West River, near Sunnyside boat launch

The Gashlycrumb Tinies

An Appalling Alphabet Which Introduces A Gallery Of Enchanting Tots And Produces A Gasp Of Involuntary Mirth When They Attain Their Dreadful Demise (apologies to my sister and anyone else with enchanting tots)

an abecedarian book written by Edward Gorey

(I never knew that word!)

The New Yorker magazine, the Cartoon Issue
{cover art by Ivan Brunetti}

cultural document

from the movie Best in Show, 2000

sorry -- eww, feet -- but you know how the trick-or-treat rhyme goes, right?

I've admired this house being built up the road from us since they started earlier this summer - the setting has a storybook quality about it, and a nicely framed view of HiTor. During this walk I could feel "strata" of air temperatures - some like sudden warm gushes from a furnace heat register; others were brisk introductions to the coming season...

I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive.

— Patton Oswalt

October morning

bits of my Sunday

Northern Spy apple

This apple has been the topic of several conversations I've had this fall :)

• A famous cooking apple--sometimes called "Northern Pie"--this heirloom is also great for eating and is still enjoyed across the Northeast.
• The American Chemical Society found that Northern Spy (and two other varieties) have the most antioxidents of any variety of apple.
• Many sources repeat, without attribution, the story that Northern Spy was found in an orchard in East Bloomfield, New York; some of these provide further information. The basis for this history may be an 1847 letter from Oliver Chapin, who wrote:

The first Northern Spy apple trees were raised from seeds brought from the Northwest part of Connecticut, about the year 1800, by Elijah Taylor. The original tree was set in an orchard by Heman Chapin, and some sprouts were taken from it by Roswell Humphrey, and by him the fruit was first raised...as the original tree died before bearing.

(info above via)

Well, it just so happens this marker stands in the yard where my friend Kara grew up (down the road from where I grew up):

...and it also just so happens that in more recent history (but still a handful of decades back) my Grandpa Torpey helped to repair this marker, so that future generations will continue to find this place


and that's my dad :)

3 pages from "The fruits of America: containing full descriptions of all the choicest varieties cultivated in the United States" by Charles Mason Hovey, published in 1852 (found via Google digital books) (click each to enlarge) -

encore

(photo from Wednesday - entering Naples Creek channel off West River/Canandaigua Lake)

zut alors!

Oh how I wish I were in Paris -

Heard about this on the radio this morning:
Claude Monet retrospective in the Galeries Nationales in the Grand Palais (on Champs-Elysées!)
In lieu of actually being there, the website for the show is pretty darn cool (though takes forever to load) - love it!

{postcard from the Black Apple}

this table full of faces greeted us outside the door to yoga class - bright smiles even in the pouring rain:

old doodle redux

(it was never that great, but I'm still partial to it anyhow)

time to bring out this old chestnut :)

stare at the center for about 45 seconds, then look around the room you are in:

whooa trippy

chaos theory

To entertain the radical idea that understanding might involve accepting chaos threatens the foundations of our existence. Confusion is anti-American; it flies in the face of benevolent efficiency—that outstanding Puritanical virtue. To admit to anything that suggests chaos is subversive. Sometimes, however, subversion is the way to understanding, and understanding is the cure for information anxiety.

— Richard Saul Wurman

and...


I don’t know what the hell is going on. Neither do you, and neither does any one else, really. We're all lost and making things up as we go. We are making things before we know what they do and breaking stuff before we know what replaces it.

We’re all just here tinkering, speculating and listening to see if our shovels hit something hard while we’re digging. I suppose that’s what world-building is, though, so let’s get used to it. We need to learn to tolerate ambiguity.

Copyright © 2010, Frank Chimero

umm, chlorophyll much?