and not skinny as I had expected. There were a lot of papers! And we talked about how we might collaborate in the future.

It is good to be the Leonard Pennario biographer.

Doors open for you!

Confession, New York style

It is high time I weighed in again!

I went to New York City to see the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra play at Carnegie Hall and while I was there, yikes, I caught this bug. For the past two and a half days I have been sleeping! But now I am up. It is almost midnight so I still have time to write in the Web log on today's date and make my hiatus one day shorter.

One thing I did in NYC before the bug descended was, I went to Mass and Confession at the Paulist Church. That is the church where Leonard Pennario used to go when he was in New York.

It was cool to go to that church and I found out why he went to Mass there: It is just a couple of blocks from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. I felt a little emotional walking in the doors.

It is a beautiful old church. There was also this very cool statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which I photographed up above. Beautiful and simple. And here is a stunning crucifix.

There was a guy with an instrument case at Mass. Very New York. And here is what was also very New York: There was a person texting in the confession line!

A slim, stylish Asian girl, two people ahead of me. And she looked like the people you see texting at stoplights, glancing up at regular intervals to make sure the light has not changed. She would glance up to make sure the confessional had not opened.

When it did, the phone went into her pocket and she went into the booth.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York, as that New York columnist would put it.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. We shall give the confession texter the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps she was using the Confession App!

May Day

My mom and I were out walking and we were talking about what a beautiful day it was.

Honest, it felt like a Hollywood set. The robins and the mourning doves were singing. It was early evening and there was the aroma of people grilling things. The yard was a carpet of violets. Beautiful and perfect for the first day of May. We spoke of that.

Then my mother said, "I think it's terrible how it's been taken over by the Russians."

She meant International Workers Day. I said, "Mom, me too!"

My mother said: "It used to be a day for the Blessed Mother." Well, all of May was but May 1 signaled the start of it and there used to be May Day celebrations.

Why do we need International Workers Day? We have Labor Day. My mother made that argument a long time ago. This has bugged her for years.

International Workers Day has bugged other people too. It bugged Pope Pius XII enough so that he instituted the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker in 1955, so the Communists would not "own" that day. I always wondered where that feast day came from. I just looked it up and that was how.

Anyway, we can defiantly celebrate May Day anyway on the Leonard Pennario Web log, with the great Irish tenor Frank Patterson.

Rustles of spring

Signs of spring! The giraffes were out.

I told Howard I was going to make note of the giraffe and he said: "You'd be sticking your neck out." Ha, ha! But I am doing it anyway.

I could not take a picture from my car in the heat of the moment so I used that picture up above from Trip Advisor, of a giraffe at the Buffalo Zoo. It is cool how the Buffalo Zoo is in the city, right on a well-traveled street corner, so it is not unusual to round the corner and see a giraffe. Other animals, too! Once I saw a rhinoceros. I just happened to have just the right view into the zoo.

That is a most excellent thing, when you are driving down an ordinary city street and can see a rhinoceros! It was just standing there two-dimensional, like an animal cracker.

Anyway, that was one sign of spring, seeing the giraffe.

Another was, I saw a freighter steaming into the harbor the other day. That is a summer sight!

And one more thing, the greatest sign of all. Yesterday morning I went outside to take out the garbage -- just me taking out the garbage is a sign of spring -- and I heard the unmistakable voice that means spring. The voice from next door.

"You son of a pup," it said.

It was the guy from next door who cannot stop swearing! His voice was quiet as if he were warming up. But it was distinct! I heard him!

Surely now spring is here to stay.

We may now hear Pennario playing "Rustles of Spring."

Ow, ow, ow!

I went to Pilates class today. My body just felt as if it wanted it so I said, "OK, body. OK."

Wow, was I ever sorry!

We did all those exercises pictured above and then some. Thanks a lot, body, for wanting that!

I have been out of the Pilates loop for a while, just the way I have been out of the Leonard Pennario loop. And I found to my horror that I could not even do the Roll-Up. That is where you lie on your back and have to sit up with your legs flat on the floor. Son of a sea cook, I could not do it! I would psych myself into rolling up ...

... but then I would have to grab onto my legs just to pull myself up. Not good, not good! It will come back to me in a few weeks but still.

The teacher, Jill, said encouragingly: "We are doing this later in the workout so you can see how your body performs when it is warmed up ... or, maybe, exhausted."

I was certainly in the exhausted category.

After that I went to Albrecht Discount  on Sheridan and they were remodeling! Dust and dirt and cardboard boxes were everywhere. Most unsettling.

I said, "I hope you're not changing things too much. I like things at Aldi the way they are."

The one workman said to me, "We're just trying to make things so that whatever Aldi you will walk into, things are the same. Like at Walmart."

 I bought some Goldhen eggs and fled.

But now a few hours later I am feeling good. I have my Goldhen eggs plus I have the aching muscles that prove I had a really good workout.

I am ahead in the game of life!

Cool cats

Tonight we did Movie Night again at my mom's. She is well again! Which means I can get back to this Web log and to Leonard Pennario.

The movie we saw was "The AristoCats."

I had never seen it! It is from 1970, a little on the new side for us.

It was fun. My brother George had done some Googling and knew that the voice of Duchess -- that's the white cat -- was Eva Gabor. So funny! Probably some of the other voices are noteworthy but I did not recognize the names. Phil Harris who was the tomcat, he was a band leader. One quote attributed to him is: "I can't die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver." Ha, ha!

The kids have gotten good at watching movies. It is a far cry from back when they could not concentrate. They were fixated on "The AristoCats" and we were all laughing along with little George who took great enjoyment in the movie and laughed and laughed, this funny loud little-boy laugh.

We all laughed together at Uncle Waldo, the goose who had been basted in white wine! Handily that clip has been posted on YouTube. I loved how they showed the geese from behind, waddling.

That jazz song at the end is a kick: "Everybody Wants To Be a Cat."

I am in my second childhood!

A new leaf

The harvest is in!

I am talking about my sorrel plant. I grabbed up the leaves yesterday and for a day they sat in the fridge in a plastic bag. But I absolutely did not want to waste them. And so I made a pilaf.

Remember my sorrel? Sure you do. It was only back in 2008 that I noted its presence in my garden. Leonard Pennario was still around then.

For my pilaf I used a recipe for spinach. If you are looking for a recipe for sorrel there are kind of slim pickings.

It came out yummy! I do not remember what I have done with this sorrel in the past, if anything. Back in 2008 I kind of mocked it out. But it is tasty! The sorrel tastes kind of like a lemon spinach. And it has a smooth texture like chard.

Now I have a mind to cook up more from my back yard. There are dandelions. And I have already chopped up and eaten some of the bishop's weed. The chives are growing and I have used those too.

Spring is sprung!

The twilight zone

Squeezing in exercise at the end of the day I found that gnarly spring trees sure do make nice pictures!

Especially with the gently variegated sky.

One of the many reasons why not to move to California as Leonard Pennario did.

This looks like some landscape out of Europe!

Snap. Snap!

I do love my variations on a theme.

Incredible, the beauty right in your own back yard!

Easter Yeggs

Our friend Ryan said that the mention of yeggs made him think of just one thing:

Bugs Bunny and "Easter Yeggs"!

Hahahahaa! I looked up Bugs Bunny's "Easter Yeggs" and found this cartoon, this clip of it I mean. It is like nothing you would see now. Bugs is in a shoddy part of town. You see signs for "Dead End" and "City Dump." Then there is that mean kid sleeping in a crate.

The kid beats Bugs up! And there is this weird old 1930s looking sofa in the background.

I had never seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon before. This is my first one.

There will be more!

By the way my mother's crossword puzzle supremacy continued today. She was able to call the first name of some football coach I had never heard of.

"He was the coach for Notre Dame," she said.

I said, "Mom, how do you know these things?"

She said, "I read the sports pages."

Researching Leonard Pennario leaves me no time for researching football coaches, alas. But I hail my mother's victory.

She is rocking that rehab!