Bingo Beat

Here's our woman about town reading Pittburgh's free Bingo Beat newspaper.

Leslie and Andy looking like a million bucks (left) and the three sisters (right). The overlook was in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh called Mt.Washington. We accessed it from the famous Monongahela Incline, which is a car on rails pulled by cables up a 60-degree slope. Its actually part of the mass transit system although its heavily used by tourists seeking grand-canyon sized views. Station Square is an entertainment district at the bottom of the incline. We ate at Joe's Crab Shack there. Pittsburgh reminds me a little of Boston. The downtown is about the same size as Boston's just by the look of the skyline, and the geography of the place lends itself to lots of little neighborhoods like villages adding up to the city as a whole. The WYSE building was in Mt. Washington.

Firefly Music Festival

Low key, downhome, friendly, DIY, BYOB, green, quiet, earnest, odd, humid, outdoors, hilly, smoky, beery, hippy, lazy, etc... Who knows what I expected from the 1st Annual Firefly Music Festival. For starters, its was in a holler or at least something like it. A borrowed hillside, woods, and creek. It ran on generators. Tents grew like mushrooms in the woods. It was a two day festival, but we only went for Saturday. Pictured above was my favorite act, the Little Country Giants.

There was a lot of downtime for exploring the property, which was nothing if not green. We saw a tree toad, a caterpillar and pupae, a dragonfly, a hummingbird moth, and a great blue heron. Actually, Josh saw most of this stuff and pointed it all out to us. Thank you Josh.

Sisters

My sisters are here! Boy, do they make me feel young and beautiful just to be around them. We went to Sara's for onion rings immediately upon their arrival. Leslie got pooped on by a bird at the picnic tables outside. In this photo she's displaying the napkin she used to wipe it off. Maggie enjoyed that.Leslie and I both moved to the southwest around the same time (Texas and Arizona) and both got blue hatchbacks around the same time, unknowlingly. Ford vs. Saturn. Here's the sister cars at Beach 11 for the Rocket 101 concert that was part of Discover Presque Isle weekend here in Erie. Libby, the dog, enjoyed that.

Rain

When I'm in El Paso I love rain. But in Erie its a heavier thing; the weight of the rain seems to make me tired and indecisive. There were at least four things on my list to do tonight, and I passed them all up because of the rain. 1) A dinner cruise with the interns on a boat. 2) A Carillon concert on a lawn at Penn State Behrend. 3) The BBQ, Blues, and Brews party at the Art Museum annex (I went for a few minutes and had a delicious BBQ chicken sandwich from Pufferbelly Restaurant, while standing in the rain.) 4) The block party on State Street. I photographed this young woman on Dobbin's Landing while trying to decide about the boat ride. There were gnarly fisherman taking advantage of the rain out of frame to the left; maybe she was with them.

Dutch Village Restaurant

At the Dutch Village Restaurant in Clymer, NY the homemade bread is thick and doughey and white. The grilled cheeses are big. On Wednesdays you get a free loaf of bread to take home with any tab over $15. The restaurant is listed in a brochure of Amish shops open to "English" customers, but the asterisk by its name indicated that it was not actually English-owned. They sell an absurd variety of scented candles in the gift shop. They serve a specialty lo-carb ice-cream which did little to mitigate the damage done by the bread. In this photo, Josh and Corinne split a vanilla milkshake. When the waitress took their order Josh asked Corinne "What flavor?"
and Corinne replied, "Any."
"Strawberry," Josh told the waitress.
"Eyugh," said Corinne.
"Vanilla," said Josh.

Findley (Sunset 3)

Findley Lake, NY is a stone's throw from Erie and is an adorable little lake community. We parked and skipped rocks. I laid down in the grass and let bugs crawl in my ears.
We saw a flying owl on the drive there that came out like a flying turtle in the photo. Looking out the front window over Corinne's shoulder at Amish country.
A farm in French Creek, PA. Its much better to be driven than it is to drive.

Liberty (Sunset 2)

These piers are in downtown Erie. The spit of land in the background is Canada. Just kidding. It's Presque Isle. I saw some Border Patrol trucks on another pier and was confused, thinking I must be back in El Paso, but then I realized I'm on another border... Another world...

The last of the "8 Great Tuesdays" outdoor concert series was tonight. Its a lot like Music Under the Stars in El Paso, but a little earlier and more beer. Next Tuesday is doomed without this.

Seen on Sassafras.

Seven (Sunset 1)

Cranch Avenue park is at the end of yet another grassy mall lined with trees in the middle of a neighboorhood called Lakeside. It's not far from the GE plant.

Country Drive

An Amish family in an open wagon drives along a dirt road near Palmer, PA. They ask you not to take photos of them in their shops or wherever you may encounter them in public, so I took this picture from far away to be respectful. I bet the kids in the back could see what I was doing. As we arrived at the next intersection they passed us by and all waved. The little boy on the back seat kept waving even after they'd gone past, twisted around in his seat to watch us.

A little father down the same road we were greeted by a friendly chow. The Amish call modern people "English." If my only impression of how the English live was this trailer I'd prefer to live Amish too. We passed a beautiful clapboard house with 30 buggies parked out front - a million kids running around and men at the picnic table, all in Amish dress. A party was underway, and it sounded like any party in the Sosa family with lots of kids making noise.

Water lilies on Pymatuning Lake on the Pennsylvania/Ohio border. We drove along a road called State Line Road, where the cars parked at houses on one side of the street have Ohio license plates and have little plastic mailboxes for the Ohio newspaper, while people on the other side of the street have Pennsylvania license plates and subscribe to the Erie Times News.

Tractor Pull

The Pioneer Steam and Gas Engine Society of Northwestern Pennsylvanias's 40th Annual Show featured a tractor pull. The farther they pull the draggin' wagon sled, the heavier the sled becomes, and the harder it is to pull. The best tractors went about 200 ft pulling 4000lbs.









There's some history of oil drilling in this area too, so we saw some steam powered engines used for oil wells and farming. I tried to video an old gear mesh from on of these machines but a funny thing happened between the rotational speed of the gear and the sample rate of the video camera, and it looks like the gear is staying still, unless you watch the dot on the side of the gear rotate. You can hear the steam cylinders puffing away.

Seen Your Bull Frog

Erie has all of these frog statues in weird places all over town. I wonder if there's a google map for them (leave a comment if you know of one). My regular grocery store, Wegman's on Peach St. has a matator frog - a "Seen Your" bull frog to be exact. He even has bulls-eyes (see photo inset). There's also a golden frog whose tongue is made of rubies outside a credit union on Pittsburgh St.

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Erie has two jobsites going right now. On Saturday I worked at the Union City, PA jobsite with 12 interns from GE on a two bedroom house that's slated to be be finished (and occupied?) by August 1 to comply with the requirements of the county grant they used to help in the land acquisition. So we worked away--I helped with the windowsills and linoleum floors. We made the windowsills out of oak stair treads; they were gorgeous. It was a fun day and a good time was had by all.

Beach 10

Waves on Toes Video

Sparrow Flight Video

Beach 1

The series on concerts on Wednesday nights finished tonight with the Tennessee Back Porch band. We skipped rocks and waded in the lake up to our knees. The fog on the water had a silence that seemed heavier than the live music. At sunset the light got a little pinker. I discovered the Erie County Farms wholesale fruit and vegetable distributor today. The standout items were red peppers, giant zucchinis, black plums, peaches, a huge variety of apples, and more greens that I could name. All of this at half the price of any grocery store. The drawback? They close at 6pm and are often more crowded that Walmart. They also have a repectable meat counter with more things I couldn't name. Our cashier worked at lightning speed, knew all the prices and all the foods, and shouted them all out as she weighed them, then shouted the weights and net prices of each food item as she went. I inquired about her skill with numbers, and she verified that she had been to college for accounting but had quit over a man.

Eraserhead and Weirdo Theatre

Friday night in Erie, and I finally found the "artists and the Beatniks" as my grandfather would have called them. I've been spending lots of time with engineers so the crowd at the Erie Art Museum Annex was a change. The movie, Eraserhead, was as deliciously creepy as ever, and the band afterwards, Weirdo Theatre, gave an energetic performance that had me on the edge of my seat. Yes, they were weird. But also, every performer was very talented. The drummer played solos for every song. One of his chosen intruments was a power drill. The violin player's long white beard was a focal point, like the center of he universe, if only for a couple of hours. The performance artist who ranted and sang kept us all laughing and engaged the whole time. The cello player was also the curator who gave us a lunchtime tour of the museum last week. The guitarist was the frameshop guy who said hi on the tour. He used an uncountable number of instruments during the performance. I don't know any names, sorry, but I did find a myspace page for the group: www.myspace.com/josephallenpopp39sweirdotheatre.

Labyrinth

Two labyrinths in one week - one in Erie and one in Chautauqua, NY. Very unusual. This one (Pictured) is in Frontier Park in Erie, and is made out of simple paving stones. It really is relaxing. The neighborhood near the park is close to downtown and has great historic brick houses and medians with giant old oak trees. I do lot fantasy real-estate shopping and yard-sale hunting there. The best coffee in Erie is also there, 10th Street Cafe and Market, which serves gimme coffee from Ithica. Brad and Janie got me hooked on the stuff in Brooklyn. They also got me hooked on those little moka percolators for making espresso at home. I even returned my Mr. Coffee to Walmart and have made the conversion to moka 100% at home in Erie. If there's one thing I'm willing to work hard for, its coffee. The weather has been perfect for the beach at Presque Isle.

Downtown Cleveland

Gregg visited last weekend, and he flew into Cleveland. I got to explore downtown a little. We visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Muchas guitarras. I learned that the Rolling Stones liked to have fresh fruit and liquor in their dressing rooms at concerts in the 1970's. Mick drank Remy and Keith drank Jack. They had a special exhibit about the Clash. Saw drafts of all the song lyrics - all black marker on white paper. Pretty simple. I guess that's what I always liked about the Clash.

July 4th

Gregg's visit has been a great excuse for road trips around Western PA. He and I went with Josh and Corinne to see an old-timey banjo band play at Findley's Lake gazebo on July 4th. The lakes here are gorgeous. Afterwards we went to see the fireworks at Mercyhurst Northeast. We got italian sausage sandwiches from a van there, and the cook had the same insulin pump as me. We got showered with ashes on the baseball field from watching the fireworks so close. Getting out of the parking lot was slow going, with all the crowds. A teenage boy cut in front of my car, and, noticing my license plates, exclaimed "I almost got run over by a Texan!" with apparent pride.

Brad and Janie's Big Party

They got married in January with only Brad's father and minister as witnesses, but under heavy protest from their adoring fans, they converted their annual July 4th party in Reading, PA into a wedding party instead. Most of the crowd was photographers, and for once I was the nerdy engineer. Usually I'm around engineers and I'm the weird artist. The party was done with all recycleable/compostable materials, except for the plastic cups which were rewqashed and reused ad infinitum. Brad's childhood home in Reading is in a grassy treed green wonderland with fields, hills, and woods galore. It's also right across the street from a State Forest. So its officially beautiful. Janie loaned me her personal tent and we all camped out in a field. You know when you camp and you bed down for the night and you just get warm and comfy and as soon as you relax your bladder relaxes too but you hate to get up again so you just lie there and try to ignore it? Well that failed by about 3am so I got up and went outside the tent and lo and behold the moon was bright enough that I didn't need a flashlight at all. It was like day-for-night in the old westerns.