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Words define our world, and how we see it. And if we see it.

Recent research is showing that, in some areas of thought, when we don’t have a word for something it becomes invisible to us. So what is clear to people of one culture, who have a word for a thing, is obscure or nonexistent to another that does not. If a tree falls in the woods, and we don’t have a word for it . . . ? How about how you feel today emotionally? How much does that alter what you see? Turns out, a lot.

Short article here:

 

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/12/do-people-always-see-the-same-things-when…

(sorry, looks like the video has been removed. 11/11/11)

 

 

 

Via Metafilter

 

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Wolftrap Lighthouse

 

Off the tip of Windmill Point and Stingray Point in the Chesapeake Bay, at the mouth of the Rappahannock River, is Wolftrap Lighthouse. It’s a well-known landmark, or rather seamark, for watermen and boaters in the area. I’ve passed it many times, myself. It was decommissioned and auctioned off by the Coast Guard back in the ’70’s, and moved into private hands. It’s up for sale again. For $288,000 you get the lighthouse and a piece of marshland on shore a mile away where you can launch a boat to get to it.

Now this is my idea of a dream home.

Continue reading “Wolftrap Lighthouse”

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Notable Boats: Odin

 

image

Mike with Odin, circa 1985 

 

When you spend long days in the shop, on tasks that don’t require much thought, your mind tends to wander. Since I’m working on boats, that’s where my mind goes, and I often take long mental journeys in boats from the past. Something happened earlier this year that reminded me of the second boat I could actually call my own, and I’ve been thinking of it a lot lately. The first boat was great, too, but it’s the second one that’s really been on my mind lately. Like the first boat, this one I shared with a friend, and that contributed a great deal to all the memories connected with it. Continue reading “Notable Boats: Odin”

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Fairing

 A job well done.

 

(to start of project)

I once had a job digging up the bones of dead monks for room and board. The pay wasn’t great, but it was a good job, and I liked it.

On the first day, a portly, pompous Frenchman named Bernard, the foreman, lined off a big grid on the ground with string, making six foot squares separated by one foot borders. Each digger was assigned a square. The job was simple: Dig the six foot square eight feet deep. You could not, however, use a shovel. The only tool you could use to remove 288 cubic feet of dirt was a small mason’s pointing trowel, which you had to supply yourself. Furthermore, you could not dig with the point of the trowel – doing so would be grounds for immediate dismissal. Instead, you had detect and carefully scrape away slight variations in colored layers of dirt with the edge of the trowel, a thin skin of soil at a time, like peeling an onion, scoop that into a pail, then empty it onto a spoil pile 100 feet away. We had three months to finish.

Continue reading “Fairing”

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Transitions

Sunshine starts a second snowfall

 

 

 

There are things you do in your 50’s that you thought you’d do in your 20’s.
This is a given.

What you remember is often what you wished for,
not what really happened.

Some things you declined to say when you could have will ring in your ears forever.
It’s better to say them all.

There will be more joy than you expected,
certainly more than you thought you deserved.

You will continue to have conversations with people you loved,
decades after they’re gone.

You will often cry unexpectedly –
not when things are sad, but when they are beautiful.

These are some things I’ve learned.

 

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Decked Out and a Swim

Tom supervises the deck operation.

 

(to start of project)

Spent the weekend on more prep work. Though there’s not much to see, a lot got done. Used a round-over bit to take the sharp corners off all the exposed edges on the framing. It’s a small detail, but keeps the wood from splitting and splintering when stuffing gear inside. It also keeps you from getting bit when reaching in to retrieve things. An especially nice touch on grab surfaces, where hands naturally go for carrying or moving a boat. Continue reading “Decked Out and a Swim”

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The Antipode of Autumn

Listening to Peepers, outside in the yard.

 

(to start of project)

I hope you can hear this. The vagaries of computers and the web makes some things uncertain. But if you can, this is what it sounds like here, right now, tonight. Driving home from work late, just after dark, I rolled down the windows just to listen when passing a wet place in the woods, or a farm pond overgrown.

Nothing sounds more like Spring to me than peepers on the first warm night of the year, the same way calls of geese coursing southward overhead on moonlit nights, plaintive and cacophonous, sound like fall. Minstrels announcing the entrance and exit of a very hard season, with a harmonic flourish.

Continue reading “The Antipode of Autumn”