Sidi-Maree

 

♥Sidi-Maree♥

July 17, 1994 - December 13, 2009

I was hoping to be able to have the strength to write a little today about my dear little Sidi and how much it meant to me to have had his glowing presence in my life.  But every time I try to think of what to say about his life I find that words fail me.  Imagine that.

Maybe next year.  

Rest in Peace my dear little man, you are always in my Heart. 

Spam and Pop Tarts

A while back I described my anti-bucket list including two of the places anyone would be least likely to find me being any Disney park (apologies to my friend Chickie) or viewing the movie Titanic.  Now the news has provided me with a new non-destination that absolutely completely tops my list:  a cruise ship.

Imagine, if you will, cramming a small town of 5,000 strangers into a floating monstrosity and put it out on the cold deep ocean.  Bad enough, right?  But now take away their electricity so there is no light, no air conditioning, no hot water, no hot food. Free booze, though.  Great for a bunch of drunks in the dark.  Fun?  Wow! The military has to send helicopters with emergency food (the delightful aforementioned Spam and Pop Tarts.)  Egad.  What could possibly be worse?

I am composing this entry in my mind as I drive home this evening, after hearing the news story on CBC radio.  I arrive home to see a madly blinking light on my answering machine.  Oh goodie!  Messages.

Well, it turns out I have three detailed messages for a person named "Monica."  Monica and her husband and child have been confirmed in their reservation on the ninth deck of a Holland America cruise ship.  YIKES!

So I called the 800 number and left a message for this earnest employee, Lily, and told her my name was not Monica and that all afternoon she had just been leaving all of these messages on a wrong number.  

I was polite and refrained from telling her that she could not put me on the ninth deck of a cruise ship if she offered to pay me.  No matter how much Spam and Pop Tarts they were planning to serve.

Bon voyage, Monica!

Mighty Hunter, Leaf Bringer, Deer Scarer

Siobhan, my six pound black and white cow cat is many things.  She is the Mighty Hunter who brings me dead (and sometimes still alive) mice onto my bed in the morning.  She also manages to lure birds in through the chicken wire and she has captured snakes and crickets and June bugs.  

When there are no rodents to capture she makes as much of a fuss bringing in dead leaves and stalks of weeds.  I call her the Leaf Bringer.  Some days she brings in so many leaves I need a rake for my living room carpet.

This evening I glanced out my back door to see a doe and her two half grown twin fawns slowly working their way towards the cat enclosure.  One fawn kept stamping her front hooves, alternating legs nervously.  All three tails and all six ears were twitching with the tension.  What was catching their attention?  It was Siobhan, who was seated calmly in the enclosure.

Suddenly Siobhan leaped onto her platform  and all three deer scattered into the forest like leaves in a whirlwind.  So now my little girl has another name:  Deer Scarer. 

The Governor's Inn

Beginning in January of 1970, although we were still folkie regulars at the Limelight Coffee House, we also patronized another little club which presented completely different but equally remarkable music. This was the Governor’s Inn, located on Sycamore Street on Buffalo’s East Side. The Governor’s Inn was a blues club and charming owner James Peterson was a jack-of-all-trades including used car salesman, blues musician, bartender, and part-time decorator - I will never forget when he redecorated and put glitter on the ceilings (at least in the ladies’ room!). James had connections to Willie Dixon and the Chicago blues scene which resulted in national acts coming to perform including legends like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. On one memorable evening Buddy Guy plugged in his guitar with a really long chord and made his way down off the stage, meandered through the crowd, out the front door and into the intersection, still playing!

My then-husband Paul and I started going there originally with a couple of Canadian friends who attended Canisius College (a professor had first taken them to the place), and then later mostly by ourselves. We were drawn not only by the well-known acts but also by our favorite house group, The James Peterson Blues Band, which ultimately featured James’ five-year-old son Lucky on keyboards and guitar. Father and son were both dazzling. I recently discovered that little Lucky was playing Bill Doggett’s Hammond B3 organ, and a love for that unmistakable sound has been embedded in my brain ever since.

I don’t know how they managed to squeak past the liquor board with a kid running around in the bar but Lucky was in attendance most of the times we were there - he used to play with his toys behind the bar. I remember one night seeing his little head going down the length of the bar and I could not figure out how he was managing to walk so smoothly - turns out he was riding his tricycle! I also remember another evening when he rode up to our table on his trike and as I was talking to him he suddenly leaned over and sank his teeth into my arm - then he giggled madly and made his escape pedaling furiously. Good thing I was wearing a winter jacket and he still had his baby teeth!

In the same span of time that found Lucky riding around on his tricycle in the Buffalo night club, he was also releasing his first record album (produced by Dixon) and the  accompanying splash of publicity resulted in appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show and reviews in well known magazines.

Some evenings we brought friends with us, but Paul and I were usually the only people of pallor in that audience and it was upon the rarest of occasions that anyone would pay any attention to us whatsoever. Despite the racial tensions of the times I always got the impression that it was the love of the blues  that united all souls in the audience. One gentleman (I won’t name him) seemed to take it upon himself to act as our “guardian” - every week he would seat himself at our table and just nonchalantly hang out with us. His companionship was enjoyable and I never really thought anything of this until one evening when a patron who was more than a little inebriated staggered up and loudly insisted on buying me a drink. Our protector said softly, “The lady does not want a drink,” and then he ever so casually readjusted his suit jacket to reveal the hand gun tucked into his belt. The unwanted drunk disappeared as swiftly as he had arrived.

Another character who livened up the place was Mingo. Mingo was a snake charmer, costumed as a sort of a low-rent genii who, in addition, pranced around performing various feats of fire- and glass-eating. His huge boa constrictor was usually draped around his neck and he kept other snakes in a big basket. How he loved to scare the ladies! He snatched empty glasses off of tables, taking big bites out of the rims and he also ate light bulbs. I never did find out if he actually worked for James or if he just showed up sporadically at the club to work for tips. Mingo was also memorable to me for the last time I saw him - he was lurching down the sidewalk in front of 644 William Street (where I worked back then). He looked to be under the influence of something and he presented an exceedingly raggedy figure in the unforgiving light of day. I later read in the paper that his boa constrictor had been lost inside the walls of his rooming house.

The last calendar notation I found of  going to the Governor’s Inn was in August of 1972 - a lot of things were happening in my life in those days and I kind of lost track of how much longer the club even existed. But after all these years, Lucky Peterson, a child-star survivor, and James Peterson are still going strong as acclaimed bluesmen. Lucky lives in Texas, according to his Wikipedia page, and James is in Florida.  I hear that every so often Lucky comes to  Buffalo for a performance (although the last time went to see him was in 1980 when he was only 16 years old). But sometimes I just can’t help but wonder whatever happened to Mingo.

Lost in the Woods

On Sunday October 10, 2010, aka 10/10/10, in order to mark this special day I decided to go for a ten minute walk in my unremarkable woods and take a couple of nature photographs. My land is flat; there are no murmuring brooks, no quiet ponds, no magnificent vistas - just trees and weeds and brush and brambles (consisting mainly of buck thorn with lethal 1”- 1½” spikes). The sun was shining and the bugs were gone for the season. It was a perfect day!

I wore a pair of shoes with sturdy soles, cotton socks with jeans tucked in, and I carried my camera, my monopod, and, having locked the house, my keys. A couple of Kleenex and a half a box of Sugar Babies completed my gear. My plan was to follow the new path back to the old oak trees, take some photos, follow the same path back out. I was pretty excited about this new trail as it had been recently created by my kind neighbor with his tractor’s bush hog.

I found the oaks and took a few photos, found a handful of pretty yellow and black feathers, took a few more photos here and there, and then I found myself to be completely lost. I could not relocate the trail at all; I started following deer trails, trying to remember where the sun had been in the sky when I entered the woods. I kept going in circles, working my way deeper and deeper into the old canopy forest. Every time I tried to leave I ended up caught in the high weeds (taller than me!) or snagged in the buck thorn. Several times the thorns held me so fiercely I feared I would never be free of them. (How do deer make it through these things with their pointy antlers?) (Deer are smart - they don’t go in the buck thorn, silly!)

This was not the first time I have been lost in the woods. When I was considerably younger I once had a similar scare down near Letchworth (I can blame a camera for leading me astray in that incident as well), and I have been lost in my own woods upon several occasions. Wait - is that banjo music I hear? EEK!

It frightens me being lost like this - and of course many wild thoughts go crashing and careening through my brain as I try to find my way back to my nice little house. Honest, I will never complain about the 85% humidity again - just let me find my house! I love my house!

What if I never find my way out - not a soul knows I went for a walk - my car is there, my house is locked, my computer is on - someone will think I have been kidnapped! They will find my bones in the spring (if ever!) and since I am carrying no ID - they will not even know it is me! I was literally and figuratively spiraling out of control. Breathing heavily - blood pressure rising.

H-E-L-P!!!

And, as a person who never goes anywhere without a bottle of water, I had no water with me - I was sweating and becoming dehydrated and boy oh boy was I thirsty! I got so mixed up I started following the sun (which should have behind me to make it back to the house).

What if I fall and break my leg/sprain my ankle? Then I will be totally beyond hope and help. What would I do? I have a lot of MacGyver in me but I did not have much to work with - keys, camera, monopod, Kleenex, Sugar Babies? Oh! The Sugar Babies - they have moisture content - they will give me energy - mmmmmmm. And thank the Powers that Be for the monopod - I was able to use that as a walking stick (since my real wooden heavy-duty walking stick was in my car!).

My cats! What will happen to my cats? My cats need to be fed! By the time anyone notices I am missing my cats will all be dead. I must find my way back to my house. My cats need me!

Thinking of my cats comforted me and I gathered my wits and calmed my breathing and composed a little prayer to the Guardians of the Woodlands - “Please give me a sign, please help me, this is a special day, all I need is a sign.”

It was not long after this plea that I looked upon the ground and found a glowing red maple leaf illuminated by the sun. I took a photo and proceeded in the direction it seemed to be pointing. Soon I found a beautiful barred turkey wing feather, picked it up, found another a few steps further - and by the time I picked up the last of eight magnificent feathers, I could see the clearing.

I entered the woods around 4pm. I am old, out of shape and carrying more than a few extra pounds and although it may not sound like a lot of time to anyone else, I had spent almost an hour with my thrashing and crashing and cursing and my walking and stumbling and tripping, when I finally came through to this blessed clearing, a very large overgrown field, it was close to 5:15. At the edge of the field, way off in the distance, I could see the backs of large buildings. This put me in high spirits because I was sure what I had found was the field behind the industrial buildings on my street (the properties adjacent to mine) and I headed in that direction. I knew where I was, my goal was in sight and I trudged towards it with a huge sense of relief.

So here I am walking, walking, walking through the weedy field trying not to trip over hidden hillocks and the building I am heading towards looms larger and larger until I discover much to my shock and dismay that it is the Toyota dealer on Highway 3 and I am about 90 degrees away from where I thought I was, not to mention I am almost two miles from home.

At least the last part of my journey was on pavement and although I must have looked like a lunatic hobbling down the street clutching my monopod and my turkey feathers, I was enormously pleased that I was not going to die in the woods and I was confident that I could make it home no matter how tired, thirsty or footsore.

I have sworn an oath to never venture into mine or any other woods without a compass and a bottle of water (and quite a list of other essentials!). I also thank the Guardians of the Woodlands for giving me a 10/10/10 that was truly memorable indeed.

Zoo Story

When I worked at Bond’s back in the seventies, Cecilia Evans Taylor, aka “Peach,” was an enjoyable and fascinating customer. She bought her art supplies from our store and we also framed her many paintings. Most of these paintings were of animals: horses, giraffes, lions, elephants - so of course I adored her artwork.

I became more acquainted with Peach when she bought a Rapidograph pen. She was fond of drawing with this pen - the fine lines were quite suitable for her delicate style; but she was always mystified when it stopped working every couple of weeks. She would bring it back to the store where I would unclog it, clean it for her and refill it with ink.

Unlike the more country club attire worn by other ladies in her age group and social stratum, Peach dressed in blue jeans and chambray work shirts and she was frequently adorned with impressive Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry. I remember her red Mustang always seemed to be overflowing with big happy dogs, and I loved these and other unexpected facets of her persona. Seeing a lady her age (I was in my twenties and she was in her seventies) wearing blue jeans made me want to be just like her when I grew up - she was the perfect role model for me: creative and eccentric and a lover of animals.

One day she came into the store and showed me a letter she had just received, a lengthy missive in cramped handwriting on onionskin, folded into small rectangles and coming all the way from Africa! It was from her good friend author Joy Adamson - I remember being so impressed - this was the woman who had written “Born Free.”

In those days I used to spend almost every weekend exhibiting at various area art shows - I exhibited an array of miscellaneous artsy and craftsy creations - macramé jewelry, abstract knotted sculpture as well as little pen and ink drawings of flowers, mushrooms, lady bugs and, of course, all sorts of animals.

Peach was an enthusiastic supporter of the Buffalo Zoo (I believe she was on their board of directors) and giraffes were her passion - she created a bronze giraffe statue for their grounds, and I recall that at one point in time she even donated a real live giraffe! It came as no surprise when she undertook a mission as one of the organizers of an art show fund raiser called “The Zootique” to take place at the zoo and she talked me into participating.

The space allotted to me for my display was, alas, in a dank, dimly lit area deep in the bowels of one of the zoo buildings - I remember all of the artists’ set-ups were scattered willy-nilly throughout. The fund-raiser was scheduled for a late November weekend and it unfortunately proved to be a dismal affair: torrential rain and chilly temperatures for the entire event which resulted in hardly any visitors and even fewer sales. I felt badly for Peach because she had been so incredibly excited about the grand possibilities of this idea.

One memory from that show that I have always treasured, however, was when Peach ushered in a dapper but slightly frazzled looking older man to see my display. She was very animated in showing him all of my wares and she ended her spiel by enthusing, “Mar made all of this by herself!” The gentleman looked me straight in the eye and simply said, “Congratulations.” Then she hustled him away to see the next artist. It was only later that I discovered I had just met Seymour Knox II.

Now, every morning on the way to my shop I drive up Parkside past the Buffalo Zoo and the Cecilia Evans Taylor Giraffe House. When the weather is appropriate and the giraffes are outside enjoying the fresh air in their enclosures, I wave at them and I think of Peach.

Bobbin' Along

My mom always had the radio on - listening in the forties to hit parade music and in the fifties to rock ‘n’ roll.  I can remember her dancing in the kitchen to “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”  But before rock ‘n’ roll came along, one of the very first song I can remember hearing when I was a toddler was “When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along.”  Mom and I used to sing along with the radio whenever it came on.  I remember having a great deal of fun with “Bob, bob, bob.”

Now all these years later it has occurred to me that I am still bobbin’ along.   When I was a teenager, the pop charts were flooded with “Bobbies” and I listened to of all of them.  Bobby Rydell, Bobby Curtola, Bobby Darin, Bobby Vinton.  They all flew out of my brain, however, when “The Bob” came along.  Bob Dylan. 

Dylan’s first self-titled album was released in March of 1962.  I was a sophomore in high school, happily surrounded by a whole passel of friends, doing well academically, dating my first real boyfriend - my life was perfect and I was in love with the world.  In June of that year my dad announced we were moving - (insert dramatic teenage pause) - and my life fell apart. 

Sometime during that awful summer, I stumbled upon that first Bob Dylan album at a Sears Roebuck store in Buffalo.  From the very first spin on the console record player in the living room, it captured my complete attention.  This music was so very different from the pop pap served up on the radio in those days so as I started my junior year in that new high school that I detested even before I stepped foot in it, my loathing was fueled by the unconventional “voice” of Bob Dylan.   (I must admit at this point in my narrative that I mispronounced his name “Dye-lan” for a while until a hip friend from the beloved former high school clued me in to the correct pronunciation - thanks Susan!)

The song that I became most enamored with on that first album was “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and I played it repeatedly at top volume until my mother finally flew into the living room yelling for me to turn it off. “Do you know what that song is about?” she screamed.  (I had no idea what that song was about but it just sounded so dangerous I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by it.)  Senior year, when the socialite kids in this school were planning the details of their prom (“Blue Velvet” - named after the Bobby Vinton song) (Ack!), I was memorizing the words to “With God on Our Side.” It has always made me wonder - had I not changed towns and schools at that time in my life, would I be the person I am today?  Would I be a housewife?  Somebody’s  grandmother?  (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)  Would I be one of those people hanging on every episode of American Idol - a (shudder) pop music fan?

Dylan proved a prolific song writer and albums began flowing out of Columbia Records at a very swift pace and I acquired Freewheelin’ and The Times They Are a Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan - all before I graduated from high school in 1964.  Songs that have stood my test of time from these three albums are “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “With God on Our Side,” “ Boots of Spanish Leather”  and “All I really Want to Do” (Even now, I still hope to someday own a pair of “Spanish boots of Spanish leather”).

I have always credited Bob Dylan (and the Beatles to a lesser extent) to forever changing my life.   His raw and powerful songs enabled me to survive those last two years of high school.  In December of 1964, finally away from that awful town and safely ensconced at Buff State College, I attended my very first concert - seeing Bob Dylan and his special surprise guest Joan Baez, at Kleinhans Music Hall.  In the impressively designed and acoustically perfect hall, the crowd of college students in blue-jeans was interspersed with the very baffled Kleinhans patrons in their usual pearls and furs. It was thrilling to see Dylan and Baez together on that stage and I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.

Of course in 1965 everything seemed to happen at once - Dylan released two seminal albums Bringing it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (still his two best, in my humble opinion).  These songs were embedded in my heart and brain and soul from the first second I heard them:  “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and my all time favorite Dylan song, “She Belongs to Me.”  Just think - it has been 45 years now that I have been searching for an “Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks.”  And I have often imagined “She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall,” as my perfect motto (for whenever I ever need a motto).

That same year I was in the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan “went electric” (despite Pete Seeger and his frantic backstage efforts to try to pull the plug).  Some of the folkies booed but most were eventually captivated by both sides of Dylan, acoustic and electric.  In the fall of ’65 Dylan was back at Kleinhans again not too long after the Great Northeast Power Failure.  He did the first half of the concert with simply his guitar and harmonica, and then for the second half, out came the electric guitars and amps.  When he took to the stage for this electric set, some guy yelled out “Pray for another power failure!” and everyone laughed and the concert went on without a hitch.

Dylan was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in July of 1966 and did not tour again for eight years although he recorded albums with some regularity in that interval.  Blonde on Blonde which contained “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,”  and “Just Like a Woman,” John Wesley Harding with “All Along the Watchtower,” and Nashville Skyline with “Girl From the North Country” and “Lay, Lady, Lay.”  I missed buying Self Portrait and New Morning in sequence, but later became fond of “Quinn, the Eskimo” and “If Not for You.”  I remember buying Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and loving the entire soundtrack especially “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

In the summer of 1972 a very interesting Dylan incident occurred which at the same time had both everything and nothing to do with him.  I was attending the Mariposa Folk Festival on Toronto Island and that weekend a rumor began circulating throughout the crowd that various folk celebrities had been spotted in our midst:  Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and (Gasp!) Bob Dylan himself.  We were hoping one or all of these luminaries would grace the main stage for a nighttime concert. 

One bright afternoon I was sitting on my blanket not really paying any attention to an old timey folk duo on one of the workshop stages under the huge willows along the shining water’s edge.  It was a tranquil workshop, the crowd couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred languid sun-worshipers, and I don’t think any of us were doing anything other than killing time until the next workshop.  Suddenly a murmur swept through the crowd like a tsunami and we all seemed to be instantaneously aware that “Bob Dylan is here!”

As one, the crowd jumped to its feet, and began the first few steps of a crazed dash off into the direction (stage left) where Dylan was supposed to have been seen.  And just as swiftly we all changed our minds and went back to our spaces and sat down.  I cannot speak for anyone else present that afternoon, but in my Gemini mind the following dialogue took place:  “Oh my God!  Bob Dylan is here - we must run to him!  But then what, what would we do?  He would be very annoyed to be mobbed by hundreds of crazed folkies. In addition, we would be insulting these lovely traditional performers by abandoning them on this little stage, so we are being silly and let’s just sit back down.”

The event that I have labored to describe for the last three paragraphs took place in less than a minute from start to finish and it is one of the oddest occasions of mass hysteria (and mass sanity) I have ever encountered.  Poor Bob never knew what he missed that afternoon. 

In 1974 his career seemed to ramp up a lot and he released Planet Waves (containing “Forever Young”), and the live album with The Band, Before the Flood.   1975 brought Blood on the Tracks and my next batch of treasured favorites: “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts.”

I was still bobbin’ along in late1975 when Dylan’s own version of the magical mystery tour, the incredible Rolling Thunder, came to town.  I rank that event as one of my all time favorite top ten concerts.  I have little recall of the concert in its entirety, just one amazing performance after another and when Joan Baez sang “Amazing Grace” it was so quiet in the Niagara Falls Convention Center you could literally have heard a pin drop.   Scarlet Rivera was particularly otherworldly playing her electric violin (considering when Dylan released “Desolation Row” back in 1965 we all assumed he was singing about an imaginary instrument). 

Over the years, Dylan had an almost mystical ability to gather outstanding musicians to back his efforts - among my favorite sidemen were Bruce Langhorne, Al Cooper, Mike Bloomfield, and of course, The Band.  The silvery soaring silkiness from these (and many other) incredible musicians provided an ideal juxtaposition for Dylan’s always unique vocalizations and his dancing tumbling lyrics.

In 1976, along with a live concert recording of The Rolling Thunder tour, Hard Rain, Dylan released Desire containing yet another of my absolute favorites, “Isis.”  1978 brought the release of Street Legal and although I loved the photograph on the cover and owned a huge poster of it, the songs therein rang no bells for me.  Dylan also performed a number of solo concerts in the seventies - in 1978 I was fortunate enough to see him in Toronto, Buffalo and Rochester!  Plus I was able to photograph him from my second row seat at the Aud in Buffalo - not the world’s best photos but they made me very happy for many years.

The last two albums I ever bought were Live at Budokan, which was nice but I rarely listened to it, and Slow Train Coming which I played only once.    Those were in 1979, and by that time Talking Heads  and The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Tim Curry and many other performers had entered the scene and then came the eighties and the Continental and local bands and musicians, all jostling for room in my life.  Oddly enough, although I rarely approve of cover songs, Tim Curry recorded a breathy and riveting version of “Simple Twist of Fate” and I still enjoy it equally with the Dylan original.

So I guess 1979 was about when I stopped following his career.  I have memorized almost every single word to every single song in Dylan’s first dozen or so albums, but, again, in my humble opinion, he suddenly “jumped the shark” and I stopped buying new albums.  I saw him being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and (later learned) it was “Masters of War” which he had performed but as I was watching it I could not understand a single word he was singing and I couldn’t even figure out which song he was doing.  Friends who are Dylan fans tell me his new stuff is great and I will take their word for it - I have no desire to immerse myself in any new Dylan songs.  My Bob Dylan remains suspended in as if in amber between 1962 and 1978.  Both of us are floating there - forever young.

In her 95th year now, my step mother enjoys watching and listening to the musical stylings of The Lawrence Welk Show. If I am blessed with such health and longevity, mayhap someday I will be the one in the rocking chair on the porch of an old folk’s home and I can only hope I will still be bobbin’ along, listening to Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. 

"Bobby Dylan" by Mar 1965