Hot Tar
Road Crew
Every road in the county has a crew doing something to it. Rolling
asphalt. Digging ditches. Riprapping culverts. Flagmen in faded
dayglow. At all the pipeline crossings fleets of heavy equipment
are articulating. Woven beds of old tires. Wheeler loads of crushed
granite. Piles of oiled timbers. Megadozers and dumpers. We watched
an operator walk a big excavator sideways off a flatbed one halted
afternoon. Swinging his bucket arm side to side to balance the
beast as he tiptoed his tracks over the side.
They're drilling the pipe crossings under the roads, which means
scooping out a trench, preparing a bed, laying a set of rails
for the drill machine, swinging it in, and winding the machinery.
They say some of the boys on the line are taking down $2K a week,
and using $50 bills at the local convenience. Texas accents.
Galion Grader
Labor
Boom times in the boonies, too, folks. It takes a while for a
pecuniary tide to reach the hinterland, but it's getting deep
out here. You have to hire Vietnamese to process sea cucumbers,
and Jamaicans to pull carrots. The locals who'd be plucking chickens
in an earlier epoch are now in a cubical at MBNA. Real estate
up behind Belfast is at a premium. Try to hire a carpenter.
Or some welding. We cross-lotted to Liberty, trying to make a
metal deal with McLaughlin for some marine hardware-- tabernacle,
drop rudder, leeboard pivots, bowsprit collar-- but he was off
moving ledges. David says the new money is having monumental stonework
done for the bragging rights. And he can't resist outwitting an
immense stone. He calls it the Machu Picchu syndrome. Just before
the inexplicable collapse of civilization the natives are tinkering
with geology.
Welding
Side Deck Framing
We still have our feet on the ground. But the decks are getting
framed, and a scow launching begins to seem plausible. I was lauded
and insulted today, for this emerging vessel. There's been a parade
of gawkers up the drive, equally admiring and amused. Probably
about right. She'll be a grand thing, and sail like a shoebox.
Or so I was twitted. We'll see how the birds sing after the splash.
It's a time of peregrinations. The heat has broken after Lughnasa,
as it always does. We've found the blanket at the foot of the
bed, and can breathe in the afternoon again. Rolling across a
sundrenched countryside with the cumulus clumping is a fine idea.
We went up the backside of Lincolnville for a box of blueberries,
and came home with 5 gallons of the cleanest organic berries.
Filled a corner of the freezer. Supped on the sweet and sumptuous
fruits of high Summer.
Summer Clouds
Real Aht
Went for ablutions at Damariscotta Lake, and Beth reminded us
of an irresistible roadside attraction out on Route 1. A collection
of shell art at the marine salvage outlet in Edgecomb. We didn't
resist. Found a ship's wheel for the barge, but the promised mussel
shell buzzards weren't in evidence. When we asked, the staff admitted
they were out back in the cooler. Carried them into the light,
and blew us away. Where else could you get carrion birds cobbled
up out of crab claws, mussels and pine cones? We had to have one.
Going out the door I asked where such splendid stuff comes from.
Bowdoinham! Just up the Post Road from the Academy of Carlo Pittore.
But of course. All roads lead to Bowdoinham.
Visitation is peaking. Local artists are hanging it all out on
the fence for the fancy trade, and festivals are in full holler.
Carlo, Arlene, Brent, Margaret, Kay all have shows up. We installed
DIRIGO 2000 at the Maine Festival , and wandered about the grounds
a bit. Very low key this year. Two sunny days. A solid gate. The
vendors seemed to be doing fine, the acts were light, the family
crowd was smiling. It didn't seem to be about fame or fortune
or the big boffo. Not a whisper of politics. Less intensity, but
less tension, too. A cross-section of Maine performers and artisans
mixing it up with a varied assortment of vacationers, neighborhood
night-outers, and the perennial festivallites. The August tribe.
Drawing by Carlo
Klez
Everything was a touch expensive, which is what it takes to foot
a festival, and it makes you dance like a sailor on leave. We
got drenched to boot, jitterbugging to the Blues Buzzards, Friday
evening in a line squall. Sunday was a daylong downpour, but there
were still customers strolling the tents. The smell of trampled
grass and barbecued lamb. Acts thumping under canvas. These seasonal
celebrations resurrect themselves year after year, despite the
grumbling of artists and performers, and the economic illogic.
And we get drawn in by some cthonic connection. Grin at familiar
faces. Eat fried dough.
Peggy says that our generation has broken the spell of traditional
rituals. Instead of reenacting received forms, we compose new
rituals out of fundamental ingredients. We can work symbolic material
without the burden of dogma. One primal form has been the seasonal
celebration, and we're still moved by some impulse to honor High
Summer. But the shape of that hoorah changes with the year, and
those who want to play.
Town Symbols
Moose Head Revisited
Monday we broke down the set, and brought Greenville and the Sternmaid
home. Set them up in Hank and Susy's yard, hard by the road, to
see how many rubberneckers we can run into the new ditch. I'm
searching for a large public wall to fasten them against for the
winter. Preferably a state institution. Perhaps not The Mental.
If I have to move these big board amusements around and around,
I might get the portable design elements perfected. These large
whimsies hinge up like a tabernacled rig, and have the same engineering
problems: windage, vertical security, and repeat performance.
Maybe I can get them to dance. Or sail. This just shows you what
happens when an absurd idea gets out of hand. Or a sculptor gets
fixated on a dipping rig.
Moose Boots
Deck Framing
I think I've resolved the difficulties of a folding gaff rig.
McLaughlin says he can weld up a tabernacle which is only slightly
bigger than the mast. If I place it high enough, I can douse boom,
sail, gaff, and all below the fold, and drop the mast Bob's your
uncle. Obeisance seems to be the prime metaphor of the season.
All the bending over in the garden is standing us in good stead.
We scoffed up our first pepper Thursday, and regularly indulge
in vegetarian orgies, all off the home plot. Ripe tomatoes galore.
But stunted garlic, and mighty small pumpkins. Peggy has been
filling the house with memories of the Magdalen Islands a la zucchini
pickle, and I've been sopping the new frames with pine tar. Straighten
up and you may get dizzy. Close your eyes and you might be elsewhere.
August can do that.
Foredeck Framing
Water Towers
I've had a flurry of painting commissions, and they've forced
me to look close at this place, again. Doing a few al frescos
reminds me how differently you see a subject in changing light,
with the wind on your face, and the sun in your jeans. Does the
ruffle in the trees and the lope-through of a pileated pecker
change the image? Can you tell which pictures were plein airs?
Suddenly there are too many subjects again. The familiar is full
of surprises. Dramatic skies reframe the obvious. The nondescript
entices. Olympus is clicking, and folders of likely scapes pile
up on the hard drive. As though all the images of Summer are rushing
to expose themselves, as the nights go cool, as the sun loses
its bite.
Morning Mist
No Pebble Tossed
There's a strange breed of mosquitoes which grow to gigantic proportions
down at the town landing. They swarm around you at dusk, making
you wave your arms wildly, but they never light and bite. Now
the swirl of swallows that were nesting under the eaves of FCH
Inc has moved over the river, to gobble those faux bloodsuckers.
I stood on Jimmy's dock at sunset in a cloud of spiraling swallows.
Diving, wheeling, hovering, swooping under my arms, around my
head. Fledglings in an ecstatic aerial festival. Whirling on the
edge of Autumn.