at sea

This was painted by my paternal grandfather in 1935, and it hangs on my wall today. I unfortunately never got the chance to meet him, as he passed before I was born, but I understand he loved to sail. There is a wonderful sense of motion and dynamism in the painting, and I look at it often.









Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

plosives liquids fricatives OH MY!

Gold-dust box from Ghana
Broad-tailed perching birds guard
Precious treasure; quiet
Raptors, greedy, blind to
Beauty—money trumps all.

Yellow reliquary—
Ropy scrollwork looping
Gilded cradle: guarding
Birds encircle borders
Over golden treasure.

Thurible of riches:
Heavy hammered chest for
Precious dust; a shining
Trophy, form and fiber:
Vessels value inheres.

work.

I just finished stripping and sanding four Heywood-Wakefield pieces. I get pretty saw-dusty.

Yankee Holiday... now with new and improved "THUNDER SNOW"!

SNOW WILL OVERSPREAD THE REGION FROM SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST THIS EVENING. THE SNOW WILL BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES BY THE MORNING DRIVE ON WEDNESDAY... REACHING ONE TO TWO INCHES PER HOUR WITH AROUND 6 INCHES ACCUMULATED ON THE GROUND. THEN...THE SNOWFALL RATE WILL LIKELY DIMINISH TO ABOUT HALF AN INCH PER HOUR MIDDAY AND A LITTLE SLEET MIGHT MIX IN AT TIMES. AT THE SAME TIME...A NORTHEAST WIND WILL INCREASE OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN TO THE TUNE OF 15 TO 25 MPH WITH HIGHER GUSTS...WHICH WILL BEGIN TO BLOW AND DRIFT THE SNOW AROUND.

THE LULL WILL NOT LAST LONG. HEAVY SNOW WILL RETURN DURING THE AFTERNOON AS MESO-SCALE BLINDING SNOW BANDS COULD PRODUCE INCREDIBLE LOCALIZED SNOWFALL RATES UP TO 6 INCHES PER HOUR ALONG WITH THUNDER SNOW. MOST ROADS WILL LIKELY BECOME IMPASSABLE DURING THE AFTERNOON. THE WIND WILL TURN NORTHERLY AND INCREASE IN THE HUDSON VALLEY CAUSING BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW THERE AS WELL.

THE POTENTIAL IS THERE FOR OUR HEAVY SNOW WARNING TO BE UPGRADED TO A BLIZZARD WARNING. THERE IS ALSO THE POTENTIAL FOR SPOTTY POWER OUTAGES SO HAVE A WORKING FLASHLIGHT HANDY.

AS THE SNOW WINDS DOWN WEDNESDAY EVENING...PROJECTED TOTAL STORM SNOWFALL AMOUNTS ARE EXPECTED TO BE BETWEEN 15 AND 30 INCHES...

West Meadow Beach

Salt ice.

When I was a child, there were some years that the ice extended out for miles, people would drive cars over it. (and there are--perhaps apocryphal--tales of people driving clear across to Connecticut back in the '20's and '30's...)

The ice folds in some spots, slowly, and cracks in others where the strain is too great, and in some spots, further out where the water is deeper and the ice is thinner , it rolls over the waves but somehow maintains at a fixed point...

I've been thinking a lot this past weekend about the landscape of my life, and I know that there's an appropriate metaphor in there, but I'm too tired to draw it out.

(Not) Brooklyn Bridge

To Brooklyn Bridge

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

(Hart Crane)