Quisset Harbor from Carey Ln

How the stone boxes of ancient Eygpt were made

The pre-dynastic Eygptians must have known how to get things spinning fast. I assume they used some kind of flywheel/bow-drill/button-toy arrangement. For some reason I am fascinated that one can drill a square hole, using a loose, triangular drill bit. For example:

Drilling Square Holes - YouTube

It explains how the pre-Dynastic Eygptians cut those stone boxes. It is a relief to have that settled. Now I ask you: was the schist disk an analog gear, perhaps used for one of those spinning devices?

Falmouth Harbor in Winter

Don't know if I like my own art.

Crowded ships

Back of Quissett Harbor

 Not sure it is worth posting. Maybe it will look different after a while.

The water had a beautiful grey jade-like color that was the reason I did the picture. It did not really come through.

Tartine Croissant

From "taste of artisan": Tartine Croissants - Taste of Artisan

Note: I took 1/2 the recipe and converted to cups and tsps. This recipe uses poolish and starter-based leaven. Follow any standard recipe for folding of butter and turning, forming crescents, and egg-wash. See Sphinxmoth: Continuous Croissants for more discussion of folding.

Leaven: 1/2 Tbs of home-made sourdough starter, mix with .8 cups flour and .4 cups water - rest in fridge overnight.

Poolish: .5(-) cups water, .8 cups flour, 1/2-1 tsp dry yeast - rest in fridge overnight.

Milk (room temp): 1(-) cups [leaven and poolish contribute about 1 cup of additional liquid]

Flour: 4 cups

Unsalted butter:1 3/4 sticks.

Salt 1(+) tsp

Sugar: 3 Tbs

dry yeast: 1(-) tsp

Mix poolish, leaven, and milk in a big bowl. Mix other dry ingredients, cover and rest for an hour. 

Knead for <10 sec. Then rest for 1.5 hours (drag and fold 4 corners 3 times, with 1/2-hour rest between)

Rest in Fridge for 3 hours.

Using butter rectangle, do standard folding 3 times with 1-hour rests in fridge between turns. Then form the crescents and allow to rise for 1-2 hours on parchment papered baking pan. Pre-heat to 425, do an egg-wash, bake ~25 minutes [check progress]

A Blue Stuffed Bunny

I was just reminded that I had a big blue stuffed bunny. I think I called him Caspian.

Crows at Chapaquoit in early December

View of the Hole from Waterfront Park

 

View of the Hole from Nobska

A concession to fall colors.

Halloween Pumpkin 2021

November afternoon at Chapaquoit

 

Best Model Classification

My article seems to have gotten disappeared on the internet. Here was the gist of it:

Gulls at Falmouth Harbour

Paul the impressionist

Just being mean cuz it's funny:

One morning Paul the impressionist got up, looked out the window at the bright, forest-green, sky and decided that today, he would paint a farmhouse.

Near the Yalden Sundial in Woods Hole

 

I am liking trees.

Sun behind Wind-Bent Cherry Trees. Carey Lane, Falmouth

Have to admit, I am enchanted with trying to portray the sun behind a tree. Went to Carey Lane, knowing the trees here are always worth drawing.

Intention vs reality

I went back to look at a tree by the ferry dock that I looked at yesterday. I was taken by the different colors of the leaves, whether in shadow, backed by sunlight, or in between. I thought I'd take a stab at drawing it but found I had left my pencil at home. So I borrowed a pen. The main beautiful thing was the sun behind the tree and the openness of the loading docks below. Lacking the tools and the necessary skills I had to greatly lower the brightness level of the sky and ground in order to bring out the sun behind the tree. So, with apologies for losing the colors:

It might as well be moonlight. See the doggie?

Trees at Flume Pond

Just before the pandemic, I ate mushrooms a couple times in an attempt to kick my mind into a different place - specifically, with my art. The second time, by myself, I did about twenty five sketches, starting in the little bit of sacred woods at Flume Pond. If you don't look too closely, the 2nd and 3rd are realistic.

Man in a Pink Shirt at Old Stone Dock

 

Pigeons and SUV at Old Stone Dock

 

The rain impending

It looked about to rain and I said to Barb: "Let's watch the rain impending". 

I have no doubt that is a bit of a complex linguistic construct connecting the narrative 

(it rains)*

to the 

rain_/impending

Quisset Disapppearing in the Fog

 I didn't think this was so good, but David and Karen liked it:

NOAA Pine Tree

 I think I ruined a good sketch:

Just a subject beyond my skill:

Latest views

  A beach scene: Trunk River, looking east:

Another view of swans at Salt Pond:

I was reminded of the Tintin "King Ottokar's Scepter", where I think I remember pelicans on a blue background - or maybe they were swans and it was a different background. It was on the side of an airplane.

Some problematic, simple, narrative structures

 In my theory of "verbs", I take them to be action events, with an actor acting on a target and changing it. For the action X->Y, we name the change in Y, as dY/dX(v), where v is a particular action. There is also a Newton's Law saying that actions always change targets, and targets are only changed by an action. I should add that my handling of intransitive verbs like: "The dog is running" says that they are describing an attribute relation, no different from saying "The dog has fur". So we might write dog_/running.

So I have a couple problems with these concepts. Here are sentences where the action is unclear but the transition is described. Are these changes or actions?

1. The bubble pops

2. The dog barks

3. The fruit rots.

Now, I think we can take 2 as dog_/barking. But 1 and 3 involve changes to the object without an action causing it - seemingly a violation of "Newton's Law". 

But how about if we treat all of these as the changes brought about by an implicit action? So [X]->bubble becomes bubble_/pops, [X]->dog becomes dog_/barking, and [X]->fruit becomes fruit_/rotting. Are these implicit actions or changes? I hope it doesn't matter but it would be nice to get straight.

Another truism?

 If someone makes a request, the presumption is that I will agree.

Chappaquoit Views

 

Feels like I am hitting on all cylinders, here.

Another truism and another type of non-sequitur

When things are in a list, attributes of one are assumed for all:

Bob has red hair and john has red hair but terry has brown hair.

Also, the list related non-sequitur:

Bob has red hair and terry is from Maryland.

To be in a list, with only two items is a bit ambiguous. So

Bob has red hair and terry has brown hair

Is almost OK. It could also be

Bob has red hair but terry has brown hair

Maybe I should acknowledge a weak form of "but",

Update: Possibly at the expense of subtlety, lets try to make this clearer: a "list" pattern is established when a shared property is found in the first two, or more, elements of a list. They are connected by the word 'and'. The first time the pattern is violated, requires a 'but'. It is noted that some patterns allow for a constant portion and a variable portion. So hair color is constant but the actual color is not, in the last example. I would focus on the first example as the only one that is a real truism.

For the record, here is the current list of truisms.

(X->Y)_/[place, time, manner]   (Events are local)

X->person::person_/feeling      (Affects cause feelings)

person_/feeling::person->Y      (Passion evokes action)

(person->Y)_/[GOOD]             (Actions are efficient)

(X->Y)_/GOOD::Y_/GOOD          (Efficient actions produce good)

X_/A::X_/[A]                    (Attributes are constant)

N(X), N(Y), [N(Z)]              (List patterns are constant)

X_/A_/GOOD::X_/B_/GOOD          (Value transfers between attributes)

X_/(+/-) :: Y_/(+/-)            (Polarity transfers between things)

X* :: X                        (Conflict is resolved)

N([Z]),Z (The implicit can become explicit)

N([Z]*)::Z                      (The blocked implicit must become explicit)

I liked the color of the orange juice

Detail:

Around Nobska and back

There are always good views from Nobska Point:

To the south and the Elizabeth Islands:

To the north and Vineyard Haven

Back in town at NOAA with the Warren Jr:

Lesser Nobska Views

   

But I do like the flying cormorants.

Thought this was not worth finishing. Never know.

Barb on Saturday Night

And on a later occasion (November):

And also in November:

Three Views Of Nobska Beach and its Horizon

Had also sketched this one, which I colored later:

Also had:

      

Looking out from the Yacht Club

 

Old Stone Dock Beach

 

Trunk River Beach

 

The camera did a poor job of replicating seawater colors.

Folks at Nobska, The Governor in the background

 

A row from Woods Hole to Hadley's Harbor and back

It was the first time I went out with the celebrity rower Laura Schulman and new friend David Epstein. The tide in the Hole was just turning west, starting to ebb, and we had planned to circle Nonamessit clockwise but, because Olwen Huxley was pressed for time (and also didn't show up - possibly because her mom is in the hospital) they had decided to go straight to Hadley's; circle Bull Island; and then come back through the hole against the current.

Even crossing the harbor on the way out to the Hole, I was having trouble keeping up. Laura seemed to dance effortlessly across the water and David was fast too. After a few minutes I said: "If I have to race you two the whole way, then I am not going to make it." Laura said she was testing me to see if I would be able to row back through the Hole. She did not slow down much for the rest of the row, so rather than having a peaceful time of it, I was working hard the whole time. 

It appears that if I make a good effort, I do not fall too far behind. We put the water tower at our sterns and raced [if you ask me] down and over to Hadley's Harbor, where we parked for a few minutes on Bull Island, giving my heartbeat a chance to slow down, before circling the island - counter clockwise - and then heading back out into the Hole. At this point Laura wanted to go back on the Penzance/Devil's-Foot side of the Hole but David was unsure if we could make it backwards through the Gut, so he wanted to go back on the Nonamessit side of the Hole and cross back to Great Harbor, just down-current from Grassy Island.

So Laura went off towards Penzance and David and I rowed a hundred yards up the inside of Nonamessit and beached on a smooth sand beach, at a spot just before the current gets strong. Just before getting to the beach I smacked a rock pretty hard, and have to hope the ding was handled by the brass strip on the front of my boat. Except for that, David was frequently warning me of boulders just ahead, or times when we should stay close to shore. At the beach, we looked across to where Laura was already trying to head through the Gut. It looked, from a distance, as though she did not make it on her first try and had to drop back and try again - hugging her shore more closely. I caught a glimpse of her beyond the hard part of the Gut, and then she was gone. She probably got back to the Yacht Club at least a half hour before us.

The water at this beach was somehow golden, turquoise, and very gentle. The only waves were little wavelets, and it was shallow water over sand. I should mention that it was sunny, and still. The water of the Hole did not seem to be moving very fast and, except for a little ripple a few feet beyond the beach, did not look too strenuous.

Already before the beach I was a little surprised at how slowly my boat was moving versus the shore. Everything seemed fine, the water smooth and calm, but I would get a glimpse downward of a shallower place or a seaweed covered rock, and realize that the current was hauling across it pretty fast. So when we reached the little ripple beyond the beach, it turned out to require my full effort for a couple of moments - first to get into the cross-current, using one oar on that side (starboard), and then using both oars to move forward against a now stronger current. It was a bit of effort but we were soon again in calmer water - as we inched up that side of the Nonamessit. In places it was only a few inches deep.

When you get to the northeastern end of Nonamessit, you hit a place where the current is strong and there is a lot of chop. It felt like the water was trying to decide which side of the island to go down. We had to pull hard there too, as we began to cross over towards Grassy Island. We stayed above the really messy standing waves and strong current and raced for Grassy. The turbulence a few feet away seemed to get closer the harder I rowed and I felt like I would be sucked in, if I didn't put my back into it. 

But it was fine, we got behind Grassy and then slowly escaped the pull of the current and got over among the moorings in Great Harbor. I smacked into one. What would have been a fast-paced, strenuous, crossing back to the Yacht Club, was just more hard rowing this time. Soon I was back on Dory Beach getting Rosie, my boat, out of the water. Didn't see Laura. David was waiting for me and we walked into town for some iced coffee at CoffeeO.

Note to self

How valuable to figure out a way to have distributed power, accountability, and no active leadership.

Crow at the Town Dock, in the fog

The gull in flight

The gull in flight

Is hard to get right

Getting into details

 Actually I wish I could rise up above the details and express myself more clearly. For now, I seem stuck at a certain level of realism:

Chappaquoit Beach

Old Stone Dock: cormorants and dinghy race