A Heartfelt, if Unwarranted, Open Thank-You Note

Dear HR Department Representatives of the Six or So Companies who have Sent Me Rejection Letters,

Thank you for your note. I very much appreciate knowing that you received my application and reviewed it to some degree before deciding against it. Over the past two months I have sent out upwards of 50 job applications but have only received about ten confirmations that I even did so. While I am of course a little disappointed that I was not selected for an interview with your company, I am absolutely elated that you took the time to tell me. I am seriously not joking. It makes me feel so much better to hear a solid no than to just sit and wait, confident my application probably was discarded without so much as a glance but still nagged by the niggling hope that maybe your office is just really, really inefficient. It took the BBC 4 months to send me a rejection letter--who's to say you're not all like that? And then where would I be if I accepted a job? Weeks after I accepted a job on a sailboat, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I received four calls from other companies--boats, offices, and even the circus--offering me interviews and expressing interest. Not fair! I have no patience for false hope. I have more respect for companies who tell me no in a timely manner than for those who string me along or simply say nothing. It's one thing if they cover their tracks from the outset with a quick "due to the high volume of applications we receive we are unable to reply individually to every letter, so if you haven't heard from us in a week please assume you were not selected for interview." blurb on the job description itself. That's a reasonable stance, particularly if you have over 50 applications for each position. That quick line of text gives an unsuccessful applicant closure. But the ones that just say nothing, particularly in the arts--that can mean anything. Seriously, with flaky artsy types at the helm, no response could mean no, maybe, yes, or even where are you, we've been paying you for six weeks. So seriously, the clear concise and timely rejection letter is a courtesy I appreciate.

warm regards,

One of the Thousands of Applicants You'll Never Meet

No. NO. You are an adult.

Here I am. 26 years old. Highly educated, proven capable of handling a wealth of tasks with ease, courtesy, and warmth. Able to hang upside-down off the side of an aircraft carrier with a drill in hand Monday, then collate investment documents and tax mailings with precise attention to accuracy Tuesday, and with great decorum put clothes on hungry women Wednesday. I am bright, capable, versatile, and ready for a committed, rewarding career.

So WHY am I seriously considering applying for weekend gigs on the South Bank for a pittance?

No. I am a grown-up with real debts and real responsibilities. I should not think that my place is in a company-logo tee shirt surrounded by tourists on the sidewalk. That's one small step above standing on the corner waving a cardboard arrow toward the nearest McDonald's--a gig a homeless guy I know in Baltimore takes occasionally in exchange for burgers. I have worked too hard on my education to think that I don't deserve self-respect and a living wage.

But what education do I actually have? As far as business-sector skills are concerned, I have very, very few--and only ones that I've gained on the job. Touch-typing, filing, mail distribution, correspondence, dictation, teaching CEOs to use their computers...all tasks I've only undertaken as a low-paid temp. Nobody wants to pay people enough to not only eat but pay for their rent AND their student loans to hang lights and build fake walls. There's too many highly-qualified technicians out there who are happy to do it for free because someone told them that after a few years of interning and volunteering, the money'll start coming in.

This is not actually true. There are always enough recent graduates and hopeful young people to exploit that the need to pay people doesn't actually come up. If they start demanding money, you just find someone new. Now that I have a MA in being exploited I've moved up from being a dime a dozen to a dime for five, but still. A two-year turnaround on burnouts is plenty of time to keep your theatre staffed and your coffers full.

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Oh I'm sorry I missed that lunch date, Arthur, but with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics, it was either hitch a ride on a spaceship or head back to the dole queue on Monday.

Inexperienced and Unskilled, but suck at digging ditches

Hello world. I need a job. I've been working for about ten years in a diverse array of fields, off and on around my education, all around the US and now London. Well, I say working in London. I say working.

Okay, scratch that.

See, I've had the fun experience of either never being asked to do anything--quite literally, sit in front of this desk and wait for the phone to ring though it probably won't--and doing highly-skilled and important tasks that I'm not actually supposed to be doing for busy bosses who have eventually decided I was competent.

I have a large résumé, but it's full of short contracts, internships, temp work, and good jobs that I nevertheless did without a license or proof that I knew what I was doing. I'm a good MIG welder (untested) a strong rigger (unqualified, and with lapsed belay certification from 2004) a skilled carpenter (scenic, unverifiable), and a capable lighting electrician who can work safely at heights (unconfirmed). I've competently operated cherry pickers (without a license) and can drive a car (in the USA). I've maintained and repaired vehicles (with my dad) and can fix and upholster furniture (though the last place I did this as a job I left after a screaming match with my misogynistic boss who tried to make me cut Styrofoam with a hot knife without proper ventilation or a clean respirator while mocking my Wiccan co-worker for being a heathen and 'playing around with voodoo').

I have about 6 months (over three years) of administrative experience. I have a master's degree (in theatre) and a valid work visa (for 2 years, the point of which is to help me find a job that will sponsor me indefinitely, which is a burden no employer wants to deal with). I've never been fired (but I've had dozens of contracts lasting four hours to three months) and have spent the past six months volunteering (as a lighting technician in dodgy-at-best theatres and found spaces). I'm organized and efficient (when I have to be) have a pleasant telephone manner (with an American accent, which is inappropriate for a truly British company) and can type 95 words per minute (when it's warm out, otherwise my fingers lock up and I can manage about half a sentence before I start spewing gobbledegook.)

All told, with my CV and personality...I wouldn't hire me. Maybe I can go into landscaping. I quite like plants. Check out my lavatera seedlings:



And my tulips, as they get going:


And my daffodil (yes, just the one)



and my whatever the heck this is:


Green thumb? Perhaps not. More like greenish toe, but not in a gangrene sort of way.

Oh the life of the dabbler, the short-term gigger. The Temp. Too competent to be an amateur, but too inexperienced to be a professional.

Hello UK

Hello, my name is Kristen, and I have the right to be here.

My newly-vignetted passport arrived registered mail this morning. I'm legal, it's official, it's in my hands.

I scheduled a National Insurance Number interview last week after I spoke with my UKBA case worker. I called to confirm he'd received my bank statements, and instead of answering that, he told me my visa was granted. (Oh darn! But I swear I wasn't hounding him to find out anything besides the delivery status of my documents!) I feel a bit silly now, as the Job Centre worker asked if I'd like a meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) and I declined as I'd been told my visa probably wouldn't be in my hands until Wednesday. She bumped it up to Friday. So now I have another week of thumb-twiddling, but things are in play.

My new visa is valid until the end of February 2013. I have two years to find a full-time job that would be happy to help me stay. I've already been looking will now continue my search with less despair. And I can apply without hoping they won't call me back immediately--I can hope for Fast Turnaround! Ooooooh.

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In other news (if you don't care to hear a diatribe about religion, politics, or authoritarian regimes, the blog post is finished, nothing else to see here.) I read a lot of Science Blogs, particularly Professor PZ Myers' Pharyngula. He teaches biology in Minnesota and points out when religiosos try to cause harm or damage politics in their own special ways. Yesterday he provided a link to the blog of a Catholic wacko who annoyed me by trying to establish through scripture that giving a woman an orgasm is a mortal sin. So I've been giving him a hard time. I figure he won't publish my response to his blog post so I've reposted it here. If you think frank anatomical discussion is explicit, I suppose it is explicit. As a courtesy, I elected to try and write this as though I am party to the writer's own skewed version of reality. I probably got a few things wrong as I am neither Catholic nor tolerant of religion, but I did try.

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Your refusal to address women and concerned husbands' questions regarding mutual enjoyment of sex demonstrates weakness--not of your mind, but of your evidence. You know that the location of clitoris, if designed by God, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and that unpleasant and un-fulfilling sex is divisive, not unitive, and leads slowly and painfully to the breakdown of marriage. It doesn't matter if you don't believe the purpose of sex is pleasure--if one party enjoys it and the other doesn't, it fails the 3-font challenge of your description.

But I’ve figured out something that can help you. It’s simple, really, so I’ll state it simply. The clitoris is not sexual, so touching it is not evil.

Check it out. Yes, biologically the glans of the penis and the clitoris are derived from the same nerve cluster during gestation, so technically they are the same thing. But functionally, and therefore doctrinally, they are utterly different. The clitoris contributes nothing toward procreation. The organ itself and its functionality are in no way related to baby-making, therefore usage of the clitoris is unrelated to sex. The fact that stimulating it leads to an energy build-up and release that society calls “orgasm” is irrelevant. The fact that it is near the vaginal opening is irrelevant–unless you want to argue that the bridge of the nose contributes to the function of the eye. The concern of the Church is that procreative organs are exploited for pleasure and not for procreation, but the clitoris is in no way procreative, therefore exploitation of it is wholly outside the realm of sexual ethics. Touching the clitoris cannot lead to the spilling of semen nor the expulsion of the egg. As long as you do not massage it with a procreative organ its use is cleanly and definitively separate from sex.

If you try to impress upon me the notion that the clitoris is sexual, then you are seeking to impress upon me the notion that the clitoris is a vital component of procreation. If so, then you’ve unfortunately defeated your own argument–if it is vital, then it must be stimulated in order for God’s design for marital acts to be fulfilled. If it is not, it is a system and entity entirely unto itself and is therefore fine. It exists not for sexual pleasure, but simply pleasure itself.

If you had to reach into the woman’s sexual organ to stimulate the clitoris it would be different, but then again, this issue probably never would have come up as stimulation thereof would be considered a normal component of the procreative act. But it is separate, therefore it is separate.

If you can find, in scripture, anywhere that it says “women have an organ separate from the entrance to the womb that feels good when you touch it–do not touch it” fair enough. But anything more vague than that does not pass muster. It is a separate entity, it is not sexual, so it may be stimulated by either partner with impunity.

A Dab Here

Pillow alcove and instrument collection. The window seat is lovely in the summer when you can open the skylight and lean your head back on the roof.

My desk and hobby paraphernalia. Before you wonder, the jars contain paint thinner and water, not urine.

The Giant Shelf. The vacuum cleaner box contains my landlord's non-functioning drag-behind model. The box is to the one Boy and I bought a few months ago which is an absolute powerhouse. And yes, Boy has more audio equipment than I can fathom a use for.


Room 3 of 7 (plus the stairwell) is now painted. The study was the first carpeted room, which added a bit of challenge, as well as the first one that had its ceiling refreshed. (As the room is mostly ceiling it seemed like a good idea.) The study also contains 2 of the 4 light fixtures I've replaced in this house, evidenced by the fact that you can't see a bare lightbulb on the ceiling or a broken fixture in the stairwell.

I listened to a recording of Pride and Prejudice, read for LibriVox by Karen Savage, for this room. As I stood on desks and chairs, covered my tattered jeans in paint, and bent myself into rather strange angles to reach all the nooks and crannies in this room I wondered just how quickly Mrs. Bennett would faint at the sight of me. Lydia and Kitty would certainly point and laugh, Mary and Jane would quietly disapprove, and Lady Catherine would slap me for disgracing myself, but I think Lizzie would probably give me a clandestine thumbs-up.

The ceiling in this room is only about 7' high so I only needed a desk chair to reach everywhere. The room is mostly edges and corners so I spent quite a long time staring cross-eyed at my flat artist's brush trying to smooth the ragged lines left by the masking tape. I had to patch about twenty holes in the ceiling before painting, and a few unfortunately need another coat of emulsion. Never trust spackle manufacturers' claims that their product does not drink paint!

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Bathroom door and card catalogue. 'Cos, you know, we need to index things in here. I know it's a bit blurry but it's dismal out and the flash screws up the colour.

New taps I installed before my family got here for graduation. I think it's a hospitable gesture to ensure your guests can turn the water both on And off.

Our Floor-Soak Plus shower door, along with the airing cupboard doors I took a few liberties with. I selected the wall colour from the design on the tiles. I couldn't not, really. Thankfully it was featured in the Wickes "Landlord Chic" line, so I was able to get a good price on a water-durable formula.


The bathroom, paint job 2. I didn't really mean to paint this one as soon or as quickly as I did--I sorta launched into it at about 11pm the day we went to the hardware store and was mostly done about a day and a half later. The shade of yellow you see is actually indistinguishable from worn-out white under incandescent and compact fluorescent lighting, and unfortunately, England's natural lighting tends to leave something to be desired, so it took another week of tweaking at different times of day to get all the holidays filled.

The soundtrack to this room was Jane Eyre, also courtesy of a team of LibriVox volunteers, so I think I got more annoyed at the cracks in the walls than I probably should have. I nearly painted the doorframe yellow while yelling "come on Charlotte, don't be ridiculous--no sane 19th century waif would think God wanted her to volunteer in India!" Still, my fury with the book did keep me motivated.

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The kitchen is down a few steps from the dining room, something I've never quite understood. Next door's kitchen is the same. The pantry is behind the kitchen door, too, so you have to waste time and effort waving both doors around in order to get anything out of there. I've considered taking the kitchen door off, but where would I store it? (If I ever find a place, I'm putting our crappy mattress in there too and getting a new one.)

Dining room seek-and-find! Do you see: 1 fedora? 2 computers? 3 glasses cases? 4 marine animals? The number 5? (Why do we keep our fiction library in the dining room, you ask? The bookshelves in the living room are for non-fiction, serials, and CDs, of course.)

The same room, the same paint, but without flash. This colour is very fun for that--it's completely dependant on the lighting. Sometimes it's red, sometimes it's orange, sometimes it's almost pink. Heart. We nicked the lanterns from my sister's wedding.


This was the first room I decided to paint, mostly because I kinda messed it up and needed to fix it. Some owner of the house many moons ago put an ugly-as-sin paper border up at chair-rail level, and some later, lazier owner elected to, rather than remove it, paint an attractive puke green over it. Later still someone painted over that with a sherbet pink, which was then covered with four or five coats of everyone's favourite Chunky White. This all happened, of course, years after someone hung the Decorative Lumps wallpaper that eventually became a structural element of the house. I couldn't do much about the lumpy walls, but the peeling, glaringly moronic painted border was downright nauseating. What can I say? I'm impulsive. I picked at it. Quite a bit. By the end of an hour I had a razor blade, a sponge and a bowl of water out and was carefully removing the ghastly thing from the entire room...which of course left me suddenly needing to paint. Whoops.

Charlaine Harris kept me company on this room with several Sookie Stackhouse novels, read by Johanna Parker. The whole scrubbing, patching, and painting process took about a week, and I typically listened through one book a day. If it weren't for all the gratuitous sex scenes the stories would belong firmly in the Early Teen section of the library--the characters are so simple and stupid it almost hurts. Every chapter includes at least two highly-detailed paragraphs of how Sookie gets dressed or what she's wearing, down to the last yellow ball earring. Still, Parker has an amazingly comforting southern accent (and does all the voices really well--when she reads phrases like 'Suddenly, out of the dark I heard,"I knew you'd be here, silly girl." It was exactly the voice I was dreading.' you can easily tell which character it is long before they're identified), and Harris always includes references to local food, customs, history, and behaviours that get me all nostalgic. That's not fair, Sookie, I can't get pickled okra here!

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Gross words: Formula. Premium. Deluxe. Nugget.

BBC rejection letter

Ha! I just got a tersely-phrased automated rejection letter from the BBC for a gig I applied to in September. I figured that had happened about two months ago. Good to know Auntie is upholding her reputation for punctuality and efficiency.

I actually received an email about this in mid-December letting me know the short-listing process for the gig had been delayed due to schnumaya-hummana, and they would let me know something shortly. This letter described my reason for rejection similarly as schnumaya-hummana, or "we regret we are unable to provide more detailed feedback at this stage, but please apply again to another suitable role." It even provided a link to other jobs that could reject me based on my immigrant status.

Well hey, maybe this is a sign--not that my visa application will be accepted necessarily, but that pencil-pushers in the UK are finally back at their desks.

Me? Me.

I have finished my MA. It's official, I have my letters and results. Yadda yadda. NatWest were true to their word and sent me my bank statements on Monday. I checked through my application, signed and dated it, and put it in the post. I also sent a birthday card to my dear grandmother. They put this gigantic gold stamp on it to send to the US, which was pretty nifty. I hope she likes it.

I checked with the post office and saw that as of yesterday evening the parcel had been signed for. I checked my bank account today and saw that I'm officially £550 poorer. I think they got it.

Oof. I'm now broke. I just went ahead and canceled my gym membership and Boy has agreed to take over my chunk of the rent and council tax until I can find a job. I'm such a filthy freeloader. Hopefully I'll have a visa soon, maybe even before February, and will apply like mad to get a job and start paying for myself again like a real grown-up. At this point I really don't care what the gig is, so long as it's out of the snow.

I filled out the form truthfully and fully, though there was this one bit that made me uncomfortable. The form indicates I must include my Biometric Residence Permit, and write its number and expiration dates and such in the space provided. My application will be deemed incomplete and will be returned to me without this data and official card. I never received a Biometric Residence Permit. I'm a Tier 1 (Post-Study Work) applicant here legally on a Tier 4 (Student) visa. Neither of these categories are included in the Biometric Residence Permit scheme, and indeed, when I checked the Border Agency website, I discovered I am Forbidden from applying for a Biometric Residence Permit. Yet the Tier 1 (Post-Study Work) visa application is incomplete without one and will be rejected out of hand. I assume this is a clerical error and I'll be fine, but it about scared the pants off of me.

The Border Agency website also informs me that there's a 6-week wait time before applications are considered. They're currently considering applications submitted on or before October 13. Yay. I feel naked without my passport. And my overcoat.

My neighbourhood is sitting in about 6" of snow right now, and the sidewalks are coated in two-inch thick mirror-smooth ice. At the time of writing it is just past 4:30pm and pitch black outside. Now is the winter of my discontent. Or at least my griping about the weather. Sheez. One day I hope to be wealthy enough to have a winter home somewhere closer to the Tropic of Cancer. Not even somewhere particularly nice, just Not Here. Hell, it'd be great if we could just have a Winter London somewhere south of here, maybe in northern Algeria. It's not like they need...oh wait, I'm starting to sound like an imperialist. Oof, at least now I understand where they get it from.

Cold cold cold cold. I was so optimistic when I set the heat timer. Yeah, the house will be tolerably warm until 6:30, you don't need to waste money on gas until then... yeah right.

I think it's funny how, when you're cold or hungry, that's all you can think about. You could be the cleverest person alive, but as soon as the heat dries up the only thoughts you can muster are "Cold! Hey stupid, yeah you up there! Toes, fingers, legs, and nose agree--cold! You know what's great? Warm. Find warm. Oh, and by the way--Cold." It's like the body stages a coup d'intellect. The only ideas my id will let through are pictures of socks and instructional videos on how to open the airing cupboard and switch on the boiler. Okay! Okay, I'm going...

(toes cheer)

Yellow

I have painted my bathroom yellow, and will shortly be painting the study blue. I think it looks quite nice. My new drill has not yet arrived, but I do have a package for my next-door neighbours in my front hall.

I made my first pumpkin pie this past Thursday and it was wonderful. Well, I say wonderful. The fill was wonderful. The crust was just...bizarre. I used an Alton Brown crust recipe and did not like it. The edges did not burn, but became very hard and crunchy. The crust under the fill remained flexible and almost...rubbery. Not sure how I managed that. I've asked my mom to source a more idiot-proof crust recipe if she or the neighbours can think of one. The fill was really, really good though. I made it completely from scratch, from a whole pumpkin. (Didn't have much choice, actually--I couldn't find tinned stuff. But I was up for the challenge.) I gutted and steamed it (kept the seeds) then peeled and squeezed the water out by hand. I pureed it with my soup-er-izer (little spinny blade on a stick thing) and added it to single cream, a few eggs, hand-ground cloves, hand-rasped nutmeg, and some cinnamon, a bit of sugar (with a few drops of Lyle's Golden Syrup mixed in 'cos I didn't think to get brown sugar) and a pinch of salt. Baked it for 45 minutes, rotating a few times 'cos its a gas oven, and served it with cream that I whipped (with a whisk) with a generous teaspoon of maple syrup. OMG. It was light and fluffy, not overpoweringly sweet or spiced but very flavourful. I did it almost entirely by hand and all by myself.

Like I said, the crust was garbage. I think it may have been because I included some vegetable shortening when I should have just used butter. Oh Alton, why did you lead me astray?

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Also on Thursday I officially received my MA in Advanced Theatre Practice. My post-study work visa application is all ready to go with the exception of my bank statements, which must be mailed to me because NatWest has to have them hand-engraved by Norwegian monks. I don't look at the £550 application fee as a great spending of money--it was just money I was holding in my account for this purpose. It was never mine at all.

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This past weekend was our 1-year House-I-Versary here in Lewisham. We celebrated with some friends who moved into their house the exact same weekend we did. It was a lovely time.

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The 25th is both Thanksgiving and Ben's and my 6th anniversary. Though of course 4 of those 6 years have been spent in wildly different time zones, we've nevertheless perservered with close affection through the modern marvel that is Skype. Thank you, Skype, for making my relationship possible, and keeping us in constant contact for years so that we might eventually find a way to be together on the ground.

Any phone company executive that would destroy net neutrality for the sake of trying to "recoup" perceived "losses" from international internet telephony is a horrible, disgusting entity that deserves nothing but inconsolable loneliness for the rest of his meaningless, pitiful life. You will not make money from making VoIP prohibitively expensive.

You will only break families.

orange

I finished painting my dining room today. It's a lovely, rich red-orange shade. I did an okay job, I think. It's kinda shiny, which is something I've never felt ballsy enough to commit to before.

I haven't found a job yet, but I've been applying.

I still haven't heard about graduation, but I'm not particularly worried that I'll pass. I am worried that they won't get their asses in gear on the paperwork soon enough to keep me and my international classmates out of hot water with border control.

In other news, I've been keeping up with Joe My God lately, and as much as I applaud the thousands of Americans who have contributed to her first real grassroots movement in decades by making "It Gets Better" videos, they make me sad. Most of the ones I've seen (made by individuals--not the awkwardly-read ones from politicians and public figures) have told of a difficult and painful childhood that was only alleviated by leaving. The only way they could find to make their lives better was to run away from their families, their homes, everything they knew, and to go somewhere safe. Because the people who were horrible to them stayed horrible when they grew up. Their families and churches remained intolerant, even dangerous.

The videos never say "it'll get better because the world is getting better." or "when you grow up, the people you want to love you will come to accept you for who you are" or even "I had a difficult discussion with my father, but he's come to tolerate me." The sweeping majority say "When you grow up, you can leave all that shit behind. In a little while you'll never have to see those fuckers again."

And in America today, that Is the best option for gay kids in the Bible Belt. Hell, in some communities it's the best option for ethnic and religious minorities, intellectuals, feminists, and even cancer victims. Just get out. There's no rehabilitating these fascists, and if you fight for your right to pursue your own happiness, in the open, pretty soon you'll start seeing burning crosses in your front yard.

Because that's what the Tea Party is. That's who video makers have had to escape in order for things to get better. The white, Christian, middle-aged bigots who don't want to have to accept anything but themselves. Indeed, they want their identity to be the national identity, the only collective identity. I don't think they even want 'different' people to join their religion, culture, or xenophobia--they just want them to go away. They oppose diversity, tolerance, and understanding. They oppose government spending on anything that isn't a free cheque for a million dollars that only they receive for being so wonderful.

The video makers have done precisely what the Teabaggers wanted them to do. Vloggers call it escaping. Baggers call it banishment. In the end, the Baggers get what they want for their community, and the Vloggers join a new one. Nobody has to change.

Teabaggers tend to live in areas of the world where they don't have to grow to accept anyone who's different because there's no one different around. Extreme conservatism is less common in urban areas because everyone is different from everyone, so there's no opportunity for cultural insularity. It is a matter of simple proximity. Urban areas do wind up hosting gangs and working around the odd integration-proofed pocket, but this is what happens to supremacy movements in diverse communities. Weirdos who can't assimilate or tolerate others find themselves on the edges of society, angry but ultimately powerless. Most people just blend in and are fine with that. They don't try to impose upon the freedoms of their neighbours, provided their neighbours extend to them the same courtesy. Any lifestyle that doesn't actively cause harm to others is just fine.

The Tea Party are the problem. They always have been. Now at least they're a unified and easily-identifiable bag of doorknobs. A quivering mountain of human blubber sitting around in their Medicare scooters, Klan hoods in one hand, misspelt sign demanding that healthcare not be extended to poor people clutched in the other sweaty palm. These are people who hate Obama because he is black, hate homosexuals because they're told anal sex is icky, try to ruin women's lives with unwanted children as punishment for not abstaining from the most natural act in human nature, and sincerely believe that America and her people are actually better than everyone else on earth.

They are not fiscal conservatives. That's giving them too much credit for learning about and understanding conservatism. Moreover, the reductions to government involvement and financial oversight they would like to see would result in catastrophe, with each one of them out of the job as soon as their employers moved overseas, or dead in explosions when their un-inspected, corner-cut factories finally shake themselves apart.

They are not social conservatives, as they don't have any coherent moral or ethical values they're sincerely trying to uphold. They demand that women not have the option of terminating pregnancy, while simultaneously demanding that no one should have to provide health insurance to them, so these miserable women are back at work trying to pay off their hospital bills mere weeks after they give birth, making them completely unable to bond with their babies or even breastfeed them. These children grow up neglected, resented, and often abused when the stress gets too bad, leading to lives of crime, hatred, and fear. They demand that students not be permitted to learn about or accept homosexuals, and demand that the only thing their kids be taught about sex is that they shouldn't do it, and try to 'cure' them as soon as they get wind that they're gay anyway, but try and hush-up the fact that their 'homophobic' pastors are routinely caught in bed with South American rent-boys, and forgive their senators and governors for having mistresses. They ignore what it really takes to uphold family values--education, acceptance, support, and dedication--in favour of hate, fear, and disgust.

Fascism is a belief that the best way to unite a country is for the government to mandate that everyone in it believe the same thing, behave the same way, and have all the same values. Once they agree on a religion, political party, and way of life, everyone must follow it without question. The Tea Party does not believe anyone should have the right to disagree with them. They do not believe anyone should be allowed to live in America without being an evangelical Christian and adhering to their teachings. They believe the church should rule the country, just as it should dictate the specifics of every individual's entire life. Because in a unified country, there is no room for individualism, intellectualism, or dissent.

No, wait. They don't believe these things. They just mindlessly repeat these things. Because they're sheep. They're sheep who have been told by their shepherds that they're the best sheep in the whole field. If they look outside the herd they may see that that's not strictly true--all the other sheep are just as pretty as them, really--so they're told not to look. The shepherd's control over them would be compromised if the herd realized that the other sheep were happy too.

You can't be at once fiscally and socially conservative in a secular state. The two are mutually exclusive. A small government cannot execute a cultural mandate. That's why they want to empower Evangelical Christian churches to bindingly establish and enforce their way of life as The only way of life. That's their goal. Not to protect religion from a powerful state that they believe would ban it, but to empower it further than it already is compared to the rest of the first world. It is frightening, disgusting, and back-assward. It is a desire fuelled not even by religion itself, but by hate, greed, and idiocy funnelled and fanned by religious and corporate leaders to further empower and fund themselves. I'm scared shitless for America right now, because too many stupid people have been organized into a singular movement that they don't and won't ever understand. They will bring painful consequences down upon themselves and the rest of the world, and all the rest of us can do is bite our fists and wait.

Erm..okay.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life, eh? I submitted the final essay of my degree last night, returned my library books, and now...feel vaguely uneasy.

Oh sheez I hope I pass.

I put some thought into it--didn't just wait until the last minute like I typically do. I did actual research and did my best to relate the lessons I'd learned from my own project to art that people who get paid to do art have also learnt. My bullshit factor was actually quite low, which, if you've ever read another post on this blog, may surprise you. The essay was limited to 2500 words, so I had to condense my typical 7,000 words of waffle per thought quite a bit to fit. I didn't say 'ergo' or 'therefore' at all.

I'm convinced I've done something terribly, terribly wrong. Misspelt my name or wrote it in Greek or left out half of it... I spent hours agonizing over my references. It is scandalous how quickly citation formats have had to change as the legitimate uses of the internet have grown. Did you know you no longer have to include urls in ? Looks much tidier, I think. And you don't have to say when you accessed documents with stable urls, or archives in a database, which I always thought was a bit invasive. It's not any of your business when I did my research.

I'm going to keep an ear out for the rest of the day for the course support office, just to make sure everything is in order--that is, everything I was supposed to submit got submitted to the right people at the right time. They kinda sprung this "oh by the way, you're supposed to submit MOAR web presence documents to us" shenannigan on us right at the last second, so I'm not sure if I sent my link to the right person. Hopefully I'll find out.

By the way, I've come to realize that I adopt different poses for typing depending on what I'm doing. For blogging I almost always sit bolt upright, keep my fingers on the home row, my wrists relaxed--the perfect model of a well-trained touch-typist. For writing research papers, however, I generally rest my head on my knee, type almost exclusively with my left hand, and lean in toward the monitor like a half-blind tv addict. I wonder why.

Lautes Licht: Underwater(loo)

This Saturday (the 21st) the Lautes Licht team will be working in the tunnels under Waterloo Station for the Old Vic's "Red Light Night." This is a 4 hour arts club immediately following the Tunnels' much-touted "Dark Carnival." It will be a loud and raunchy extravaganza of Red Light District themed-and inspired art, performance, music, and more.

For those familiar with my interpretation of the piece, you may not be surprised to find that I think this could not be a more ideal niche for the show. Lautes Licht is the most disturbing PG-rated piece I've ever created--an opportunity to manipulate and exploit other human beings in an eerily non-sexual way. The cast will be clad in frumpy and comfortable pyjamas and trainers while the audience will likely arrive in corsets and fishnets. This works in my head, in a funny sort of way--hopefully it will come across well for the viewers and operators too. Here are these free people willingly clad in the constrictive, restrictive, and frequently bondage-inspired garb of the sex industry, pulling the puppet strings of perfectly ordinary people in attire usually reserved for Buffy marathons.

Except the performers are actually all professionally beautiful people under the t-shirts and flannel trousers, while the audience is actually comprised of ordinary folks with sensible jobs out breaking the monotony of their daily lives for one deviant night. Audiences are out to be entertained, to escape themselves, and debauchery-themed club nights fill a vital role to that end. If these leather-clad Lady Marmalades were like this all the time everyone in the office would be driven to distraction. Everyone knows they're playing dress-up. But sometimes even your friendly and helpful receptionist needs to glam up and indulge her trashy side in a loud, dark place. It's edgy. It's dangerous. It's a well-researched, medically-endorsed cathartic experience.

Art clubs provide a space for responsible adults to look sexy, think with their genitals, and be bad in a supervised and controlled environment. They're a place to have all the dirty fun you imagined the cool kids were having when you were a teenager, except with less risk of getting caught by your mum, arrested, or pressured into sneaking off with that popular guy who expects a blow-job but thinks pleasing a girl is disgusting and degrading.

The point is, you go to the art club knowing full well that, after spending Sunday nursing an expensive hangover with burnt toast and instant coffee, you'll put your tie on and go back to your real life--the same old responsible, upwardly-mobile you.

It is an ideal place to bring a piece of theatre that requires an audience that is willing to manipulate and unapologetically jerk on willing strangers. Particularly when they get a good look at them and realize that they're being handed beautiful, talented willing strangers to command. Not beautiful like a painted prostitute in a picture window, but beautiful in that wakes-up-with-dribble-and-hair-plastered-to-her-face-and-she's-still-hotter-than-you-with-a-makeover-on-a-thin-day way. Beautiful, in short, in burlap.

They're wearing pyjamas to distinguish themselves from the audience, and to showcase the way manipulation is always disgusting, even when it's in completely mundane ways. And these people you're playing like an accordion? They volunteered for this to show you a side of yourself you may not want to see. But the jammies may serve a more sinister purpose, as a reminder to the false-eyelashed audience that for some, even real life is sexy.

Lautes Licht

Just to let any reader know, I have a show opening up on Thursday entitled "Lautes Licht" at the Shunt Lounge, London Bridge Station. (quite literally, it is directly under London Bridge Station, in these neat old vaults) It requires audience participation to work--you, the emancipated spectators you are, get to set the light levels, thereby telling the characters how to play! Make them run! Make them dance! Make them create beautiful music! You may have fun, you may feel cruel...you may step back and see that somehow all these separate performances seem to relate to each other, and tell you a very individual story. Take a moment to set the action and enjoy your show, then let another guest take a turn. Be sure to watch while your friends conduct their own pieces--you might see something new.

It runs Thursday through Saturday, May 27-29 and June 3-5. All shows start at 8pm but will have a variety of performance times and durations (at least 2 1-hour runs each night, as it relates to concurrent pieces in the space). Tickets to the Lounge are £10, £5 concession for students, the elderly, and the unemployed on Thursday and Friday. There will be loads of other performances, art installations, demonstrations, and opportunities to drink and be merry all through the night.

I acknowledge that most readers of this blog do not live in the UK. I won't be heartbroken if I don't see you.




----
As with most of the work I'm up to these days, Licht is a proposition. An experiment, both for me and for you. It is an opportunity for you to see exactly what you want to see, and an opportunity for me to see if you enjoy that. Does the power to control the action excite you? Scare you? Disappoint you? Why?

Lautes Licht (in English, Loud Light) is also a study of the musicality of language. Our multi-national cast will be speaking and singing in a variety of tongues, playing instruments, and communicating visually, each performer on his and her own. I'm excited to see if you find narrative and meaning emerging from the juxtaposition of their actions the way I have. The performers in the space will change regularly throughout the night, so be sure to come back often to try new configurations, new levels, and new stories!

It wasn't Meditative

it was boring. You may attempt to reconcile these two very different emotions in an attempt to not appear a philistine, but I work in theatre and hold education and experience in this field and can confidently and helpfully state that Peter Brook's "11&12" at the Barbican was two of the most boring hours of my life. (and do you know how many hours I've spent in departure lounges?)

Helpfully? (you ask, eyebrow slightly raised) Yes, I'm helping you. I can think deep thoughts. Abysmally so. As a postgraduate I spend all day every day studying and developing ridiculously heavy theories, then rescinding them in recognition of their post-colonial viewpoints or Utopian ideologies. I have long-winded and delightfully deconstructivist discussions with my professors on a regular basis--debates which leave me red-cheeked and wild-eyed and feeling vaguely as though I've torn out a page of my practical knowledge and replaced it with excitingly useless philosophical nonsense. (a degree in philosophy and 75p can buy you a tiger loaf at Tesco. mmm) To the point--it's my job right now to think about, analyze, engage critically with, and discuss the ethics of everything that goes into theatrical production.

And I say it's boring. Therefore, you too can admit that you found it boring, and let that off your chest. There was nothing deeper for you to get, nothing you should be embarrassed for missing or not appreciating. It was dull, and even the woman across the aisle with the opera glass and the pensive frown thought so.

Its this insistence upon not admitting to oneself (I wasn't bored, I was entranced by the tone and smooth line delivery. no no, I must be smarter and more worldly than you because I was distinctly Not bored.) and one's friends that one was bored of his or her skull by a piece of theatre that allows bad theatre to continue to be made. I'm not suggesting we need every show to have explosions or song-and-dance numbers, but there is no excuse for boring theatre. Theatre, by definition, exists primarily (and in most cases, solely) to Entertain. If it is dull, it is not entertaining. Therefore it fails.

At my school we produce heaps of boring theatre. We justify making it by calling our pieces "artistic explorations" or "studies of the performer's inner struggle." but on the inside we all know (well, maybe not the performers themselves, who continue to insist upon doing these sorts of things) that it's just pointless navel-gazing that leads even the most pretentious audience member to crave the solitaire app on his phone. Performance is narcissism--if you are dating an actor you may want to keep that in mind next time you find yourself feeling small. While all humans have to some extent a "look at me!" need, most of us don't need 500 people 6 nights a week to do so to satiate it. (oof, sorry, bit of a tangent there.)

The biggest problem with making boring theatre, though, is that it is offensive. (jigga-wha?) It is not hugely difficult to make interesting theatre, but it is really, really easy to make it boring. If the eyelids of half the audience are drooping it shows you didn't put an ounce of effort into your piece--not just into writing it, but staging it so that it is visually and aurally engaging. This is doubly true for ethnically sensitive pieces, where you're making a show about a culture you aren't a member of and you're fairly confident your audience won't be. Making a show about the Other that is painfully dull tells the audience that you don't quite give enough of a shit about them to make your piece watchable. Which is a dual shame--one because it makes you look like just another arrogant Westerner, and two because you've just passed up an opportunity to give your audience some culture.

Yep--I wish to redefine the "cultural experience" right here, if you don't mind. If a night of culture is so dull, incomprehensible, or simply unwatchable that most of the audience exit the gallery thinking only "damn I want my money back" they have not had a cultural experience. They didn't get your point or moral and they didn't pay attention to your history lesson or showcase. They did not leave with more information, tolerance, social awareness, or interest than when they came in. You have not cultured them in any way.

So. I may appear a bit jaded, but honestly, this is my area of study--audience impact. I want my audience to want to be there to see my piece. I want them to take something away from it that isn't just boredom or a new appreciation for the glowing hands on their watches. I want the show to not need big-name actors in order to draw a crowd and I want theatre to go back to its roots--its real roots. Entertainment. Fun. Contrary to Dryden's views, I do not believe theatre's first obligation is to educate. No one who makes theatre is qualified to teach, and any attempt to do so by a theatre practitioner is a misguided effort at best, a dangerous and unethical display at worst. Most theatre types don't know if what they're presenting is ethnically or historically accurate, and really don't care either way. Theatre's first obligation is to entertain, but if someone is likely to learn something from it (Because it's interesting to watch) what you present needs to be right.

When I sat down to watch "11&12" the first thing I saw was a sparsely-decorated stage, yellow streaks under a big red blanket and a collection of carved tree trunks on dollies. Not a good start. While the play does take place in Mali, recreating a desert wasteland--even an abstract one--is not a good idea. The stage was eventually shown to be covered in sand. Most people in Mali do not live in the Sahara, and the piece takes place in the south-central Mopti region, which has a decent agricultural base. (e.g. your average villager does not desperately seek shade under petrified trees as the wind whips sand into his weathered face.) Yes the nation is poor, but presenting this barren landscape sets me as an audience member up for a story of people clinging to life in spite of everything--not a babbling, meandering discourse on religion. At one point a character is shown riding a boat down a river...in the desert. Right. As it is, the sparse, monochrome set does nothing to liven up the staging used--mostly people sitting around--and the unchanging amber wash likewise encourages the eyes to look elsewhere--but there's nothing else to see.

Most audience members chose to either look at the inside of their eyelids or at each other (one particularly meditative audience member to my left was so entranced by the play that he began to snore lightly) but not in a judgmental, "oh look at the world I live in, I should feel grateful that I do not face persecution for my religious beliefs." way, but in more of a "honey, that haircut really doesn't fit your face" manner. I've studied pieces which intentionally toy with audience attention and practical applications of boredom and I can confidently say this was not one of them.

The one active scene in the show is a depiction of violence. Now, in a show about French colonialism and interference in Islam and the wave of massacres linked to this instance you'd assume they'd have plenty to work with of oppression and torture, but the one display is, you guessed it, villager infighting. Great. Way to encourage the audience to empathize with the underdog. Colonial and modern France give you so much fodder--religious intolerance comes to mind--and yet in your piece they come out smelling like a bed of roses. Sheez--the French aren't even in the audience to defend themselves! You could say Anything! But no, instead we're treated to a view of anger within an oppressed community, just like the BBC chose to show the day after Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, reinforcing the subtle notion the West likes to tell itself--these people need us to come and save them, even from themselves.

Nanny-stating aside, scenographic probing aside, the staging was dull, the accents were all over the map, the costuming could have been less beige but I honestly haven't studied early 20th century Malian fashion so I can't reasonably comment, the music was interesting and well performed but had nothing to do with the time, place, or people, and the colourblind casting was nice but honestly why did you give the only line including the phrase "us black people" to the only white guy on stage? Come on. That's tacky.

Actually, that really about sums up my whole experience. I've been to worse theatre, certainly, but rarely by people as well-esteemed. Many of my classmates attempted to justify the piece's choices by quoting this and that theory about how by being dull and ethically dubious it provoked thought, research and argument, but I'd argue against that--most audience members don't watch theatre like theatre workers. They take it for what they see, and what they saw was dull.

Londres

My Christmas present to myself is 10 days in England. So there.

I have knitted 3 hats since I've been home. The process is exceptionally easy with a round knitting loom, and a delightful, mindless activity to keep my hands occupied.

I'd love to get into theatrical hair and make-up. Prosthetics and fake blood and bruises and wigs are just neat. Sadly I don't believe my work experience affords me much of a chance to get a job in this field without re-training. "Okay, what are your credentials?" "Well, gimme an hour and an angle grinder and I could probably make you some scissors..."

I got a little creative in the bar the other day and came up with a tasty new drink. If it already has a name I can't find it, but its an ounce of peach schnapps, two ounces of white wine (i used a chilled Pinot Grigio), two ounces of grapefruit juice, and a splash of club soda. It is very refreshing and not too sweet. I shook it and strained it into a balloon glass filled with ice. Garnish with a grapefruit slice.

Ow, I just burned my tongue on hot tea.

Save the Day!...light

While I'm not a huge advocate of daylight savings' time, I am happy to fall back every year. After two or three weeks of waking up in the dark, it is wonderful to have at least a little more time of waking up to sunshine before that, too, disappears in preparation for winter. Ah, temperate zones.

So my absentee ballot application was mailed to the wrong address, bounced, and came back to the voter registration office. I got in touch with them and they sent out a new one...and it arrived today, November 3. (for anyone unfamiliar with the absentee voting system, you are first mailed a ballot application, which you fill out and return, and upon receipt of a perfectly filled out application, the actual absentee ballot is mailed, which you then fill out and mail back. its asinine, it wastes paper, it wastes time, and i put in for it with plenty of time to take care of everything, and South Carolina screwed up.) Thanks, SC. you've fucked me again. Way to withhold constitutional rights.

So, I had a great week in Philadelphia. The kids were awesome to work with, we made and ate some delicious food, i discovered new bars and new beers, i slept in a real bed, and, what fabulous timing--the Phillies won the world series while we were in town! It was fun to watch the revelry in the streets after that--that was until they started lighting things on fire and looting. Didn't quite grasp how "hooray we won" translates into "hey, lets break shit!" but oh well, i've never been a Phanatic.

I also discovered one of those awesome bookshops in the old part of town--called the Book Trader, it had scores of volumes stacked right to the ceiling, confusing, tight, twisty, irregular aisles, funny lighting, that old-book smell, a huge upstairs, and the best shopkeepers i've yet met. I bought six classics i've been needing to read for about eleven dollars and practically skipped home. (by "practically" i mean "i skipped home.")

On the slow, difficult transit up I took a number of photos of the bridges we went under in the C&D Canal (chesapeake & Delaware). as soon as I retrieve my camera from Sigsbee i'll be sure to share a few. It was a very pretty, if laborious, trip up--the current was strong against us the whole way, it was freezing, and the wind was directly on our quarter, which meant the main wanted to jibe the whole freakin day. Most of the time we held it off or allowed it to jibe safely, but steering was a relentless battle against the wind. A positive upshot of the current was that when we finally did get into Philadelphia, the entire exterior of the boat had been cleaned of algae. Who'd a thunk it.

The transit back was quick and easy by contrast. Whereas on the way up we averaged about 3.7 knots, the way back we averaged 9.3 and made it in 14 hours. Instead of two days. The wind was still on our quarter, but the current was helping at an amazing clip (that same amazing clip we were fighting before) and practically threw us into Baltimore. The buoys, anchored against the onslaught of water, looked like they were motoring past as the waves broke around them. I'd never thought to personify a buoy before, but it was pretty funny.

I finished James Michener's Chesapeake! I knocked out the last 500 pages in about 4 days. I was sad to see Rosalind's Revenge go. Say what you will about the power of the seas and the perpetual motion of nature that maintains the universe's constancy... Dammit, I Liked that house!

I'm currently about halfway through The Kite Runner, which I borrowed from a crewmate after I ran out of pages. While transits can be tough, there's also rather a lot of down-time when you're not on the wheel. While I'm not enjoying the story per se, it is excellently written so far.

Fillie

Sigsbee will be heading up the Bay to Philadelphia beginning tomorrow morning. we expect to arrive on Sunday, but will not be sailing Saturday during what is expected to be gale-force winds and unpleasant precipitation. We'll be in Philly for just over a week running sails with a youth program. It should be an adventure. I've got my long underwear all clean and ready.

Today marked the annual shipboard Jack-o-Lantern contest, bumped up a bit on account of our iminent departure for the frozen north. Mildred Belle won hands-down, with a beautifully carved design of a white perch...on fire. In close second ran a delicately rendered hellcat, entered by Snow Goose of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. An attractive lighthouse scratched out by the Lady Maryland crew earned them a third place ranking, and Sigsbee's crew pulled fourth with a delightfully vindictive depiction of the Mildred Belle...on fire. And sinking. All pumpkins will be visible for the next little while on Pier 5 on their respective boats.


I am currently open to suggestions as to what I should go to grad school for. I'm not hugely interested in maths, sciences, arts, languages, medicine, law, or history. Unfortunately I can't find Small Engine Repair at the Ph D. level.

pretty boats

This past week Baltimore played host to the Parade of Sail, the pre-game show for the Great Cheasapeake Bay Schooner Race. I experienced the joy of participating in the parade from the deck of the Lady Maryland, who went on to finish second in the race. In honor of yet another of my birthdays, I decided that this year's celebration should be of boats, which are a touch prettier than rats. Please note, as usual, all photos are mega-huge, and were taken by me in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Small, private schooner Martha White. Raised two questions: Are they really all that into flour? Is that really all bottom paint?

Pride of Baltimore II firing a cannon salute in the Inner Harbor. The ensuing audio battle among vessels Pride, Constellation, Gazela, Lady Maryland, Mystic Whaler, and others led to the National Aquarium at Baltimore to call over the VHF "please stop firing your cannons. You're scaring the dolphins."

Sigsbee! Aw, I'm sorry you didn't get to come, darlin. She's lookin' sharp.

Baltimore Clipper Amistad. -Wait, That Amistad?- Yes, That Amistad.

Schooner Mystic from a Boston Whaler.

Square topsail schooner Sultana, from Chestertown, Maryland. Judge her size compared to the people on deck. She's a perfect miniature. And a good friend of Living Classrooms.

Schooner Virginia. has a reputation for being bad-ass. Broke a gaff during the race. I heard everyone is okay. Is it just me, or does she look like the kind of boat Darth Vader would captain?

Schooners Virginia and When and If?, under Lady Maryland's main. So much canvas.

Mystic Whaler, a beautiful vessel in and out, and excellent hosts. Thank you for throwing a great pot luck!

I'll try to add a Lady Maryland "Fear the Pink" shirt soon.

hot sauce, spider webs, and a gallon of coffee

So. I've been out of town.

Having a blast, by the way. Two weeks ago found me in St. Michaels, MD, running some day programs for Eastern Shore kids, which were a lot of fun (if fast!) My crew and I spent nights alternately weathering rain and enjoying brightly starlit skies from Sigsbee's deck after delicious meals cooked over a lead-melting burner. (a welcome backup after a propane tank attachment mix-up. Big Fire make Fast Dinner. And perhaps the most perfect popcorn i've ever tried.) The crew transit back, a trip of several hours, was passed enjoyably, if a bit noisily, thanks to the addition of four bottles of hot sauce and a box of crackers. Yeowza! (technically we only tried three--the fourth was saved to be shared with the captain of another vessel. After watching the reactions of tasters, I'm rather glad I wasn't tempted to try the fourth.)

Last Friday was spent in drink and revelry at the annual Maritime Magic gala, a large party/concert/auction/local restaurant sampler/boozeup to benefit the Living Classrooms Foundation. The music was great, the food was excellent, free, and largely vegetarian, the vendors were friendly, and nobody fell in during my M.O.B. watch. I'd call that a success.

This week found me on a 3-day trip to Kent Island, complete with an entire department-load of insurance agents on a team-building adventure. Also known as a lovely few days on boats, some lovely restaurants, and plenty of lovely beer. They were generally pleasant people, and though we flatly lost the sailboat race against Lady Maryland, no one was hugely surprised and it was a great day on the water in any case.

An odd thing occurred while we were crossing the bay toward Baltimore--in a rather nondescript area of open water we happened to pass through a giant cloud of bugs. I don't know what kind exactly--they looked like largeish flying ants, but with pointier aft ends. They may have been larval wasps or juvenile versions of any number of interesting critters, but needless to say I spent most of this time cowering behind one of my coworkers as the bugs whizzed past. Most of them passed by without even noticing Sigsbee, and the ones that did land on deck were easily shooed off it again. We passed through them in about twenty minutes at 5 knots, so do the math and tell me what the diameter of the bug-cloud was. Seriously. I'm pathetic at math.

Anyway, we got back to the dock and tidied up the boat, and in the process of tying off the gantline a member of my crew happened to look up and see that every line, every lazy jack and halyard was decorated with hundreds of delicate webs--the entire rig was covered in a filigree of arachnoid fibers. We assumed these had something to do with the bug-cloud, but we really have no idea--no one had heard of six-legged or winged insects with the ability to produce a web, and none of them appeared to be ballooning anyway. Some theories we proposed, but later shot down included:

-the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which marks the entrance to Baltimore's Outer Harbor, just doesn't have cargo ships passing under it like it used to get and is overrun with spiderwebs.
-the bugs were being attacked by minute ballooning spiders and we just interrupted, which led to all of the webs appearing to be over four feet long
-we were attacked by something at the dock overnight (this theory was dispelled when we saw the same webs covering the Lady Maryland's lines, and LM anchored out pretty far from land because the water gets too shallow for her)
-our captain is actually a spider and we've just never noticed.

Any ideas?

in any case, my crew has been rather busy lately and, on account of this, have managed to go through three bags of coffee beans in about three weeks. Is that normal for four people?

The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race is coming up in a couple of days, and boats from up and down the eastern seaboard have been showing up in droves in the inner harbor. Its been a lot of fun to see. I hope to get a chance to schmooze with their crews.

One more thing. This piece of psychadellic art gave me pause to wonder--it looks hand-painted by a giddy stoner with no concept of life-like colors, patterns, or ratios. I think a new religion or at least emphatic cult should form around this clear proof that God trips on acid.

CTY

Anyone who is curious as to what i've been doing for the past month would gain insight by visiting Here, then Here. (note, the second "here" is only the trip 2 bit, not one, three, or four.) The Sigsbee kids kinda got distracted and never finished blogs for days 7-9, but you may rest assured that they enjoyed themselves.

Kids navigating, Sigsbee Trip 1. Please note that, as usual, photo actual sizes are mahoosive.

The rest of this blog post is going to sound like a "Dear Mom and Dad, I'm having a wonderful time at camp..." letter. be forewarned. my favorite event on the Sigsbee trip was kayaking around Wye Island. i'd forgotten how delightful that pursuit is. Feels good to row, you know? And it kept the kids occupied without my having to entertain them, which is always a breath of fresh air. And my favorite event with Lady Maryland was whale watching--while the trip was nausea-inducing, i'd never seen humpbacks up close before and it was amazing.

Baby Humpback Breaching, Gloucester, Mass. The kid is just farting around waiting for its momma to surface.

I met some very interesting people--both adults and kids--on these trips, and I'm glad i got to go. I had no idea that my first night in Gloucester would be spent in the company of Angus the Shipbuilding Giant on a midnight tour of a half-built tea ship. Or that full foundations existed for the sole purpose of disentangling marine mammals from fishing lines. (and no, i don't believe they've ever disentangled a duck-billed platypus. its a polite, inclusive-sounding term for whales.) I also tried my first ice-cream made with cardamom. yum! The girl who served it up, in Provincetown, Mass, was one of those pretty lesbians with a buzz-cut and a thick Ukrainian accent who has no patience for people who can't make up their minds on what flavor to get. I didn't dally.

Gloucester Light

This past week I actually spent back on Sigsbee doing day trips, like usual, except with some rather unusual groups. Imagine a trip of ten 16-year old male drug addicts and seven cops. They were surprisingly interested in bay ecology. I think some of them got a lot out of it. Then imagine a trip of two 16 year old female drug addicts and 2 cops. and 4 crew. It was the most relaxed, comfortable, easygoing trip ever. I never knew I'd have such a pleasant time with junkies.

Not Sigsbee, but similar. At Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michael's Island, Maryland. I watched her raise sails. Its really hard to take pictures of the vessel you work on from afar.

Have you ever met a kid who looks and behaves exactly like you did when you were their age? Its eerie. Since April i've seen two of them, one girl scout and one with a city camp last week. Interestingly, both of these girls were completely nuts, had loud, sort-of annoying voices, and latched onto me within seconds of their arrival. They're both about 10 years old now, blond, healthy, science whiz kids with total comfort talking to adults but little patience with or acceptance from their peers. I still argue that if it hadn't been for my science teachers grades 7-9 I could be a rockstar biologist by now. But I didn't learn anything new for four years and eventually lost interest. (to be fair, my 9th grade science teacher went on maternity leave three weeks into school and we had an intern for the rest of the year.) Anyway, i'm a bit weirded out by these little carbon-copy mes running around--i mean that's two kids who've gone on trips on sigsbee in four months. Think how many else there must be. And how many came before me. And how many are thinking the same thoughts as me right ....Now.

Sorry. got a bit existential back there. Everyone come through okay? Good. Make sure your seat belts are buckled and your volume is turned way down 'cos I'm going to post a video down here, but please note that it is shaky and has a lot of wind whistling around. Allow me to share...Whales! out of sight of land but near Gloucester, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Captain Bill's Whale Watching Charters. We did have our own neat adventures with whales on the lady maryland, but by then my camera was full. And most of them were Finback whales, which aren't nearly as playful or fun as Humpbacks.

The Heat Index or When A Gallon Just Isn't Enough

So it's pretty dern hot and humid out. This weekend saw the first day of hazardously hot weather for the greater Baltimore area so the computer voice on the weather station had helpful tips and reminders for how to stay safe. In addition to the temperature, wind, and waves, the weather voices occasionally are programmed to offer little quips such as "turn around--don't drown!" and "on frosty days, cover your delicate seedlings and bring potted plants indoors." While the voices are a bit more sophisticated than the typical "Alvin" speech replicator, they nevertheless sound pretty funny when called upon to say anything more than "at Thomas Point Light House, Fog was Re-ported. The TEMperature was Nine-ty Four deg-rees. Now for some Ob-Ser-Va-tions from the surrounding A-rea."

In any case, I realized I drank 5 liters of water today and still felt a little dehydrated. We've reached a point at which it's just too damn hot to eat, but if you don't eat you get even woozier with nothing to hold your water. Bleh. Interestingly, this hot weather has brought with it the smell of salt and a number of breathtaking lightning storms, pretty much overnight. I'm glad I got my hair cut when I did--curls plastered to the back of my neck would be intolerable right about now.