promo

In family promotional news, wearyourmusic got featured in a Consumer Reports magazine (above). And the company's founder (and child) posed in another catalogue—check out the onyx/shining sea trim pic. (K says she looks like she's about to move to one of those suburban neighborhoods she reviles).

disquiet on campus

You have to ask yourself how sports became so important to Americans that university endowments are based on football teams.

old school j school

This 1940 film was made by Encyclopedia Britannica as part of its series "Your Life Work." Love the part at the end about "the country editor."
In other journalistic news, Donna Ferrato makes the New York Times (again) for her sex and violence work.
And in other, more tangential journalistic news, here's a fun typesetting game about kerning.
Now to prepare to speak about the narrative form at Elaine's journalism class this afternoon. . .

meanwhile. . .

. . .back in Block Island, the outdoor furniture and the lawn mower have moved indoors for the winter and John Henry is coming to shut off the water. Wifi is off there (and finally on here in NYC). But the cycle is still in motion. Returning guests are already playing musical chairs for next summer, and new tenants are lining up for the remaining spaces. The seasons, they go round and round.
 

city so nice they named it twice

Back in media central, without Internet as a means of communication. Forced to fall back on printed materials, phone and in-person interactions. Ok, so I do have the smart phone and texting--but my options are so restricted. How did we live and do business before?


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city or country?

Let's say you were young and restless, and maybe you grew up a city mouse and maybe a country mouse, and you had two beautiful places. Which would you choose?

why it is a milltown

OK, so the town, like much of Rhode Island, is on the skids. But it has some great natural features and  unbelievable building stock. Take the old bank building (not visible), for instance. It had the grand entrance, maybe six floors, working elevator, great condition—just sitting there waiting for somebody to come up with a magical idea for—maybe—an ultra chic retirement commune or crack house. Yours for $250,000! Total! And then there are the mill buildings, in various states of rehab. Just add artists!

en famille

Off schedule

That would be me off schedule, not Camilla .



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Location:Providence,United States

what's on the boat?

The truck.
Or will be at 12:30.

What's in the truck?
Hint: Diapers. Jigsaw.

And all I have to say is it's a damn fine day to be leaving.

this morning

Let's look at the list:
Electrical cords
Breaker box
Unplug jacuzzi
Roberta money
Douglas hot dogs
Johnny coffee
John Henry song
Put away records
Rehang surfboards
Close fireplace dampers
Turn off gas
Wash
Fridge

Tomorrow we can play "What's still on the list?" and
"What's in the truck?"

ozarka!

"Forget the Yellow Brick Road. If you are off to see The Goose, you have to follow the Long and Winding, Yellow, Striped, Road," writes Frank. He sends along this picture of Rt. 160 right before the Thomasville turnoff. Most people in the Ozarks call these stomach-addling ups and downs "whoopdedoos." The sight of the road makes me a little homesick (no, not carsick!), but the Goose is shut down for the winter now. Fortunately, snow is infrequent;  your whoopdeedoo becomes a fine howdeedoo, I'm a tellin' you!

day sail

Thursday is shopping day on Block Island. Or rather, off Block Island. Everybody piles on the 8:15 boat, gets into their cars on the other side, and takes off for doctors' appointments and supplies. We went to the car repair garage, Staples, a window factory, two pet stores, Trader Joe's,  Home Depot, Wal Mart, Belmont gourmet market, Stop 'n' Shop, the Dollar store, the farm stand and the Bluebird Cafe. We took the 5:00 boat home, tossing in strong winds and rain.
   It was 39 degrees, indoors and out last night. And, failing a warming pan, I put the laptop under the covers last night to heat up the bed. I am writing from bed now.  Thank goodness I bought those socks.

tour of hannah's block island rental

OK, so the production values aren't great—what do you want from me and an iPhone? Hannah's video tour of Claudia's is superior to Claudia's video tour of Hannah's, but I had to  shoot the footage before leaving the island: I begin reserving for next year next month. And it begins again.

roll call

It's raining, and the ice cream stores have closed. We're down to a couple of ferries a day.  Last night was what they call the roll call dinner, where everybody sees who's left on the island.
It's an early Thanksgiving dinner. People cook turkeys and all the fixings, and everybody gathers at the Harbor Baptist Church where, for a donation of whatever they want, they can eat themselves silly. The kids from the high school (all seven of the graduating class) replenish the gravy and serve blackberry and pumpkin pies and coffee. It's a chance for the island folks who have ignored one another all summer to socialize. And we did.

Um. And due to this glowing article about me in the Block Island Times, I socialized while hiding out in the corner with friends and relatives. 

second spring

The birds have been going whacko, nesting all over again. This little one hopped out of the nest for the first time yesterday, ran into the window, then flew away. The evidence indicates, however, that the thump in the night was The Cat, and that other fledglings were not so lucky.

big doings in t'ville

Sign at the Goose

 There was a Bear sighting, or rather hearing, over the weekend.  If I want to tell Bear something, I usually have to write him a letter. I wanted to tell him that I was going to have the plumber shut the Goose down for the winter, and I wanted to know whether he had ripped off the well housing and built a new one. So I wrote him a letter. Problem is, he doesn't write back. So I told him to call me using the phone I bought him that he never leaves on. It's a pain in the ass because, for reasons even Wal-Mart doesn't understand, you have to dial the number twice. And you can't use redial.
Anyway, he called. It took several tries to get through, but he did. The new well house (call it a well shack) is half built despite the fact that Bear got a full time job! He is working at a sawmill that will get pretty cold in winter, given that it's open on one side. And he will soon need a reliable ride with gas mileage that won't eat up his salary, but hey, it's steady work.
And then I texted him how to text.
"HI," he wrote.
Then, "firout."
That's "far out," I texted.
"OK."
Another step towards ruining one hillbilly's life.

after the fall

In the autumn, Block Island closes down slowly and deliberately like your computer shutting off—the browser, the mail, the operating system. Blink, blink, blink, black. This weekend, I wonder, what will be next?

you cain't make an. . .

Before

After

So the result of having fabulous new storage was—stuff had to move around, upstairs and downstairs, from house to house and closet to closet until, hopefully, it settles into a place it feels comfortable and we can all find it again. This has not happened as yet.
  I confess I went to sleep dreaming of—new shelving.

stormy weather

And on a completely different note, but also having to do with photographs, here is Chien-Chi's new video montage about Burma. The credit I receive is undeserved.
Oops, sorry. Link wrong, as Deb pointed out. Corrected now.

another obstacle removed

 Mowing is an art form, but in a place where about the only things we grow well are briars, poison ivy and grass, He Who Mows has a chore. It's a maze out there. He has eliminated a few lawn ornaments such as clumps of fountainy grass, but there's plenty left to dodge. The clump of brambles around the firepit whoozie was pretty close to others, for instance. You voted it out.
  It's gone. The rock was not as big as feared and I rolled it down to another ride-around clump, moved the dirt to a hole in the driveway and sort of leveled the hump.
Takes a lot of doing to make things look natural.

golden

John and Pam have pumpkins and chrysanthemums. There's candy corn on the table. The song Spooky is running through my head, and I've started waking up later and later. Guess the time's going to change soon.

pair of mallards

Evening yesterday, as the weather vacillated between bright and rainy and sometimes both at once. I don't even want to say what I have been doing because it is sooo boring you would fall asleep before you got three items down the list—a screw here, some glue there and etc. Maybe I'll take a nap just thinking about what the day holds. Although there is sun—and 35 mph gusts. The weather is never boring here.
Off to the dump. The dump is never boring either.

flying fish

Or whatever you think. . .

at the old stand

I have returned home to Claudia's, making the long, long trip across the yard, accompanied by the vitamins I'm no longer supposed to take, the frozen lentil soup, the paint-covered overalls, and all the unpaid bills that seem to dog my footsteps. But not, apparently, accompanied reliably by my e mail on either my computer or my iPhone. And the hunt for the Great Gas Leak goes on, more urgently now that I'm the one smelling it in my bedroom.

landscape design challenge

What would you do?
So there's this sort of wood- burning firepit deal that's right in the middle of the yard. Right next to a clump of bushes that is also right in the middle of the yard. A mowing challenge. The metal thing was placed there because there was a large mostly underground rock that we didn't want to run into with the mower.

     Should we dispense with the firepit (seeing as we already have the two fine bbq grills shown here) and attempt to remove the rock that could be the size of a Volkswagen? Or stick with the status quo?

Vote now vote often.

storage

Measuring

Assembling

I am better at jigsaw puzzles than I am at using a jigsaw, sadly, but I only ruined one piece of wood. Figuring out how to do it was harder than the execution, however. And if my skills with the skill saw ran thin, well—there's always molding!
PS I dare you to find a song for this one. . .

oops

Well, I was just fiddling with the blog template this morning and, lo and behold, I applied it by accident and there was no going back to the same old same old. Hope you like the new look! More later. Gotta get to work and finish the thing I've been working on, which I hope comes out more predictably than the new template. But you love it, right?

down and dirty

OK, so it's not rocket science. I just took the thingy off the other thingy and reattached the thingy with picture wire and then reattached the other thingy to the arm thingy. I should probably buy a whole new rubber thingy since the chain thingy had split the thingy's attachment whoozie. But on the other hand, how the hell would I know what to order? Anyway, it works

beauty shots

This concludes the promotional period of our year.
The final renters arrive today, and I will be moving from House A to House B on Monday. The blog will also take a turn for the less scenic as I do not anticipate prospective tenants arriving on it (the blog or the Block) for quite a while. There have been Complaints from our Faithful Readers about the Paucity of informative Blog Posts lately.
I promise, my dears, to get Right Down to the Real Nitty Gritty, Yeah!
Maybe CBA can oblige with the appropriate You Tube link.

slated for destruction

The house next door is going. A flatbed delivered a large storage container, and a group of guys came over to hang out on the porch and look around. I just hope they're done with the heavy moving by next season! Hear tell the plans for the new house look a lot like the one the singer is sitting in.
CBA offers up this appropriate tune, Eve of Destruction.

no photoshopping

I swear, I did not do anything to this picture. This is just the way it looked in front of the house this morning as Kathleen sailed away on the Block Island high speed ferry.

deer in the headlights

Right in the driveway. At midday. They must know that doe season hasn't opened yet. . .

the night boat

When the seven o'clock arrives in Block Island now, it is full dark. Fall is here.

chasing rainbows

They poured onto porches, cameras in hand, and stopped in the middle of the road. They called each other on the phone to tell one another to step outside. Or, if they were me and the sisters from the Fun Family, they drove like maniacs all over the island snapping pix along the way and trying to get back to capture a few from the balcony of Hannah's Hideaway before the whole thing evanesced.

the fun family

Have these siblings got stories! Of growing up with dirty magazines in Staten Island, of hijacking buses in London, of running into Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey, of food cooked on Chambers stoves. That's right, one of the Chambers stoves in my family came from this family.
Meanwhile, I had never met two of these siblings (though the husband of one), but they knew all about me—the Goose, the birthday, the cast of characters—from reading this blog. DR and brother Bo, each of whom has their own blog, Light Sensitive and No Line is an Island, are frequent comment-ers here, with Bo having attained notoriety as the Poetry Man. Talk about social network! They entertained me in fine style in their rental digs on BI after attending a wedding here. Kept me up past my bedtime. Laughing.

they said rain

The promised week of rain has totally not materialized. Fog and sun and warm temps.
What the Irish call "soft" weather, I believe.

fooled again

The the life of  an appliance in Block Island is brutish and short. Well, not that brutish—my previous stove was seldom used by tenants in its approximately 10 months of use (spread over five years). Nonetheless, it went on the fritz. The electronic control pad doesn't respond well to the moisture here, I guess. Still, it lasted three years longer than the last refrigerator, which responded to the power fluctuations by blowing its compressor.
I vowed to buy the cheapest, simplest stove without electronic controls. And did, on line with Home Depot (free delivery!). And was dismayed to find that the stovetop grids are gray rather than black. Couldn't tell from the pics. So now I'm thinking spray paint.

off season for a reason

It started raining yesterday (or the day before, or something), and it is meant to keep on pouring for a week. The sun should come out about the time the next guests move in.

five years ago today

Mirror, mirror.

It's again the equinox, when
yin and yang
are perfectly balanced.