an infrequent repository of mostly new stuff
Jamestown Distributors Feature
Got a nice shout-out from Jamestown Distributors today. Their Digital Media Coordinator sent me a nice note saying they were featuring one of my videos on their site. I bought a lot of the supplies from them during construction – things I just couldn’t get anywhere else – so nice to see how things circle back.
The Ballad of Holland Island House from Lynn Tomlinson on Vimeo.
This is a lovely piece. You’ll remember last year, while sailing near Deal and Crisfield, I wrote up the story of Holland Island. It has been one of my most visited and favorited posts.
This animation on the same story, made with clay on glass and set to music, is really well done, and the medium lends itself well to the subject.
A nice post on Colossal is here, with additional links:
This is Colossal: Holland Island House
My father-in-law’s family was in the chandlery and barge business on the Hudson in New York, for a century or more. His mother’s family was in the tug business, a match made on commerce, as it were.
A fine article and video on the icebreakers of the Hudson. Many communities along the river still rely on barges to supply them with essentials, like heating oil, salt for roads, and bulk staples.
Icebreaker Sturgeon Bay on the Hudson
Nettles a.k.a. Guion Pratt
It’s been a long winter already. There’s still a lot of wood left in the pile, which means Spring is not near; but today was 70+ degrees and breezy from the South. Orion is overhead before bedtime, and it’s there’s now a little light in the sky when I leave the office. Thank goodness for the relentless spinning of the spheres. It’s a good time of year to spend with friends.
A few nights ago we stopped in town for a show, an album release party for a friend. A poet, a musician, an all around nice guy named Guion Pratt had an album release party at The Southern in Charlottesville.
He’s one of several of talented musicians in the area we’ve followed for years. They mix and match through multiple permutations under different names. When Sam Bush writes and leads, they’re called The Hill & Wood, named for an iconic funeral home in town. When Guion writes and leads they’re called Nettles. Etc., etc..
This is the sort of show when you arrive you find other friends are already there, people who were in the poetry writing classes with Guion in grad school, or used to jam with him in the little Model A single-car shed next to the funeral parlor that they’ve rented out for years, where they all got started, and still use as a multi-purpose art and performance space.
It was a great show. Lots of fun, lots of laughs, and great music. I grabbed some low-fi recordings, which Guion was gracious enough to let me to post:
And “Brando” based on the Tennessee Williams play “Streetcar Named Desire”
You can buy the album here:
Brando, Locust Avenue, and Annuals are some of my favorites.
As a bonus, here’s a recording of one of my favorite Hill & Woods songs recorded at the same venue last year. Somehow the ambient bar sounds and boot heel steps only make it better:
The Disciple – Live at the Southern
This is really cool.
Undeveloped World War II Film Discovered from The Rescued Film Project on Vimeo.
The Rescued Film Project discovers and processes 31 rolls of film shot by an American WWII soldier over 70 years ago.
Filmed By: Tucker Debevec
Audio Engineer: Eric Bower
Original Music: Mark Doubleday
Second Camera: Eric Bower
Edited by: Levi Bettwieser
the harbor at Isle au Haut, Maine
A couple of weeks ago, tired after a day of raking leaves, T and I collapsed in some chairs in the back yard. The warm sun felt good, and I laid back and stared up into the big bell of a clear blue autumn sky.
Small insects were backlit by the sun, glowing brightly. Milkweed and ragweed seeds drifting on the breeze caught the light, too. Then I noticed a long bright silver streamer, and another, and another. Looking more closely, and shading my eyes with a hand, I saw the air was thick with them, blowing by on the wind high above the trees:
Little yearling spiders were taking flight on this clear windy day. Crawling to some high point, as high as they could get, they were spinning out long threads of gossamer silk like spinnakers, and setting sail for parts unknown.
There were thousands. It was amazing how high they were, too. You may not be able to see it in the video – Youtube degrades detail horribly, and photography is really bad at conveying distance – but if you watch it in HD you might be able to see that they completely fill the air column, some easily a thousand feet up.
It’s a behavior known as ballooning or kiting. Some of the hapless argonauts catch on tree branches or power lines after only a short flight, or drop to the ground not far from where they started. But others travel amazing distances. Human sailors have found these arachnid sailors catching in their rigging a thousand miles from land. They’ve been sucked into the analyzing equipment of weather balloons 16,000 feet in the air. They can even get caught in the jet stream and, surviving up to 25 days without food, travel profound distances, colonizing mountaintops and islands far out at sea, even distant continents.
Pretty amazing little buggers.