Rhapsodies

A comic strip about life, love, accounting, progressive bookstores and the divine power of jazz!
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Visiting Parents: They trust Me With an Axe!

by wpmorse on July 13, 2016 at 5:20 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

Pemaquid Point with the Lighthouse
Today started with my mom finally getting ahold of the axe she’d been waiting for. The purpose was to deal with a rotten log blocking a trail. While soft, it was too big for the band saw. I had some experience using an axe from a summer camp I’d gone to years ago, so I was pretty optimistic about this going fairly easily.

It turned out the rotten wood was only an inch thick and the rest of it was an exhausting ordeal. Mom and I took turns and going back and forth between using the axe and a saw eventually got it through.

After that the next job of the day was to find “shelters” made by a moth caterpillar, my dad is studying, in sensitive ferns. (Shelters are when a caterpillar folds up a leaf to protect itself) Of course that means that we had to go and find all of the places in the woods Sensitive ferns grew, mostly in muddy bogs. The first patch we found the remains of one. We couldn’t search more since there was a lot of poison ivy growing around it. We went to another forest trail down the road and found another.

After lunch we went to my old favorite, Pemaquid point. I always love the near moonscape of the rocks, as the surf crashes against them. We started by going to see the Lighthouse at the tip of the point which had a small museum of Maine maritime history. Nearby there was a gallery of local artists and a video about Maine lighthouses.

Finally we went to the Point itself where I took pictures of the rock formation until I filled up my camera’s chip.

└ Tags: Family, Maine, Vacation
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Visiting Parents: First Watercolor

by wpmorse on July 12, 2016 at 6:16 am
Posted In: Art, Test

Well today started with getting two hours to myself.  I spent them taking pictures in the woods. It was a really gorgeous morning, with a steady breeze so there weren’t any mosquitos. I really got into my zone shooting nearly everything. It has a really meditative feeling. The sheer overwhelming silence, that I’m yet to get used to, seems to slow down time. Two hours felt like twice that, in a good way. Seriously, by the end of my time I was feeling like there was something wrong with my two hour timer. When I got back it was more trail maintenance, going over some of the stuff we’d done in the rain yesterday.

After lunch we went down to the coast again to check  out a spot Mom thought would be good for paining. It was indeed a nice spot, though she started to obsess about some driftwood that was cluttering things up. So I did my first watercolor of this trip while she cleared it up. Both the watercolor and the rock clearing came out very well.Visiting Parents: First Watercolor on the Maine Coast

We quit early because of a lecture at Colonial Pemaquid about the Salem Witch trials and the significance of Maine in it. The gist of it was that, with the colony in Maine being pretty much wiped out by both King Phillip’s War and King William’s War, Massachusetts Bay Colony was flooded with refugees. Along with the economic burden a and one of the worst recorded winters in history it was just easier to blame the devil.

The speaker ended it in an interesting way. Before you ask how people could be so ignorant, just sit back and replace the word witch with terrorist.

└ Tags: Family, History, Maine, Vacation, Watercolor
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Visiting Parents: Into the Woods

by wpmorse on July 11, 2016 at 7:47 am
Posted In: Art, Rhapsodies

Well the first night with my working CPAP machine was… okay. 6.3 events per hour with a mediocre mask seal. (The My Air Page says it was good but I’m beginning to assume it will only say bad if the mask falls off.) I guess (hope) it’s adjusting after four days without.

Anyway it was raining this morning so my Mom thought this was a great time to put on our rain gear, go into the woods,  and do another trail. This one was heading for the far point of the property with an old cabin. Mom thinks it will be a nice place for me to work. On the way we saw some interesting things. First we nearly stumbled over an animals burrow. It was probably a fox as we saw an orange streak with a bushy tail minutes later. Technically we saw two foxes. The other one was a skeleton. It was a small carnivore at least.

The trail work lasted about three hours. It’s amazing just how quiet the woods are in the rain. It dampens (pun not intended) Everything. You can barely make out what some one is saying within 15 feet.

After we got back we went to the Farnsworth Museum in  Rockland.  The Farnsworth is best known for it’s collection of Wyeth paintings, all three of them. The best bit this time was a series of watercolors by Andrew. As a watercolorist myself I always like to study other people’s techniques, and this was especially interesting. They were all done in varying degrees of effort from ones with meticulous detail to ones that looked like he did them in a half hour. As well as this There were a lot of great examples of N.C. Wyeth mostly his personal pieces as opposed to the illustrations he’s known for. All were great.

For the evenings’ viewing pleasure after supper when we got home, My Girl Friday.

└ Tags: Family, Forest, Vacation, Watercolor
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Visiting Parents: CPAP Restored!

by wpmorse on July 10, 2016 at 5:27 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

Well today started all right and I think I had a good night’s sleep. (That is to say a sleep that did not display noticeable symptoms.) 

The day started quietly with us trying trying to find out if Fed Ex would get deliver the package with the replacement cord for my CPAP, even though the office it was addressed to was closed for the weekend. Happily it turned out that that they could and the morning turned into me and my mom taking turns waiting for the driver to show up.

Visiting the Parents, CPAP restored

My Mom the Forester

While it was my Mom’s turn I went down to the waterfront and drew rocks for an hour an a half.

When I got back the package had arrived (and it was the right item!) Which meant my Mom and I went to do trail work. Maintaining the numerous nature trails around the Darling Center. She saves a lot of the donkey work for when I visit. So for the next two hours we sawed up trees that had fallen over trails.

For the rest of the day and into the evening I introduced my mom to the joys of Screwball comedy with My Man Godfrey (which I’d seen) and Bringing up Baby which I hadn’t. I’d heard Bringing up Baby was good but I hadn’t realized just HOW good.

Now I look forward to my first night of mechanically aided sleep in four days!

└ Tags: CPAP, Family, Movies, Screwball, Vacation
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Visiting My Parents: A day on the Boat

by wpmorse on July 9, 2016 at 8:37 am
Posted In: Art

Visiting My Parents: A day on the Boat, panorama

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Well I woke up feeling a tired with a headache but feeling confident that this would be the last of it as the CPAP cord was on it’s way. Coffee was welcome and appreciated.  we had bacon, frittatas and toast with blueberry preserves for breakfast.

From there my cousin, Boyd, and I went to the harbor to get his sailboat ready. My mother went with his wife, Faith, daughter Nicole and a friend to run some errands in downtown Portland.

The last time I’d seen the boat it was in the shop being very much a work in progress. Now it’s ready for ocean travel, barring a few of Boyd’s projects. The cabin is amazingly spacious, with a roof just high enough to keep me from bumping on it. We chilled for about a half hour, talking. The most interesting thing being how Ospreys can be a pest. In this case by perching on the top of the mast and destroying weather equipment. We then drove the boat over to the dock to pick up my mother and Faith.

From there it was an entertaining couple of hours doing circles around the bay. Lunch was phillies with potato chips and I started my new sketchbook with a picture of everybody.Visiting My Parents: A day on the Boat, Sketch

When we returned to dock my mother went went with Faith to pick up the girls in Portland and I stayed to help Boyd with the mooring. (Boyd moored the Sailboat, I waited at the dock)

While waiting at the docks I watched some kids fish, watched a police dog named Greta train to find pot and saw an egret.

Afterwards we went to a Mexican Restaurant where we were joined by my other cousin, Ted.

We got home in a roundabout way. Mom wanted to avoid the usual congestion around Wiscasset and took a backroad.

Unfortunately my replacement CPAP cord hadn’t come yet and since the darling center office is closed on the weekend I’ll have to suffer subpar sleep until Monday.

└ Tags: Boating, Family, Vacation
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Visiting My Parents: The Hunt and wishful thinking

by wpmorse on July 8, 2016 at 8:09 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

Well as I mostly expected I mostly woke up tired with a mild headache from a night without my CPAP working. I suppose it could have been the remains of jet lag or the psychosomatic symptoms caused by assuming the worst. I figure that  would probably be wishful thinking.

Visiting My Parents: The Hunt and wishful thinking, Clarks Cove Maine

Clarks Cove at Low Tide

After breakfast my Mom took me down one of the forest trails she maintains during the summer to retrieve a piece of wood, she had left at the bottom of the trail by the cove. The idea was to cut it in half and then use the pieces to cover a particularly marshy spot. The cove was at low tide slightly obscured by a bank of fog.

Visiting My Parents: The Hunt and wishful thinking, Black-throated Blue Warbler

My nemesis… or so she thinks

On the way back we were harangued by a small bird, that turned out to be a female Black-Throated Blue Warbler. She was easy to identify since when she was getting on our case she was close enough for me to take a picture. Though at the time my identification consisted of “some sort of Warbler, not an Ovenbird.”

After that it was another trip to Portland in one more desperate attempt to replace my CPAP chord. Still luck. One couldn’t in good conscience sell me the general router he had. The other needed a prescription from the local health provider, but recommended a webpage that sells them.

From there we went to my cousin’s house where I tried to call the company for the item number so I knew what I had to order. Unfortunately my cousin was tinkering with his house’s system so I had zero bars. In order to call the company I had to walk a quarter mile away from the house. I finally made contact and got the number. So with any luck the item will come and I’ll be able to sleep properly soon.

└ Tags: Family, Maine, Vacation
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