Earlier this month, Alaska announced that it had canceled the entire snow crab harvest for the year. The reason? Nearly 11 billion crabs had suddenly disappeared from the Bering Sea.
The news heralded a catastrophic population collapse for the animals, in which nine out of ten died out between 2018 to 2021. It’s a terrible development for those who make a living harvesting the crabs in a region of the world that’s warming unusually fast because of its proximity to the North Pole. (Alaska officials also canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest for a second year in a row.) This isn’t a small industry; Alaska’s crab fishing is worth more than $200 million a year. The sudden shutdown has left the state, well, shell-shocked.
Pharoah Sanders, the revered American jazz saxophonist, has died aged 81. The news was confirmed by Sanders’ label, Luaka Bop, on Twitter.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” the label’s statement read. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.”
Born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1940, Sanders’ career began in Oakland, California. After moving to New York in the 1960s, he started collaborating with Sun Ra, who gave him the name Pharoah, before becoming a member of John Coltrane’s band; Sanders played with Coltrane until the latter’s death in 1967.
My favorite:
ROCKLAND — Tucked away in a small workshop on Rockland Harbor’s North End, a scruffy part of town where the marine trades and industry intersect, and noisy ospreys nest atop rusty poles, the little wooden sloop Wren is undergoing a transformation, a Cinderella tale that will culminate this week with her relaunch into Penobscot Bay.
For the last six months, this Herreshoff 12½ day sailor sat on a boat cradle inside Cody Smith’s workshop, surrounded by tools, ladders and an armchair covered with boatbuilding supplies. She was carried there on a cold day last February on the back of Steve Laite’s trailer, after being transported to the mainland in 2019 from a North Haven boat shed.
That’s where Wren’s owner, Lisa Morgan, first spotted her, a neglected hull with a “Herreshoff for free” sign unceremoniously hanging off her side.
“Why not,” thought Morgan. No one likes to see a Herreshoff languishing, and to Morgan, an artist who works with her hands every chance she gets, the opportunity to learn how to restore a wooden craft ignited her imagination.
While a sailor, Morgan is not a boatbuilder. She put the word out and found Cody Smith, a young master builder on the rise. (He more modestly refers to his training as hawsepiping – learning on the job).
“It was in terrible shape,” said Smith, when he first laid eyes on the boat.
The frames were cracked and the fasteners gone. Peeling paint and varnish hung from her sides, and planks were rotting.
Morgan asked Smith to help her take on the project, and he did, tackling it with gusto. He obtained plans of another Herreshoff, tacking them up on the shop wall for reference, as he probed and calculated how to make repairs on a boat that had been built by masterful Rhode Island boatbuilders at the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company generations ago.
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Hank Mobley tenor sax
Kenny Drew piano
Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen bass
Albert Tootie Heath drums
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| The Tercentennial granite cross at Allen Island |
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