Prout's Neck - Where Waves Moved Winslow Homer’s Brush - NYTimes.com

In Maine, Walking Where Waves Moved Winslow Homer’s Brush - NYTimes.com:

For the last hundred years or so, the only way visitors could see those cliffs was to stay at the Black Point Inn, the sole hotel on this two-and-a-half mile-promontory. But as of Sept. 25 the public will be able not just to observe the ocean as Homer did, but also to visit the two-story clapboard studio where the artist lived and painted what many consider to be his most majestic works.

This is thanks to the fact that the Portland Museum of Art bought the house six years ago when Homer’s great-grand-nephew decided to sell it. After Homer’s death in 1910 the house was passed down through a series of relatives and ultimately to this nephew, Charles Homer Willauer, who rented it to others for many summers. 

Winslow Homer's cottage

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Tornado at Breezy Point and Gerritsen Beach

New York's "Irish riviera" - Breezy Point at the west end of the Rockaways barrier beach - today was the site of a tornado.  As was Jamaica Bay at Gerritsen Beach.

Hurricane Isaac from space - NASA

An animation of the storm's progress from NASA

Armstrong’s White Flag Says What He Won’t - NYTimes.com

Armstrong’s White Flag Says What He Won’t - NYTimes.com: "Now he is for the ages, in his own Lance way. Lance Armstrong has joined the legion of the lost, the great athletes who were barred or exiled for sins admitted or charged or suspected."

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雪龙 Xuelong heads for north pole

Xue Long at dock in the ice-free port Akureyri in northern Iceland 

The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong 雪龙 (Snow Dragon) - having completed the northern passage  over the top of Russia - has left the northern Iceland port of Akureyri and is headed north - true north to the north pole. The website Arctic Portal reports that the Chinese expect that by 2020 global warming will make the straight line "central route" feasible for ice-hardened sea traffic.  You can follow the ship in real time HERE.

Life aboard a McAllister tug - NY Times

For twenty six years I have watched the tugs and barges moving silently below my apartment overlooking the Hudson or North River.  I don't know where they're going or what they are pushing - except for the football field size arrays of blue stone barges.  Others are pretty obviously fuel carriers.  They've got a red flag in front to show combustibles. One of these days I'll somehow get aboard one.  Meanwhile I check out Tugster, who reports from his Kill van Kull perch on the Bayonne Bridge.  And occasionally we get a piece like this Times article.

Maine is troubled by too many lobsters - The Washington Post

Nothing special here - I just thought it was interesting that the writer lives in Friendship near the Friendship Lobstermen's Co-op.
- GWC

Maine is troubled by too many lobsters - The Washington Post: "By Joanne Omang, Published: July 20

Joanne Omang is a writer and former Washington Post reporter. She works in Maine during the summer. Her e-mail address is omangjoanne@gmail.com.

FRIENDSHIP, Maine
At 4 a.m. I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet. The pickups weren’t arriving outside; the lobstermen weren’t getting out and joking their way to the docks that flank our house; the lobster boats that crowd lovely Friendship harbor weren’t chugging out before sunrise for another day’s haul. At 7 a.m. the boats were all still there."



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Esalen at 50

the Pacific shoreline at Big Sur as seen from Esalen Insitute

The Times frets about whether Esalen is getting "too corporate".  I don't know about that.  I do know it is one of my favorite places in the world, that it was a transformative place for me twenty two years ago when I spent a week there at a Joseph Campbell workshop with my friend Robert Walter of the Campbell Foundation.  And it is stunningly beautiful as this slideshow demonstrates.  And, yes, the massage practitioners at the tables above the rocks are wonderful.

Elephant herd rescues drowning calf

from The Rainforest Site

Riverkeeper Boat Blog: Gowanus Patrol 7/2/12

Riverkeeper Boat Blog: Gowanus Patrol 7/2/12: "Gowanus Patrol 7/2/12
We patrolled the Gowanus Canal using an aluminum skiff which we carry aboard our “Mother Ship” patrol boat, the R. Ian Fletcher.

The Feds, the EPA, are mandating a massive Superfund cleanup on the Gowanus. NYC and NYC Department of Environmental Protection continue to resist, “don’t worry, trust us, we’ve got a plan, we’ll take care of it.”

This is what we saw on the July 2nd. Just my opinion, but I don’t think we can leave it to NYC anymore. We spent the day taking educators, local bloggers and activists on patrols in the skiff so they would have these sites, and smells, firmly in mind when they went to a public meeting on the proposed EPA cleanup that evening in Brooklyn.

Message to the EPA…please BRING IT, and thanks."
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