The road ahead…

The clove hitch and the bowline are two of the most important and useful knots for any sailor. Anyone can use these very handy and easy knots. They are excellent for tying down loads on a bicycle rack, securing a washing line between two trees, creating loops for tent pegs…the list goes on.

A few years ago I bought a bicycle to get around town, go shopping, go to the beach, etc…basically save money on car rentals. The side effects have been a general improvement of my physical fitness, a sense of community with the other bikey folks and an overall emotional well-being. I started with one bike, a used mountain bike. Then I bought a road bike. Then I bought a better mountain bike because I had outgrown the first bike. I still have all three–my donkey, my mountain bike and my road bike.

3 bikes–Donkey, road and mountain

I really love bicycling. I have ridden some races, both road and mountain, preferring mountain but enjoying the speed and adrenaline of the road race. What I really love is a long mountain bike ride, mostly uphill, and not so fast. No race, just me and the elements.

A couple of years ago I watched a documentary called ‘Janapar’, by a bikey named Tom Allen. So I guess that’s when I caught the bug and I guess that’s where this is all leading: bicycle touring. This summer it will happen. I will ride the Wild Atlantic Way, south to north, i.e. Cork to Derry. +/- 2700km. July 24 to September 12.

There are a few ways to do this. I could spend huge amounts of money and stay in hotels, B&Bs, etc…this is called ‘credit card touring’. Or I could pack up all my gear (plus some new stuff) in four panniers, camp as often as possible and really have an adventure. I have been in contact with a bike shop in Cork and was going to rent a bike from them. The cost, like the hotels and B&B, would be high, even with any kind of generous discount they may grant me. So I’ll buy a new bike. I’ll buy it from them. And I’ll ship it back to Greece when I return mid-September. So that’s it.

There are some nice bikes for someone like me. I’ll expand on all of this in upcoming blogs. For now I am practicing my knots, getting my gear together and getting fit. Four months from now I’ll be riding through West Cork. Crossed fingers.

–JDCM

Early with the rain…

On the surface my parents would have had to be considered liberal and left-leaning. Certainly they voted that way. Their social views were in line with this, I think. In hindsight, however, I see my upbringing as being quite conservative. I guess it is the same with most beliefs. That which they held most dear they held with such fervour that it could be seen as a form of conservatism: strict in their liberalism. All of this means nothing except that for most of my formative years I was not allowed to eat pre-sweetened cereals or watch a lot of television. Or drink TANG. Remember TANG? TANG has not forgotten you. I loved TANG. A childhood friend drank it and it was a forbidden treat when I would visit his house and have a glass of TANG. My father would screw up his face in displeasure at the thought. That was over 35 years ago. I looked up TANG on the Billabong one-stop shopping website and there it was! And in several different flavours. Well, I am purist when it comes to these things so I ordered a tub of it, classic Astronaut Orange. It arrived the other day. I mixed some up and had a tentative sip. Amazing! It was exactly the same as I remember. Dee-lish! Why we are not all drinking this stuff? I don’t know.

TANG: The drink of astronauts

I guess I have to rethink the food thing, because in reality I ate a lot of Jell-O. And hotdogs and Campbell’s Pork and Beans. Also my fair share of Chef- Boy-R-Dee Beef-a-Roni and Ravioli. Then again, I was a just a little guy and my mother had figured out that if I was eating, that as fine, regardless. So who had the distasteful views of these forbidden fruits? Probably my father, who was so strict on himself and with others he could never really relax. His disdain for modern comforts like air-conditioning was offset not long after he left us by his embracing the machinery of mechanical coolants in his own home: central air. The way he looked down on certain restaurants in Provincetown as being beneath us was eventually nullified by his making these places his favourite haunts. Was he aware of the hypocrisy? Maybe. Who cares? I have my TANG.

I was thinking about this because I woke up early this morning, about 04:30. I heard the steady patter of the rain. I started the coffee, fed the cat, brushed my teeth and went out beneath the pergola to say hello to the Cosmos and encountered a minor flood. The drain pipe on my terrace was blocked and about 8 cm of water had pooled on most of the marble balcony. I found a wire clothes hanger, unbent it, and, while being rained on (I was wearing a hat and raincoat) reamed out the top of the pipe. Gurgle, gurgle…and the rater began to flow. As I was doing this I remembered back to how my father would wake up in the middle of a rain storm to go pull a board out of the spillway so the pond wouldn’t overflow. He grew to resent these aspects of his life, those rural elements that distracted him from the urban (and snobbishly urbane) lifestyle he craved. So he left.

After that, the menu was more relaxed. I even ate my fair share of Captain Crunch, another item on the Culinary List of Scorn. It seems that only one of my parents had had such hard and fast beliefs. So were they both liberal or was one more so than the other? Or, perhaps, one was willing to be flexible, more easy-going, than the other and, in the end, more independent. I must not forget that my mother was also one to wake up at 3AM, slip on her rubber boots and barn coat (before it was fashionable) over her pyjamas and trudge out into the rainy gloom, yank a piece of wood from the concrete spillway and go back into the house for a cup of coffee. In fact, she probably did it more often than he did.

It is supposed to rain all day. This is good. The island needs it. It drinks it in and, in a few months, will reward us all with a symphony of wild flowers. I will stay inside as much as I can today, venturing out only to go to the PO. These are familiar rhythms, movements I have learned. I am flexible. I can bend. I can let it go. I have my TANG.

–JDCM

PS: sorry about the size fo the new header, my dental X-ray. I can’t make it smaller and still have it fit.

Madness, anger, fear…

There are hundreds of millions of angry people today.  I am one of them.  I fear for the future.  I fear for the future of all people, regardless of gender or how they see themselves.  Even those who are grasping the coat tails of these monsters in the White House, these hooligans, I fear for their future too, for they are driven by avarice and a need for authority over others.  They seem big now, but they are not.  They know not what they do.  I would like to believe that the current events in America are the final gasp of ignorance and panic in a rapidly changing world, a world that is leaving them behind.  I would like to believe that there is some good that will come out of all of this, in the end, some grand epiphany…it is very difficult to believe these things and doing so make me seem naive.

The last time America was so divided 620,000 people died–roughly 2% of the population as counted at that time.  That deep wound has never fully healed and politicians (on all sides) have been picking at the festering scab of the Civil War since Reconstruction.  Of course, this is only a facet of what is happening now. I ramble…

I would like to believe in the Taoist story of the farmer and the horse.  When all seems good we exclaim, “Oh how lucky!”  When all seems lost, we wail, “Oh this is terrible!”

How do we know?

–JDCM

The downward slide…and onwards we go!

The Dormition of the Virgin has come and gone here on Paros.  In the next few days the ecological disaster that is summer tourism will begin to slowly fade away and by the first week in September the island and its inhabitants will breathe a huge sigh of relief.  What to do about the rise of tourism and its accompanying stress on the people and natural resources?  I have no solutions that would be seen by any as humanistic or even nice but I do know what would not help:

A larger landing strip on the local airport allowing for larger planes from big cities will not help.  More vehicle rental agencies (cars/quads/scooters) will not help.  Building more holiday homes in otherwise pristine areas will not help.  Converting long-term housing into AirBnB rentals, driving up the cost for local residents, etc…this will not help.  These are not solutions.  These are the problems.  That is my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

I am growing more and more despondent with the news from America.  TFitWH really wants to be an oligarchical ruler, like his Russian man-crush, like his Hungarian buddy, his North Korean BFF and his new pal in Turkey.  Once again, I have no solutions.  Well, actually, I have hope.  I am not advocating this, by the way.  Just a quick disclaimer!

On a personal front I have decided that I don’t want to smoke cigarettes anymore.  I woke up last Saturday, had a couple of rollies and thought, “Man, these are stupid.”  So I have quit.  I had no health issues.  I don’t get out of breath when exercising; my BP is 122/78 with a resting HR of 64.  This is all good.

So I went to the pharmacy and they put me on ‘the patch’ which is keeping me from losing my mind while the nicotine gets out of my system.  This will be a 3-month process,gradually reducing the nicotine to almost zero.  I’m into it, a day at time.  I want to stop.  That is half the battle.  I will admit I had 7 on Saturday, 3 Sunday and Monday and 1 on Tuesday.  Wednesday morning I woke up, cleaned my flat really well and threw out all my tobacco paraphernalia.  That helped a lot.  So none yesterday or today.  If I want one, I have to go buy the crap.  I have noticed that I suddenly have a lot more free time on my hands.  Also, my apartment is cleaner.  All that ash and smoke created a lot of dust.  I am already feeling better.  I have a lot of energy.   So that’s that.

There we go.

–JDCM

PS:  I haven’t changed the header because I am too lazy to do so.  Hope no one cares.  I don’t.

 

Following some familial footsteps…

I would like to blog a lot about the terrible political situations that are sweeping the globe, but there is so much of that already from all sides that I have decided not to do so.  I re-Tweet, comment, etc…already.  That’s enough from me.  I would like to tell you a story instead.  I hope that, in some small way, it helps to dispel some of the darkness.

In the late 1890s, at the University of Iowa, there was a writer by the name of George Cram Cook.  From 1896 to 1899 he taught what is considered by many to be the very first creative writing course.  He titled it ‘Verse-Making.’  When he left in 1899, the course was continued by his colleagues and became what is now known as the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  Cook then went to Stanford University and taught a similar course and, in 1915, after marrying his second wife Susan Glaspell, moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts where they founded the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde theatre group.  He produced plays written by Glaspell, some of Eugene O’Neill’s first plays and also those of Edna St. Vincent Millay.  That is just a small sample.  He worked with the group until 1919.  A long-time Hellenophile, he moved to Greece in 1922, settling in Delphi, home of the Oracle.  He died in Delphi 2 years later after contracting glanders from a dog bite.  The Greek government granted him status to be buried there, his grave marked by an ancient stone from the Temple of Apollo.  His daughter Nella was buried alongside him in the town necropolis and there is a memorial to Glaspell, Cook’s mother Ellen Dodge and his first wife Mollie on the wall above.

Jump ahead about 50 years.  My mother, the ever curious historian, began to research the P’town Players, Glaspell, Cook, et al…At that time my family lived in Provincetown as summer residents and were a part of the arts community, largely due to my novelist father.  Mom’s curiosity was such that she planned an excursion to Greece with my grandmother.  Grammaw had lived and worked in Athens and Thessaloniki in the mid-1960s and, as she was more familiar with the lay of the land, joined my mother in a search for Cook’s grave.  I do not remember if they found it, and I sense there was some disappointment to their quest.  I would have been about 7 or 8 years old at the time, so this tale is bathed in the slippery mist of memory.  I am skipping a lot here, especially about Grammaw and her interest.  Another story for a later time.

Jump ahead again to yesterday, 23 June, 2018.  I had a free day in Athens so I signed up for a tour of Delphi.  I had been there in 2006, but the Mom/Grammaw/Cook story had slipped my mind.  I decided to rectify this and follow their footsteps to find the grave.  The tour was pleasant enough and an economical way to get there, see the sacred site, the superb museum, have lunch and be transported back to the hotel later in the afternoon.  My tour mates were mostly American and Australian tourists and were curious about this aspect of my trip.  It was fun.  They enjoyed the tale as well.  I related a more truncated, less rambling version, by the way.

During a free 45 minutes between the site visit and the museum, I scurried up to the modern town and asked a local about the cemetery.  It was easy to find, and when I entered I queried two workmen if they knew of the grave.  “No..no English here…no Americans here…”  Undaunted, I looked around the small cemetery.  Among the cleanly carved headstones and markers, one stood out, up in the northeast corner, beneath a cypress tree–an ancient marble stele.  There it was.  After sweeping off the graves and taking some pictures, I looked at my watch.  I had just enough time to make it back down the hill and join my group for the museum tour.

 

 

–JDCM

 

It’s been a while…

I haven’t blogged in a long time.  I have had so many ideas about what to say, how to say it…it has all become a jumbled mess.  I should have taken notes.  I’ll try to untangle some threads…

News from the world of photography–some of my work has been chosen to be part of the Antiparos International Photography Exhibition in July.  It is a group show of about 14-15 different photographers and I have a feeling I will be a black sheep.  Going by what has been shown in the past, there will be a lot of street photography, travel/editorial work and landscapes.  I have submitted a new portfolio of abstract digital work–more of my Found Horizons.   They are very colourful and somewhat large, so they benefit from being seen from a few meters away.  When I have an e-poster, I’ll post it in a few places for you all to see.  It is a true privilege to be a part of this event.

–I have suspended my gum bichromate work until the autumn when the temperatures and humidity drops to a manageable level.  It has become too hot to work in the darkroom these days.  By that time I hope to have some new, larger digital negatives to work with.

–My work with the Photographic Club of Paros has come to an end for the season.  I had a wonderful time with them all and they printed some good work, some of which can be seen this upcoming weekend here in Paroikia.  I am very excited to see what it all looks like matted, framed and behind glass (ok..plastic).

–After years of waiting, the collection of my mother’s newspaper articles from the little local weekly has finally been collected and made into a book.  I dare to say ‘published’ since there is no ISBN number and it is not for sale.  I have given copies away to family and friends. I am so happy this has come about.  I began the process a few years before she died and I feel it is a fitting memorial for who she was, how she thought, what she believed, how she lived.

–I am hoping to embark upon another artistic path this summer.  That’s all I can and will say about it now.  If I follow through I’ll be sure to share.

–I go through eating phases. For instance, last winter I was eating a larger ratio of quesadillas than normal.  Sometimes for lunch and dinner.  These days it is caesar salads.  I have been making my own caesar salad dressing and have confirmed that this wonderfully garlicky, tangy aoili tastes good on just about anything–except fruit.  This may seem banal, but it is the little joys in life, isn’t it? I do not make them the way the Greeks make them.  For them it is a meal with chicken, corn, bacon…yummy, but I am more of a purest.  I even skip the croutons.  Just the romaine lettuce and the dressing.  Funnily enough, both the quesadilla and the caesar salad are from Mexico.  Hmmmm…

–I am convinced that TFitWH is yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize.  He’ll try to take credit for anything good that happens in Asia or the Middle East.  He’s a corrupt shark and we all know it.  He was corrupt long before he became TFitWH.  What does this say about the moral and ethical state of America?  I know that there is outrage, political movements, protests…and that is healthy and right and I support them all.  But what about the rest?  Have the citizens been gorging themselves so long on bread and circuses that they’ve become complacent cattle led by their collective noses?  I know many who are not.  This gives me hope.

I guess that’s it for now.

–JDCM

 

 

 

A painterly photographic ancestry…

Before digital, before silver (what we know as ‘silver gelatin’) there were ‘alternative processes.’  I find this amusing, since at the time (1840s to the mid-187os) there were no other alternatives. It is only in the digital age that we can approach photography this way.  There were several different types of processes.  You can look them up yourself.  I have chosen gum bichromate printing as my first step into this rich and varied past.

Gum bichromate printing entails mixing a potassium dichromate solution with gum arabic and watercolour pigment.  I have chosen black.   Potassium Dichromate is one of the more dangerous chemicals on the planet.  Needless to say I wear nitrile gloves, a Level 2 filter mask and safety glasses when I handle it.  I am using 4×5 negatives and I hope soon to be printing some larger digital negatives so I can make larger prints.

I made the first test strip a week or so ago.  The result is on the left.  Intervals are 15″, 30″, 45″ and 1 minute exposures under full daylight.

The problem was not the emulsion, or the paper, but me.  I wasn’t patient.  I had not allowed the paper to dry fully between each preparation stage (sizing, gesso, emulsion).  This resulted in flaking emulsion.  A common error and easily rectified.

Three days ago I began the process again.  Using 300 gsm Canson water-colour paper, I sized (soaked) this in 60C water for 30 minutes and left it to hang for 24 hours.  The next step was to make sure my gesso mix was as thin as milk, which is much thinner than one thinks.  The gesso needs to be thin so it can soak into the paper, not create a layer on top, as per a painter’s canvas.  I applied the gesso in the late afternoon and left it to dry under an exhaust fan for several hours.  Two nights ago, around 22:00hrs following the weekly Photo Club meeting, I went back into the darkroom and applied the emulsion coat after the gesso had completely dried.  I used 5ml of potassium dichromate solution to 8ml of gum arabic.  For colour I added about .5 gram of black water-colour paint (Van Gogh).  I mixed this well using a natural bristle brush and painted it onto the paper using a foam paintbrush.

Yesterday morning, after letting the emulsion-coated paper dry overnight under the exhaust fan, with a dehumidifier running and a small heater maintaining 20-21C, my paper was dry to the touch.

I used the same VW Bug 4×5 negative.  The first test strip was better.  Once again, 15″ intervals up to 1’15” under full sun at 10:00.  The result was a huge improvement in detail and resolution, although clearly not enough time.  I was on the right track.

Test strip at 15″ intervals up to 1’15”

I decided to increase the exposure time for the first proof to 1’45”.  After developing the print in three consecutive trays of 20C water for 20 minutes, this is what emerged.

1’45”, full sunlight 10:20, March 8, 2018, Paros.

Much improved!  The next time I print (tomorrow), I will expose the whole piece for the 1’45”, then burn in the top 30% for an additional 30″-45″ so the top of the hillside and the sky behind the car achieve some tone.

–JDCM

Birthday, friends, good food, Lent and photography…

I haven’t written much about photography lately.  Or if I have it has been fleeting.  I am not one to talk about my work a lot, especially work that I have not done or that may in process.  I learned from my father that this is a good way to “talk it out” and I end up not doing it.  This has been my experience.  But I’ll mention some goings-on.

My winter’s work with the Photografiki Omada Parou has been a real joy.  The 20 or so people that signed up in the fall for the 35mm analog project have all been enthusiastic, fun to work with and, without exception, have produced interesting and striking work.  Today I am meeting with one of them to develop their film.  Tomorrow I hand the camera over to another, and Thursday I work in the darkroom printing with a third.    I think I will try to print on Friday too.  This project has kept me busy through the winter but it has been much more.  I have come to know many locals who I had never met, and they I.  During the weekly club meetings (Wednesday, 19:30hrs) I get to hear at least two hours of solid Greek from numerous voices which has helped my Greek language studies which I work on every Friday afternoon with my teacher Stella.  So all around it has been a “win-win” situation.  They do all the work, by the way.  I am just a guide.

My own work?  This week I hope to submit a new portfolio of digital abstract work to the Antiparos International Photography Exhibition for the upcoming summer 2018 show.  This work is finished  so I can talk about the fantasy digital land-sea scapes I have found and photographed.  Very little Photoshopping, as you may guess.  Just a slight curve here or there for contrast and to keep it WYSIWYG.  Cross my fingers…I am also embarking on some alternative work which will open up some new technical and artistic avenues.  I won’t say much more except that if the winter time is for the darkroom, this project will be perfect for the summer and all of our sun.

Oh yes…the anniversary of my 53rd trip around the sun was a few days ago so I celebrated yesterday with some friends at a local taverna–that is was also ‘Katheri Deutera’, or Clean Monday, informed the menu.  The remains of the meal can be seen below.  Lent begins today.  I would like to keep the Lenten diet as much as possible for the next 40 days.  It is a healthy choice here in Greece.  Of course, this ‘diet’ predates any religious function as it was a result of the end of the winter, when the stored foods from the autumn harvest had run low (or out) and the agricultural population waited for the new crops of spring.  So it will be lots of veggies for me, seafood without backbones, no cheese, no meat…thank the gods the Greeks are sensible enough to still allow olives and olive oil…

The collection of my mother’s newspaper articles is all but done.  Last week I submitted the digital files to a printing company in Athens and the book goes to press this week.  Finally!  It has been years since I began this project, a memorial to my mother and a gift to family and friends.  And I like this book company.  They do nice work.  I may put together a book of my own.  A small collection of my photographs.  We’ll see…let’s not talk about it yet.

So thats it for February.  Right now there is a lovely, gentle, soaking rain blanketing the island.  It is supposed to rain all day.  Really great.  I am tired of winter.  I want spring, warmth and green things to see and eat.  I need to swim in the sea and shed some of the layers I have had to wear all winter to stay warm and dry.  The world moves ahead into the light and the alchemy I practice draws its magic from an ancient source.

clams, mussels, bean salad, pickles…

–JDCM

 

Mom’s hours…

I haven’t blogged in a while.  I have been busy–good busy.  Too busy to do this.  I have neglected this ongoing missive.  And, to be honest, this post is made up of excerpts from a post I didn’t publish last August, so be patient.  My mother has been on my mind lately and I have been getting up very early, well before dawn usually.  The unpublished post was to be called “Mom’s hours” so I have pasted that into the title field.   I promise to  blog again with something more current in a couple of weeks.

“It’s just after 6 and I have had my coffee, made my bed, fed the cats and it is still dark…the sun is creeping up in the east, I can just see rosy fingered dawn…Much too early to be awake, yet here I am.”

“After raising three children for consecutive decades, getting them up in the morning, making their breakfasts and getting them all on the bus to school, my mother just stayed in the habit if getting up at 5AM, even when she lived alone.”

“…so many of those mornings long ago were dark and cold, frosty, drizzly.  Terrible mornings in which to thrust one’s children, into the palaeolithic harshness of the American public educational system of the 1960s and 70s…”

“…early mornings, sweet tea and cinnamon toast and daypacks heaved onto small, grumpy, narrow shoulders.”

–JDCM

 

A Christmas tale…

 

 

 

 

 

I have always loved Christmas.  Not necessarily the gift giving, although when one is young getting stuff is always fun, and Santa Claus is real and the magic of the lights on the tree in the family living room enchanted a little boy who stayed up too late…

There is something about it I like.  Something deep.  Thanksgiving is fun, but Christmas has some kind of special, ancient magic.  Maybe it’s the hopeful twinkling lights or that it falls around the Winter Solstice and I am very in tune with the moon and or that here on Paros it so quiet and so cold and today we are expecting glorious rain, rain, rain…the island has become an emerald dotted with oranges and lemons.

The Greeks celebrate Christmas in a traditional way and a modern way, but also in their own way.  They are quick to adopt any celebration that involves staying up late and carousing with friends so they have taken the northern European Christmas to heart in so much as they are playfully opportunistic.  Gift giving is supposed to happen on January 1st, which is St. Basil’s Day in the Orthodox Church.  And then it is only for children.

St. Nikolas (December 6th), the patron saint of sailors, archers, children, brewers, repentant thieves, pawnbrokers and merchants is an historical figure dating back to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.  He worked some miracles, and gave way presents to children, hence the legend of St. Nick, etc…there is more to read here…

The Christmas tree is a northern, Scandinavian thing, dating back to the pagan era when the locals would light big pine trees on fire during the solstice, beckoning the sun to return.  You get it, right?  Trees on fire and drunk Vikings…Ok?   Works for me.

Here it is the tradition of the St. Nikolas boat, which is really the point of this blog.  The Greeks don’t use a tree, not really.  Being a mostly seafaring folk, this makes sense.  They lost this tradition for a while but it is back in vogue as a pleasant and pretty thing to do and I am sure all the gia-gias are ok with it.  I have wanted a St Nikolas boat for a while and this year was determined to find one.  And I did–made from an empty 5L olive oil can, a couple of sticks and some string…perfect!  It was for sale in a booth at the seasonal bazaar.  Ideally, one should display their boat on the 6th of December and take it down after January 6th (Epiphany).  I put mine up a bit late…Sorry Nick.  I’ll keep it up and twinkling until after the 6th.  I bought the lights in Athens. They are LEDs which are really super.  One setting blinked so fast I thought I was going to have a seizure!

Christmas Eve I am having dinner with some Greek friends.  I’ll bring some sweets as a gift.  Christmas Day I am making dinner for some non-Greek friends.  Pork roast with candied apples…something else.  That’s it really.  A quiet Christmas that rolls into the New Year and before you know it…

Well, I wish you all, wherever you are, however you mark the day, a very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years!

 

–JDCM