Maine Attaction

I'm tagging along with my wife in Maine this week while she studies landscape photography under the Wyeth family's official photographer, Peter Ralston.

Dogshead Island

Coastal Maine deserves its reputation as an über-romantic spot, and in mid-September teeters on Indian Summer, one of my favorite times of year.

Yesterday, we island-hopped for 14 straight hours in Peter's 37-foot lobster boat, The Raven, as he directed my wife in shooting hundreds of photos of skiffs, schooners, sailboats, shorelines, shacks, shanties, and seals. 

And lobstermen. Hundreds of lobstermen.

Our two-hour stop on Vinalhaven Island reminded me we were only miles—31, to be exact—from Monhegan Island, where artist Jamie Wyeth spends his summers.

Monhegan Island, known as the "Artists' Island," holds an esteemed place in American art history, having, before Wyeth summered there, been the summer home of Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Robert Henri, and Rockwell Kent. Jamie Wyeth in fact now owns and has lived in Kent's former island home.

Vinalhaven Island

Kent was drawn to Monhegan Island in 1905, and summered there off and on until 1953. Wyeth bought his home in 1968, but later moved to neighboring Southern Island, to escape the summer tourists.

In his lifetime, Kent was one of America's most revered artists; but Joe McCarthy put an end to his career. The witch-hunting senator accused (falsely) Kent of being a Communist. As a consequence, every museum in the country took down his paintings.

Jamie Wyeth, on the other hand, is the darling of American museums—and rightfully so. 

I love Wyeth's work. 

Serendipitously, Jamie Wyeth loves Rockwell Kent's work (most of which today is in Russia, gifted to that country out of spite by the beleaguered Kent) and collects it. He keeps his collection in his Southern Island home.

I love Rockwell Kent's work, too; maybe more.

Maine may be über-romantic, but it wouldn't be Maine after all without some weirdness. (It's the home of Stephen King.) 

Jamie Wyeth's homage to Kent, Portrait of Rockwell Kent, hints at that weirdness by including the contour of a woman falling from the rocks to her death in the background.

That's Kent's mistress, the New York socialite Sally Maynard Moran, who either committed suicide or was murdered in 1953. 

Her body was found in the ocean off Monhegan Island three weeks after her mysterious disappearance one night.

Nobody knows, to this date, what happened to her.

Above: Island Library by Jamie Wyeth. Watercolor, 28 x 20 inches. Wreck, Monhegan by Rockwell Kent. Oil on canvas panel. 7 x 13 inches. Portrait of Rockwell Kent by Jamie Wyeth. Oil on fiberboard. 34 x 26 inches. Maine photos by Robert Francis James.

The Prickly Pump

 

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

—H. L. Mencken

I had to gas up my car in Massachusetts yesterday and pulled into a Sunoco station. 

I removed my credit card from the pump's reader before answering all its dozen questions. 

A huge mistake.

The pump went full-scale ballistic, flashing READ! READ! READ!

I've never been verbally assaulted by a gas pump before.

My hunch: the pump has built-in AI.

Through machine learning its has acquired a wicked Boston attitude.

Lovely

We don’t need a little bit of lovely somewhere,
we need a lot of it everywhere.

— James Rebanks

On this mournful day, we need a lot of lovely everywhere.

It was medieval bloodlust that drove bin Laden's berserkers to attack the Twin Towers. Like impotent boys who realize they can't win the competition, they scattered all the blocks.

Who knows what symbol they'll knock down next? Probably the Internet. Impotence makes weak children rageful.

Today, put them aside.

Remember their victims and find a lot of lovely everywhere.

Fire the Writer

Well, that's putting your foot in your mouth. Or your toe in your mouth.

On its website, the amateur-league baseball team Savannah Bananas boasts that "we toe the line."

We are not your typical baseball team. We are different. We take chances. We toe the line. We test the rules. We challenge the way things are suppose to be.

The writer doesn't know the meaning of "toe the line." 

The idiom means do what is expected or act according to another's rules.

You can't both be a maverick and toe the line.

Dear Writer: strike one, you're out! 

NOTE: Toe the line comes not from baseball, but track and field. Officials used to shout, "Toe the line!" Now they shout, "On your mark!"

Real America

WARNING: Content may be offensive to some audiences.

Rep. Jim Jordan retweeted video from a Wisconsin football game yesterday with the comment, "Real America is done with Covid-19."

The phrase "Real America" is Jordan's equivalent of ein Volk, a phrase popularized by Adolph Hitler in the 1930s.

It's best defined not by what it means, but by what it doesn't.

Real America is not...

Real America is not Civilized America—those pain-in-the-ass weirdos who insist on wearing masks.

Real America is not Immuno-compromised America—those annoying wimps who worry they'll catch Covid-19. 

Real America is not Black America—those whiney, dangerous, hip-hop lovin' ingrates.

Real America is not Latino America—those lazy, foreign, Catholic beaners.

Real America is not Asian America—those creepy gooks who want our jobs.

Real America is not Indigenous America—those all-time champion losers.  

Real America is not Gay America—those unrepentant degenerates.

Real America is not East Coast America—those latte-sippin' socialists.

Real America is not West Coast America—those tree-huggin' communists.

Real America is not Jewish America—those overeducated loudmouths.

Real America is not Muslim America—those people who're worse than Jews.

Real America is not Poor America—those welfare-squanderin' weaklings.

Real America is not Homeless America—those whack jobs who foul the land beneath our beautiful freeways.

Real America is not Disabled America—those embarrassing feebs. 

Real America is not Old America—those wrinkled, funny-smelling people.

Real America is not Female America—those witchy pretenders to equality.

Real America is not Expert America—those Commies with doctorates from fancy-pants universities.

Real America is not Liberal America—the true enemies of Real America. You know, Democrats.

My advice to Jim to is simple: grow a toothbrush mustache. 

You'll complete the outfit.

NOTE: Fascism is hardly new in America. Learn more.