Stanley Bogdan - legendary reel maker dies

Bogdan reel

Stanley Bogdan

Stanley Bogdan, designer and builder of much-coveted fly fishing reels has died at 92.  He made them with  his son Stephen at S.E. Bogdan Custom Built.  Stanley was a master fisherman - especially of Atlantic salmon.  The magic of the reel is its highly sensitive double-disc brake - which enables the fisherman to adjust - wearing out the fish without breaking the line.


The Times obituary is HERE Marc Aroner, maker of Spinoza fine bamboo rods remembers Bogdan HERE, with a fish tale or two.

End of an Era - Tulipan & Conk, P.C. 1986 - 2011

for rent - available immediately

200th anniversary of Manhattan's grid

John Randel, surveyor, drew the map for the City's
Street Commissioners

Sam Roberts reports in the Times about the 200 year old map that laid out Manhattan's street grid.
There is a terrific interactive street map from 1811.
If you look carefully you will see that the Spurten Duyvil Creek (over which the Henry Hudson Bridge now passes) leads into the tidal basin (now Inwood Hill Park and Columbia boathouse) and then heads back north over a kind of thumb. That "thumb" is now Van Cortland Park.  It was cut off by the ship canal which joined the Spuyten Duyvil and Harlem Creeks.  So part of Manhattan Borough is "in" the Bronx.

James comes running

On Back River meadow, Friendship, Maine, March 2011

James is very happy that we bought the house on the Back River in Friendship, Maine.  He loves to run on the salt marsh.  It's Labrador Retriever habitat.

Back River meadow, late afternoon, super moonday

late afternoon March 19, 2011 super moonday

Supermoon - March 19, 2011

Tonight is the closest full moon of 2011.  Some are calling it a supermoon.  It is a perigee moon - when the moon is closest to the earth, so its gravitational pull is stronger.  And Saturn is visible in the eastern sky.  Great info at Earthsky.org


I rowed from our house to Friendship Harbor - leaving 1/2  hour before the morning high tide, the meadow at the edge of the river was flooded, and when I took James for a stroll on the same meadow in the evening the water had fallen 11 feet in six hours revealing a dramatically different landscape.  Those shots are HERE.

high tide - supermoon 2011

low tide six hours later - 11 feet lower

Building a lumberyard skiff: My summer boat building course

Here is the link to the course at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin, Maine - wooden boat capital of the world.

16 foot skiff designed by instructor Walter Baron

圣巴特里克节快乐 Happy St. Patrick's Day

圣巴特里克节快乐  Happy Paddy's Day!
This is how they celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Shanghai!  
The Green Dragon was the name of the Chinese-Irish entry in the round-the-world 2010 Volvo Ocean Race .  HERE are shots of the Singapore - Tsingtao leg.

How to view an ancient Chinese art scroll

Family Handyman One-Day backyard project