Two tragic deaths in Brooklyn

Raizy and Nathan Glauber on their wedding day
photos - NY Times

The reports of the tragic deaths of Raizy and Nathan Glauber a young "ultra orthodox" couple whose unborn boy survived the collision on Kent Avenue in Brooklyn reminded me of my school days there. We passed each other without acknowledgement every day on Nostrand Avenue - Satmar Jewish boys with long dangling curls and yarmulkes.  

We were from different tribes - the Catholic school boys at Brooklyn Prep on Carroll Street and the Jewish boys who went to the kosher butcher and baker and grocer.  It was a mixed neighborhood of the kind remembered by Pete Hamill in Snow in August.  Mike Devlin, an altar boy, becomes  a shabbos goy - helping a white bearded rabbi on the sabbath.  He befriends the boy for whom  a chance to make a little money becomes a chance to learn about a world he would otherwise never have glimpsed, passing anonymously on the streets as we did in Crown Heights, Catholic and Jewish boys.- gwc

the funeral

On the boardwalk with James - Pelham Bay Park - The Bronx

Hunter Island looking east to David Island
click pix to enlarge and for slideshow

James running on the boardwalk - Hunter Island meadow

glacial morain - the Bronx

Pelham Bay looking toward Throgs Neck Bridge

Five essentials of fly casting

from MidCurrent
Audio interview with Nick Lyons
Five essentials of fly casting

A Black Spot, The Size Of Six Earths, Appears On The Sun : The Two-Way : NPR

Cool Photo: A Black Spot, The Size Of Six Earths, Appears On The Sun : The Two-Way : NPR

Portlandia: City of Conceptual Art

Presidents Day 2013

The storm merely "grazed" us

That's what the National Weather Service says. But it's 23 F and wind is gusting to 48 kts. here in Friendship on the Muscongus Bay with waves 5 - 6 feet.

Debate Over How to Help Massachusetts Fishing Towns - NYTimes.com

Debate Over How to Help Massachusetts Fishing Towns - NYTimes.com:
Can we still save the ocean food supply?  Gloucester - our iconic fishing town - has been declared a disaster area.
'via Blog this'

Paying respects at grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton

The crewmen who repeated the Shackleton Antarctic voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island paid their respects to The Boss.  At the start I was impressed by the handsome replica of the 22' loa lifeboat which Shackleton desperately prepared for the early winter 800 mile last chance mission to get help.  But I was skeptical.  They were navigating by sextant, yes, wearing traditional clothing and using traditional gear like a spill-prone primus stove, huddled under the surely more watertight than Shackleton’s canvas deck cover. But the re-enactors  hadn’t lived in a tent on an ice floe for six months, drinking weak tea, eating penguin and seal, burning blubber for fuel, with an occasional cigaret for a treat, had they?  

But when they got to the desolate cove on South Georgia huddling in a cave two of the crew had “trench foot” (think WW I) and had to be med evac’ed rather than hike over a mountain range.  Tim Jarvis - an Everest vet - and his navigator took off and - still in original gear - had to be re-supplied (by their rested mates) when they were in a tough spot on a ledge above a glacier in a storm.  I’m a believer now.  They gave us a glimpse into what Shackleton and his men endured. - GWC

Expedition leader Tim Jarvis  with Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Sir Ernest,
and patron of the lifeboat voyage from Antarctica to South Georgia Island, at the grave of The Boss at Grytviken

Shackleton voyage: story ends with visit to Shackleton’s grave | Classic Boat Magazine:
"It was a fitting tribute to conclude one of the most gruelling expeditions in recent times.
A mug of Shackleton’s favourite scotch, a toast raised to ‘the Boss’ and the last dram of Mackinlay’s poured onto the gravesite in an offering to his legendary achievements.

Today the six members of Shackleton Epic crew met with their Patron and their boat’s namesake, The Hon. Alexandra Shackleton at the grave site of Sir Ernest, who is buried at Grytviken, South Georgia, where he died in 1922."

h/t Jesse Fradkin

Axe Handles

 poem by Gary Snyder from Axe Handles (North Point Press, New York, 1983)

Axe Handles

One afternoon the last week in April

Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet

One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.

He recalls the hatchet-head

Without a handle, in the shop

And go gets it, and wants it for his own.

A broken-off axe handle behind the door

Is long enough for a hatchet,

We cut it to length and take it

With the hatchet head

And working hatchet, to the wood block.

There I begin to shape the old handle

With the hatchet, and the phrase

First learned from Ezra Pound

Rings in my ears!

“When making an axe handle

     the pattern is not far off.”

And I say this to Kai

“Look: We’ll shape the handle

By checking the handle

Of the axe we cut with—”

And he sees. And I hear it again:

It’s in Lu Ji’s Wen Fu, fourth century

A.D. “Essay on Literature”—in the

Preface: “In making the handle

Of an axe

By cutting wood with an axe

The model is indeed near at hand.”

My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

Translated that and taught it years ago

And I see: Pound was an axe,

Chen was an axe, I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture,

How we go on.

h/t Patrick O'Donnell