YARTING

By the Fourth this town is running full tilt. About the pace of an urban saunter. The local news has gotten so far ahead I'll have to hurry to catch up.

The weather stayed damp and drear right up to the Solstice. Made the gardens slow starting, but lush. Our peas are up over four feet, but just beginning to blossom. Usually we have a feed for the Fourth. Strawberries are late, but the size of apricots. Salads are rank. As is the back swamp I try to keep mowed. There's so much moisture around, every time the sun breaks through, up the cumulus towers. Farmers are praying for a break to make hay, but there's a cloudburst most afternoons. The rivers have been running high, full of flotsam, and there are stretches of landslip scarring the shorescape.

Prout's Berries

Gimmy's World

The shorescape in town has been transformed, too. Over on the public side, things are just as scalped and sweaty, but under the shade of Jimmy's trees is a whole new world. During the fooraw about harbormastering it came out that property owners are permitted up to 14 boats at their dock before it officially becomes a marina. Jimmy has been providing dockage for an increasing portion of the local fleet, and his estab now swallows half the river above the boat ramp. Kayak Mike shifted his excursion operation to Jimmy's, and they installed a slick Kayak launch float, which tilts in for easy access. All the jettys and fingerpiers make Cathance Landing look like a real harbor. All perfectly legal.

Funny how tales turn and turn about. When the Canoe Club took over the landing and"improved" it to suit their ideas of progress, many of us who had used and maintained the public put-in decamped for Jimmy's. Helped him build up his docks with labor or a bit of cash. I stowed the Sieve Number Two under Jimmy's ramp, as others jockeyed for berths. The Master drove Jimmy out of the mooring business, but he just sat back and watched the sparks fly across the water.

Setting Delano

Snapping

They don't call him Gimmy Jimmy for nothing. As the conflicts over moorings, and the use of the public docks, escalated, Jimmy quietly provided a cash alternative. Then raised his rates. When he told me I'd have to pony up $250 to keep my skiff in the shade, I rowed back across the river.

As it happens, the landing was so busy last year, and the mooring scene so confused, out of town boatists have gone looking for easier places to play. Except for hot summer weekends, when it's a zoo, the lot is rarely crowded, and there are fewer skiffs at the town float. Now the parking is cramped at Jimmy's, but congenial.

John's Plymouth

TOAD at the dock

The boating pressure ebbs and flows. Gas prices are cutting into the Bayliner business, and it takes a string of broiling days to drive all that Clorox into the water. Richmond saw an explosion of use at their landing a few years back, but the then Harbormaster butted heads with everyone, until the boat crowd gave up in disgust. But, when Norma went looking for a place to moor her 45 foot dreamboat this month, the present Master in Richmond couldn't have been more helpful.

Be careful what you dream. When Norma's life fell apart in the early Nineties, she set about chasing her dreams. Enrolled in a Master Mariner course at USM, came out with a commercial master's license, took some marine archeology classes, and fell in love with an old dive boat, called JERE. This winter she bought the beast, hoping to turn it into a cruise vessel, and we've all been watching closely.. to see who's going to win.

Norma's Folly

TOAD at work

Summer can do that to you. Drives you out of your inwardness and gets you on the water. We've been spending a lot of time on the TOAD. Chasing the wind, and taking out weekly Yarting Parties to sketch and paint the bayscape.

These ritual excursions have rekindled my urge to do landscapes, and forced me into working subjects without human artifacts. There isn't much junk in view on the bay. Looking over everyone's shoulder opens my eyes to new ways of seeing, too. These outings shift the emphasis from solitary work to artmaking as a group experience, as do the weekly figure studies at Carlo's. Going out in the TOAD to yart makes the group act into an art event. She's such a beauty.

Carlo Yarting

First Mate

There are usually a few novice sailors aboard, and enough wind to make the TOAD dance, so some converts have been inspired. In fact we may have to add another day to the weekly schedule to satisfy all the yartists and Toadists. Fine by me.

Keeps my mind off THE BIG QUESTIONS. Like what am I supposed to be doing? It's obvious by now that whatever I bring in from artwork doesn't amount to a hill of beans, so the commercial imperative has lost its urgency, or at least its relevance. Without that cash incentive, an artist is left to his own devices, and, frankly, I'm stymied. Whatever inner need I've had to make stuff has always been bolstered by the outer needs of cashflow and fulfilling promises. All the creative aspects of the work make it worth doing, but they never drove me like a mortgage payment, or a commission deadline.

Bryce by Carlo

And another

There are still paydays, and I'm still taking commissions, but the commercial pace has slowed. I'm not doing any less creative work, but I'm spread all over the map, and much of what I'm doing doesn't make a marketable product. In a commercial culture, without something to sell, it's hard to answer the question: What do you do?

I go TOADing. Or blowing with the Buzzards. I've been working out on this whistlestick since New Years, and finding musicians who'll let me jam in. Piano Bob has been pushing me along, dusting off 60s and 70s pop tunes, and your basic 8bar blues. I'm still drifty in some keys, but I'm learning how to finesse my fluffs. Pretty good yoga, and the best soul medicine.

Birch Point

Behind Sturgeon Island

The Blues Buzzards, a loose assortment of hard cases, has been kind enough to take me under their amplifiers, and I actually got to play on stage with them at the Town Hall. Fortunately for all concerned, with the amps cranking, the flute was barely audible. In fact I couldn't hear myself, which may be the best way to play. It was a gas, however, to watch the shimmyshake from up front.

I may not be a full-fledged Buzzard , but I had to eat a little crow. The benefit we played at, for a couple whose house burned down, was the first event in the renovated Hall. After all our noise about uglification, I was among the first to benefit from the new facility. The entrance works much better than I anticipated, and doesn't block as much light as expected, but it's still UGLY. At least you get to piss in it.

Pleasant Point

Little Brick Island

The week after the Buzzards buzzed, town meeting was held in the Hall, and a few of us got the chance to be pissed off. The heralded Comprehensive Plan got tabled because the state hasn't had the time to vet it, but the eagerness for development was palpable among our citizens assembled.

Thanks to the new gas pipeline this town is entitled to a small tax windfall, but the opportunity to boondoggle was too good to miss. If we take the full windfall, half of it will end up as transfer payments to the county and the school district, but the state offers a clever alternative. We can create a development plan utilizing all the tax dollars, and to hell with the schools and roads. Not to mention the other half of the money, which might reduce our individual tax burden. No, we are going to create a local bureaucratic position for a development consultant, to attract commercial development to town, and spend our windfall on a do-nothing job. O.. our new consulant will also be available to help us poor benighted local entrepreneurs figure out how to run a business. Talk about pissing tax dollars down a rathole.

Along Center's Point

Civic Statement

I've figured out how to do my civic duty without aggravation, though. Last year Robin at Banana Banners painted her building a wicked nasty purple, and anyone coming into town from the highway experiences a long colorful passage. That purple wall called out for a large banana, and this week I installed a 12 footer. Maybe that's my true purpose: find sites begging for civic installations, and leap into the breech. Stick a banana in the public eye.