Well, it is the season, and to encourage participation let’s make this one easy. We will all be doing this in the next few weeks, so take along that pocket camera and get some good ones.
Eat Drink and be Merry, closing time – Midnight January 15th 2012
Saw this one on my nearby stump yesterday.
A Yellow Shafted Flicker, a kind of Woodpecker, and a female I think.
Now I see some red and some black and some gray and some buff brown, but Yellow?
Theme for the first competition of 2012 – A New Beginning.
Anything you wish to make of it. The New Year, a new home, a new country, a new love, a new bike, upon being released from prison – you get the idea.
To avoid the somnolence which follows the season’s festivities I would like to set the closing at midnight January 10, 2012 (GMT or equivalent) or when the first female contribution is made, whichever is later 🙂
The recent discussion of money and its inherent value (only of that for which it can be exchanged) sent me back to my sketchy records of something I read back at the start of the present financial debacle (when the CDO’s first hit the fan so long ago). I posted this way back then on that other awful site, but it is still a good read and even has some familiar seasonal references.
Since ancient times, the notion of debt has been deeply interwoven into our culture, literature and social structure. With the global markets in turmoil, Margaret Atwood looks at the history and meaning of being in hock. Continue reading “Debtor’s Prism”
It was just after midnight on the night of December 24th 1936.
The steel-hulled square-rigged ship “Caspar” 140 days out of Callao, beyond Cape Horn, with 3,500 tons of nitrate fertilizer in her holds, was just into the English Channel. Her destination and homeport was the town of Ipswich, now less than 200 miles away. The weather in the channel was bad and getting worse. In heavy snow, driven by gale force winds out of the East, the big sailing ship was fighting for every inch of windward progress she could make and had tacked to the northward far over by Guernsey Island in an attempt to get beyond Start Point and buy a little extra room to make better eastward progress.
Continue reading “The Gray Ghost – December CW Comp.”
Bearsy set a high bar for this one, but here’s my attempt.
Continue reading “The Owl and the Pussycat, Twenty Years On. (Poetry Comp.)”
I had planned a blog about a local event that is usually well worth a visit and in preparation I moved the boat about 60 miles on Friday, about 30 miles on the Bay and 28 miles up the Chester river to Chestertown, Maryland, an interesting little town of some character. The event is the annual Downrigging Weekend which marks the end of the working season for many sailboats, the event attracts a large number of original and replica sailing craft, ranging in history from The Kalmar Nyckel a replica of the ship that established the first Swedish settlement in what was to become Delaware in 1636 through the Schooner Elf built in the 1880’s and still afloat. My personal favorite and a winter resident of Chestertown is the schooner Sultana a replica of a colonial revenue cutter built ten years ago from original lines taken off the ship when she was bought by the Royal Navy in about 1770.
We got in late on Friday and anchored opposite the Chestertown waterfront in time to see the firework display. After that things got dark and interesting (well it is close to Halloween). A gale of wind and heavy rain descended, forcing the few of us who were anchored out to seek out the more sheltered local creeks to ride out the storm. Saturday came slowly, bringing with it gale force winds and driving SNOW. So far all the Saturday events have been cancelled together with my plan to take lots of good pictures of the various ships under sail. The forecast looks none too rosy for tomorrow either but we will hang here in this creek and see what happens. More later.
It’s been raining here for a few days, this morning it was sunny and warm. I noticed that the overnight geese were staying in the creek and took the camera to try to get some pictures. The geese are wiley creatures and always have “sentries” stationed around the outside of the group keeping their heads up while the others sleep or feed, anyway they saw me and all swam off over to the other side of the creek, leaving me only with another shot of the boat and some “specks”. Then camera in hand I spotted this guy on the floating dock.
Zorb of Klig slithered across the room on five of his tentacles, swiveled his single green eye towards her and bid a hearty hello to his inamorata, the lady Billa of Arachnia. She had curled her millipedal self into a perfect spiral in the middle of her favorite armchair and was awaiting his arrival with interest.
Boadicea's Chariot 
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