a fun day

What a fun day.

First of all, it's beautiful.  Weather-wise and color wise. 

FA and I went to Olean where I indulged my Lax obsession at the St. Bonaventure archives.  I browsed the Lax collection of photos, books, and got to hold in my own hands some of the little notebooks that he used to carry around to record his poems, sketches, journals.

 And what about this graphic representation of one of his color poems?(!)  How cool is that?!

We saw the Lax grave, which is a simple stone, flush with the ground:

Finally, we set out to find the abandoned Lax cottage, famous for the summers of 1939 and 1940 when Lax, Merton, Ed Rice and Ad Reinhardt hung out there, drank beer, and held writing marathons.  We did not have directions for how to get here - it IS on private property.  But we knew that it was on a hill on the South side of Olean, about 5 miles out of town, and had a radio tower in the back yard.  So we set out southward toward Rock City, with our eyes on the radio towers in the hills.  Literally following our noses, we found the cottage.  I had to cross some posted no trespassing signs but felt sure that we had found it (and it was later verified by the Lax archivist at St. B.).  It was a cool adventure.

This is all you can see from the road.  I wonder why the radio tower people don't tear it down?

Then we had lunch at a Lebanese restaurant in Olean and tonight we're going out to a fish fry.