windsend

Blog Fever

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of buying lunch for and being interviewed by Ms Feverish.  She is doing research on the blogosphere for a masters thesis, and I was a volunteer interviewee.  I got to shoot my mouth off to my hearts content about why I blog, who I think I'm blogging to, what of myself I try to convey in my blog, whose blogs I read, why the design of my blog is what it is, and on and on. 

I had a Chinese cabbage salad with peanut dressing and grilled chicken. She had a turkey wrap.  She thanked me for my time and asked me questions, listened and scribbled for an hour.  She had a slick little digital recorder, which she pointed out looked a lot like the memory erasing device from Men In Black, but had the opposite effect on me.  The interview prompted me to do more explicit thinking about this activity than I ever have before.  I will share with you some of what I told her: 

Ms Feverish, I try to be honest about what I write here.

Ms Feverish, I do sometimes censor what I write here, usually to protect the guilty, or I should say, to protect myself from the wrath of the guilty.  On the other had, I told her, I do occasionally write more critically about someone here than I would have done an a monthly magazine column I used to write, because I felt it less likely that the object of my scorn would find his or her way here, and because I felt the blogged word was somehow more ephemeral, and therefor potentially less hurtful, than the printed word.  In some of these cases, I did not use the name of the person of whom I was being critical, but that anyone who had published something with which I disagreed was fair game and would be named.  On the whole, I really have tried to keep windsend from becoming an outlet for criticism.  I hope to be more positive than negative.

Ms Feverish, I don't really know who my readers are.  (That is, I know some of you, of course, from outside the blogosphere, but thousands of you have done me the honor of paying a visit, and I only know a few of you personally).  I do know that some people have found me as a result of some pretty strange queries - for instance, looking for "Lanzarote locust" (Windsend used to be on page one of Google results for this query, but since locust actually appeared on Lanzarote, we slipped to page 12).  That the most comments I got in the first few months were people looking for a source for Deletum.  (The world has a graffiti problem - if you can solve it you will be a hero, and probably a rich one.)

Ms Feverish, I'm afraid I am not very good about maintaining the links in my sidebar - my blog roll is not up to date (now that I use Newsgator), but that I do try to use the links to other smaller (non-broadcast) blogs regularly, so that those writers know my link is there leading people to them. 

And, last but not least, Ms Feverish, please be sure to let me know when your thesis appears, because you know how much we bloggers love to see ourselves up there on the monitor.

Disappointed Again

I am reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear (SoF).  I probably should do him the courtesy of finishing the book before panning it, but I am very disappointed.  I lived upstairs from Mr Crichton's brother in college.  I loved his brother dearly, so I always hoped to like his books.  He's an MD from Harvard, so I suspect he has a good mind.  He has obviously been a successful writer, and I have to admit I had a good time reading the politically incorrect Disclosure and Rising Sun,  but SoF is really beyond the pale. 

I don't mind so much his disingenuous use of selective evidence to attempt to debunk the underpinnings of global warming predictions (for a thorough rebuttal of his arguments see here).  But here is a guy who has made his living scaring the begeesus out of people with the horrors of microbes from outer space, cloned dinosaurs, unsafe airplanes, the evil Japanese, nanomonsters, etc, etc.  And what is the thesis of this new book, a political polemic (barely) disguised with a thin layer of fiction?  That global warming theory is a conspiracy of the evil environmental movement to keep the ignorant populace (that's us, folks) in abject fear.  Now, Mike, isn't that just a wee little bit hypocritical? 

I'm not sure I would mind putting up with the polemics, if it supported an even vaguely compelling story.  But in this case, the story is just too far-fetched, yet predictable and cursory, to keep me turning the pages the way a good thriller should.   I should have finished the thing in a couple of days, but I keep putting it down for a couple of days and coming back only from the feeling of obligation I have toward books that's like the obligation beaten into me in my youth to clean my plate at dinner.

I just hope that doesn't mean my mind is as flabby as my body...

UPDATE: Well, I finished the book.  No happier with its entertainment value.  Sure, the earth's climate is an incredibly complex and poorly understood system.  Mr Crichton has certainly educated himself thoroughly on the subject.  He has come to believe that predictions that the earth is warming due to CO2 emissions are false, or at best, unproven.  He believes that acting to limit these emissions will be harmful to the poor nations of the world.  He has taken this show on the road, lecturing on the topic to audiences who are receptive (and, I presume, pay his lecture fees). 

However, to palm off this lecture as a thriller, by painting it with a thin coat of improbable plot and cardboard characters and charging $27.95 for it...?  Disappointed still.

Christmas Cards

[Alternative PC Title: Holiday Cards]  ML and I have very different patterns of card sending.  She sends out a few cards with long handwritten personal messages to a handful of friends with whom she is not in touch the rest of the year.   I send out a bunch of cards (about 40) to people I may or may not have been in touch with over the year, but whose friendship I still wish to acknowledge.  I usually don't include that much of a personal nature, beyond the signature and maybe a brief greeting.

I think of these cards as a way of saying to those I haven't seen or talked to in a while, "Hey, we're still here, you're still there, we haven't forgotten about you."  Sort of place holders in our relationship, a relationship that may or may not get back to the front burner  some day. 

Some reciprocate, some don't.  I always try to send out more than I receive, and usually succeed if you don't count the cards from politicians, stock brokers, car dealers, etc.  I don't always get them out in time for the recipients to actually receive them by Christmas Day.  This year, for instance, I just got them to the PO in time for a Christmas Eve postmark. 

So, my question is, what do Christmas cards mean to you?  Both the ones you send and those you receive?

Loft Report 12/22/04

This short week we cut and partially assembled some Sabre 34 sails for our partner loft in Vermont.  We've been finishing up our giant Cryin' Lion spinnaker inlay (which got delayed while we looked for an ink that was more compatible with the fabric we were using). 

We have been building a Maxx laminate J/30 blade, a Hunter 31 main, and 8 turnabout mainsails for a Maine yacht club junior program.  The program director for that club is known to us as a competitive J/24 and Melges 24 sailor and he is demanding that these be pretty hotted up Turnabout sails.  I grew up sailing Turnabouts, and I know that the juniors sailing them can be every bit as much into hot sails as the twenty something wannabe sailing rock stars.

We have also been learning a thing or two about air-freighting cargo in the post 9/11 world.  Turns out one can't ship cargo on passenger planes unless one is a "known" shipper, which means someone who with established bona fides themselves checks you out and gives you a clean bill of health.  Since only passenger carriers carry air freight to Micronesia, we need to become "known" in order to get a recently completed sail to our customer in the South Pacific.

Welcome Winter

This morning my dog woke me at about 4 am, scratching to get back into the house (ML had let him out a few minutes earlier).  Out the door, I could see that, although it had stopped snowing at dusk yesterday, the wind had been up, and the fine snow had drifted back over the walk and parts of the drive.  I slipped back into bed, but by 4:30 I realized there would be no more sleep for me.

Knowing it was cold, I donned long underwear, sweats, ski pants, boots, parka, gloves and balaclava.  About half an hour with snow blower and shovel cleared the drive and walks. Then I came in and changed for the gym.  The Cooper coughed a couple of times warming up, but the heated seats had kicked in by the time I jumped aboard and pulled out of the garage.  The outside thermometer on the dash said -4 degrees. 

At 7:42 am the sun grazed the Tropic of Capricorn and began its long journey North.  By then, I had showered off my workout sweat and was headed down to open the loft.  The mercury had risen to a balmy -3.   We certainly seem to be ready for winter up here in Maine.

[Update:  Yes, that is a photo of my house, taken yesterday early evening (12.20.2004), but the falling snow effect is courtesy of Corel PhotoPaint 'Cubist' Art Stroke.]

Weekend

I spent a quiet weekend at home, with a good balance of chores, paperwork and recreation.  I find that I have trouble getting the balance of these things right.  If I don't do enough chores and paperwork, I feel too much guilt to enjoy my relaxation, and as a result, the whole weekend is not very satisfying.

This time I got it right - some cleaning and laundry; paying a bunch of bills and filing some paperwork for my Dad's estate; the requisite visit to my mother; some reading; the Times crossword; a little TV football; a good brisk 4 mile walk on Sunday morning.

The  book I finished was, as I mentioned earlier, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.   I agree with the jacket blurbs that it is his best since Neuromancer, perhaps his best ever.  For some reason I have always loved books that hover around apophenia ever since reading The Crying of Lot 49 in college.  I have never been able to become a full scale conspiracy theorist, but I guess I have always secretly wished that I'd find a conspiracy to seduce me.  Still waiting...

Lights out

ML and I returned home from visiting my mother in her apartment in the nice retirement community in Scarborough at about 8 pm last night.  We sat down by our propane stove in the living room, ML in front of the computer and me reading (and dozing) in my leather chair.  About 8:15 the lights flickered and went out. 

Usually, when this happens in our town, it is weather related, but last night was quiet.  It was actually very pleasant just sitting by the light of the gas flame.  The sliver of new moon lit up the front yard.  We heard a siren in the distance.  Perhaps someone crashed into a telephone pole.

After about twenty minutes of enjoying the quiet dark, we resigned ourselves to the prospect of waiting several hours for the juice to come back, and we went off to bed. 

A few years ago, during the great northeast ice storm, we were without power for 13 days.   At the time we decided to get a generator, but that project got put off - still on the list, but never getting to the top.  Last night was just another reminder.

The incident particularly drove home to me that in an emergency like this I can no longer go home.  Of course, I was home, but somewhere in the back of my psyche, I had until this year still felt that my parents house - the house that I grew up in - was there as a haven if I ever needed it.  It is no more.

[The lights came back about 1 am.  We got up and switched off the lights and went back to sleep.]

Lombardy

Reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, I come across an acronym to die for: LOMBARD = lots of money but a real dickhead.  So now you'll know what I mean if that expression should cross my lips.

Board Meeting

I went to only my second board meeting of the Maritime Museum yesterday.  It is a large board, mostly because people on the board are reliable contributors, and because of its size, it is a little unwieldy - everything takes longer than it should as people put in there two cents worth on various issues. 

We discussed the budget, some special projects and the long term strategic plan for the museum.  All these had been dealt with by various committees, so they didn't require a lot of work on our part.  The museum seems to be in pretty good shape - it has a great physical plant, a wonderful collection, a dedicated and capable staff, lots of good volunteers, and a pretty substantial endowment. 

The biggest problem it faces is a problem that most museums around the country are facing - a gradual, long term decline in visitors.  We discussed examples of museums that successfully reverse this trend, but it seems most do so by reinventing themselves, usually through huge capital expenditures, and then reverse the trend only temporarily.  We decided to work harder marketing ourselves.

The whole discussion of the strategic plan and the kind of future the museum had to look forward to got me to focus on exactly what I thought the purpose of a museum should be and who it should be for.  Is it a place for historians with the purpose of simply preserving special artifacts and documentation that will then be available for study into the indefinite future?  Is it a place to recreate a slice of the past for visitors to experience like a theme park?   Now, it is a little of both.  The real question is, how do you balance limited resources to serve both these purposes?

I suppose I should be chagrined to admit that I agreed to serve on a museum board without having thought this all through, but there it is.  I am working on it. 

Loft Report 12/9

This week we are working on a HydraNet roller furling jib topsail for a 55 foot aluminum cutter cruising in the South Pacific.  We will be sewing on the acrylic canvas tabling cover, a strip of cloth on the leech and foot that protects the sail from sun damage when its furled up, with PTFE thread.  We usually polyester, which in Maine lasts about 6-8 years, but in the tropics needs replacing every year or two.  The PTFE should last as long as the sail.  When were done we'll have to figure out how to get it to Pohnpei, Micronesia. 

We are having some difficulty finding a good dark black ink that will stick to silver Airx spinnaker fabric, so we can finish up our crying lion inlay. 

We just did some mylar patterns on our plotter of the rudder, centerboard and stem of a Fish-class day sailer for an MIT professor who is building one in his barn.  When he gets farther along, we'll do patterns for each of the stations.  If he gets that far, we'll build him some sails.

We are also building a jib for an Etchells and some Turnabout mainsails.  We should be starting on some International Class jibs, but the fleet is getting cold feet about building them from Maxx laminates.  It has been pretty entertaining, watching the e-mail discussion of this issue. 

Today, we sent Patience off in the van on her first trip down East.  She'll be visiting a few boatyards to pick up sails that need some work.  They are pretty much off the beaten track, so she will be exploring new places.  Should be a nice adventure, with the sun out and a bit of new snow around.