Let Go

Let go that which burdens you. Let go any acts of unkindness or brutality from or against you. Let go one breath into another.

— Joy Harjo

Known locally as "Massholes," they drive mostly black SUVs and oversize pickup trucks.

While driving in Massachusetts, I must remember Joy Harjo's poem. 

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!"