Daffodil Hill

Taken during a lovely Easter Sunday visit to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This is one of my favorite things at the garden. I couldn't believe it last year when I realized I'd totally missed it. I made a point of going this year.

P.S. - re the Saturday paddle I was so excited about - Gino's pasta matriciana tastes even better when the 5 miles from the club to the restaurant involves pouring rain, a headwind gusting to 20 kts & a current going in the wrong direction. I don't think I've ever left there without leftovers before. First time for everything! It was a tiring paddle, but that's exactly what I was in the mood for after a very long week at work (finally went home at 10:45). That's my 2nd 10-mile paddle in windy conditions in 2 weeks. Felt good.

YAAAAAAY! (trying very hard to look on the bright side...)

Yippee Yippee Yippee!

We're going to Gino's tomorrow!

Woohoo!

The weather's gonna be crappy but who cares!

Ten miles, good friends, good food and then hanging out at the club until Marcus's Falkland Islands presentation.

Plus I get to see how my garden is coming along two weeks & plenty of rain after cleaning it up & putting in some seeds - YAY!

Wait...what's that?

Oh.

No, I am not blogging under the influence. At least not under the influence of anything entertaining.

I'm just trying very very hard not to write about how i'm still at work and it's 7:30 on a lovely spring friday night & no idea what time i get to leave. Cause that would make me go "bah" & who wants to read about "bah" except sheep.

bah.

see? Boring, right?

Seriously though, my paddle in CT last Sunday(the one where I took those pictures of the Sunday racers launching from Tillerman's old club) was my first time on the water since the Long Island Paddlesport Convention, it was great & I've been itching to get out this weekend too. Quite badly, actually, it has been a long couple of weeks of budgeting & forecasting here at the really big children's publishing house (where all our books are for really big children, of course). Tomorrow's weather is crappy, but I was going to see Marcus's presentation in the evening, so I figured it would work well to make a day of it. Sort of wasn't sure if anybody would want to join me out in the wind & the rain but a number of the usual suspects came through. Let's hear for the usual suspects. Woohoo!

(just wonder what time we get to go home tonight, that's all...ok, that was a nice break, now back to work. Baaaaah.)

Onion Flower.

Who knew?

NY Lighthouses Slide Show

Lovely slideshow in the NY Times about some NY-area lighthouses: - the West Bank Lighthouse in the lower harbor, off Staten Island; Stepping Stones and Execution Rock in the western end of Long Island Sound; and my old favorite, the Robbins Reef Light (the picture above is one I took on a beautiful day out on the Hudson & the upper harbor with some friends back in April 2006).

Found via George Conk's Voyages blog. Thanks for posting, George!

Hoboken Cove Boathouse Seeks Volunteers!

This just in on NYCKayaker!

HAVE FUN ON THE HUDSON RIVER - AND HELP SUPPORT FREE RIVER ACCESS IN HOBOKEN!

Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse Organization is a non-profit 501(c)3 kayaking organization that is run by loyal river-loving volunteers. We are now working out of the city of Hoboken's Boathouse at Maxwell Place Park; future plans include our own boathouse at Hoboken Cove Park (16th St.). Community boathouses used to be a hallmark of our town’s historic past, all up and down the waterfront. As the Hudson River gets cleaner every year, we can reclaim our place as a great waterfront city. Public access to the water—our water—should be part of future planning!!

You can help support free river access in Hoboken and volunteer at a Hoboken boathouse! The Hoboken Cove Boathouse Organization is looking for volunteers for our next 5 program dates:

Sunday, June 7, 9am-1pm
Sunday, June 14, 11am-3pm
Saturday, July 11, 10am-2pm
Saturday, July 25, 10am-2pm
Saturday, August 15, 1pm-5pm

If you are a kayaker, that's great, but one does not have to know how to kayak to help out! We will train you on the spot!

Here's what we do as volunteers. The day of the paddling program, volunteers will be signing in paddlers, handing out info sheets, fitting paddlers with lifejackets, helping paddlers launch and land their sit-on-top kayaks on the beach, and of course, signing on new volunteers to help keep the kayaking program going all season! We will also need volunteers to help us on the river in kayaks during our 5 programs. We will be doing basic on water volunteer training for volunteers that would like to help out on the river . . . once the Summer days warm up the river! If you have a high skill level as a kayaker, please let us know. We use skilled kayakers to patrol the river during the programs. We will be running occasional river trips and will need kayakers to tag along on these lovely paddles.

We will also need volunteers to help run our Spring Fundraiser. We are a non-profit 501(c)3 and are presently borrowing kayaks from our generous sister organization in Manhattan, The Downtown Boathouse. We would like Hoboken to have our own boats and gear for free river access! The Spring Fundraiser date will be announced soon.

If you want to kayak, or just want to be around a fun river fest atmosphere---this is the right place! Come join us for a few hours-or all day! You can also support our cause by donating at our Fundraiser in the Spring and our non-profit free kayaking programs in the Summer at Maxwell Place Park.

Please contact us at

volunteer@hobokencoveboathouse.org

For more information, check out their website:
http://www.hobokencoveboathouse.org/

Tillerman Tuesday

Here's one for you, Tillerman!










Hello, Dollies...

Mystery Frog Identified!

And yes, it is a frog! Which is good, because, as I said to Brian during an email exchange in which we were puzzling over the animal's identity, "Toadma" just doesn't work as well as "frogma".

Anyways - it seemed like everybody was baffled on this one, so this morning, I passed the question on to my birder friend Prof. M (aka "She Who Produces Snowy Owls Upon Request", I'm still amazed that she found us one of those). She passed it on to a few friends of hers & by this afternoon, one of her friends had sent this message:

Note the following about coloration of the Gray Tree Frog, Hyla versicolor....//S.

Introduction: Gray tree frogs are medium-sized tree frogs native to eastern North America. They are common in much of their range near small bodies of water, and are often encountered by humans during the breeding season in spring. If you capture one in the wild and keep it in captivity, do not release it. There are two species of gray tree frog: Hyla chrysoscelis and Hyla versicolor, both of which look identical and can only easily be told apart by their call. In captivity they both require the same care. Adults reach a size of around 2 inches (5 cm). As their common name suggests, most are predominantly gray, although their ventral side is a light white, and on the inside of their hind legs there are two bright orange or yellow flash marks. Gray tree frogs have the ability to change color depending on temperature, humidity, light intensity, and the color of their surroundings. They can range from bright green, to pale white, to dark brown, although most of the time they remain gray. Juveniles are generally green in color and develop their gray adult coloration as they mature.


[Not sure if you’ll be able to open the link below – if not, google gray tree frog + green and the image will show up on the top row]

I was indeed unable to open the link, but I followed her instructions & sure enough, there was Mystery Frog's twin!



The picture was posted on the Amphibian Care section of the Reptile Forum UK - hence, I think, the warning about not releasing them, the poster was concerned about erstwhile herp fanciers creating Yet Another Invasive Species Problem, as he was addressing people who live in an area where the Gray Tree Frog is not an endemic species, but would probably like things just fine, thank you very much (cf: Gray Squirrels).

Thanks for the I.D., S., I never would've figured that one out on my own!

Tower Bell Ringing at Trinity Church, Part 2

Continuing where I left off (it was getting late) - I think I should be able to wrap this up before I head off for CT. There's a video at the end, even!

Where I'd left off was "How do you play music on those things?"

The picture I'd posted at the end of yesterday's post? That's tower bell music. Doesn't look like any music you've ever seen, does it? Unless you're a change ringer who's stumbled across this, of course!

The fact is, despite the fact that even the smaller bells can outweigh their ringers by two or three times, and therefore completely impossible to stop in mid-swing - there is a moment, when the bell loses momentum at the top of its arc, that the physics of the situation change & for that moment, the ringer can influence the timing of when the bell begins to fall back in the other direction. The ringer can hold for a second, or move on a little more quickly, and by doing so they can switch places with a bell that's ringing next to them.

So let's say you start with 8 bells ringing consecutively in an ascending scale (called "rounds", can be fewer bells or more bells, depending on how many ringers you have & how many bells in the ring - Trinity has 12 & that's what you'll see in the video, if you make it to the video!):

1 is the highest, or treble; 8 is the lowest, or tenor -

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Once everybody's got a nice steady flow going, then the ringers can use that moment of control to start switching the order. This is just an example I'm making up on the spot, but here the treble is going to switch spots with the #2 bell. If the ringers are good, the rhythm won't be disrupted at all, just the order of the notes. And this is pretty much how the notation I showed yesterday works -

Here we go, #1 & #2 switching spots-

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8

And then 1 can switch with 3, and then 4, and so on (and I'm highlighting the 1 so you can see where it goes)

2 3 1 4 5 6 7 8
2 3 4 1 5 6 7 8
2 3 4 5 1 6 7 8
2 3 4 5 6 1 7 8
2 3 4 5 6 7 1 8

etc etc.

The 1 can also go back the other way, so you could have something like this;

2 3 1 4 5 6 7 8
2 3 4 1 5 6 7 8
2 3 4 5 1 6 7 8
2 3 4 1 5 6 7 8
2 3 4 5 1 6 7 8
2 3 4 1 5 6 7 8
2 3 1 4 5 6 7 8
2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8

And of course other bells can be switching with their neighbors as the same time as the 1 is weaving it's way through too, and that's when it turns from my made-up example to some real tower bell music:



That was on the back of the frame of this graphic-art piece, a gift to the tower from artist Helen Whitehead, a nice visual take on how the patterns of notes change:


And here's how it all comes together with 12 ringers on as many bells!

NOTE - This has sound! I'm not sure why (YouTube newbie, you know) but for some reason it starts with the YouTube volume control turned all the way down. Thanks O-Docker for the note!



Here's what's going. They begin with "rounds", descending scales with the 12 bells being rung in smallest to largest order, highest to lowest, aiming for a nice even rhythm. Changes start right around 1:30. The young man with the beard & the kelly-green shirt was the leader for this set. You'll hear him shout something (I can't quite make out what it is); on that cue, he & the 11 other ringers begin the changes in ringing order. They gradually switch spots with each other, weaving their way through the order. At 1:57, the leader shouts "Back round" - at that point, the ringing order has completely inverted itself & a moment later you will hear one ascending scale, lowest to highest. The weaving then begins again until right around 2:30, when you'll hear the leader shout "This is all!" and the basic descending round resumes until the next cue starts them off on another set of changes.

And there you have it!

Interested in finding out more? Check out http://www.nagcr.org/ - that's the website for the North American Guild of Change Ringers.

Tower Bells at Trinity Church - Part 1

Well, I got stuck at work, but I'm going to go ahead & try to get this post up anyways. Heading up to CT to see TQ tomorrow evening - and Sunday I'm going paddling, I can't quite believe this but between my folks being in town last weekend, and TQ being in town without his winter paddling gear the week before, and I can't remember what the problem was the weekend before but I'm thinking it was bad weather (or maybe I just needed a weekend to get ready for 2 weekends of company), I actually haven't been out in a boat since the Long Island Paddlesports Symposium, which was - yeesh - a month ago. In the boat again, just can't wait to be, in the boat again. Woohoo.

So where was I? Oh yes. Campanologma, the dogma of campanologists! Or to put it in plain English, tower bell ringers. My parents began doing "change ringing" during my dad's last Naval assignment. He was stationed in London, and they were living in a village on the outskirts of London. The town had a church with a belltower. The belltower had a band of ringers, many of whom also rang in the church's handbell choir. My mom loves handbells, and pretty much everywhere she's lived since I was in junior high school or so, she's found a choir. I remember it going back to jr. high because she had me doing it for a while - in the end I think the sort of open-ended, we-have-to-do-this-every-Wednesday commitment wore thin on teenaged me. Come to think of it, I still shy away from that sort of commitment when it comes to recreational activities, nothing's really changed - now I just know better than to sign up for that sort of gig in the first place, that way I don't let anybody down in the end.

But I guess I digress. Back to that village in Middlesex - my mom joined that church's handbell choir, as was usual. Where things got unusual was that, as I said, this church also had a set of tower bells - something my folks had never run across before, tower bells not being terribly common in the States (there are 51 active towers in the US and Canada today, and I can personally name 2 - Trinity Church and St. Andrew's in Honolulu - that didn't have sets of tower bells when my folks were in London, and I know that there are more that have been added since then too). The handbell ringers who were also in the tower ringers' band quickly introduced my mom to those, and before too long my dad had joined them too (tower bell music seems to be well-suited to mathematical minds like my dad's - or vice versa - more on that shortly). They both got completely hooked. Much to their delight, that tower in Hawaii was getting bells just as they returned there, and aside from a hiatus when the tower was found to need reinforcement, they were able to continue practically without interruption.

People frequently seem puzzled when I start talking about these "tower bells" that my parents ring. They tend to either picture the sort of single bell hanging in a steeple that churches all over the country use to call congregations to worship (hardly something that would lead people to fly from North Carolina to New York City for a weekend, even if Alexander Hamilton is buried in the churchyard) or they picture something like they have at Riverside Church, where full hymns and carols are played. That instrument is a carillon, and those are played by a single individual, called a "carillonneur", who uses a set of manual controls that can look a lot like an oversized piano keyboard:
(image from http://www.wellesley.edu).
Each key is attached to the clapper of the corresponding bell - the bells don't actually move.

Tower bells, on the other hand, ring while swinging - and not just in the small, side-to-side arc followed by the steeple-hung bells I was just describing, either. Tower bells are mounted on a sturdy wooden frame shaped like a wheel.

Here are a couple of the bells in the 12-bell ring at Trinity:
That picture is not upside down - that's the position that bells are put in when they're ready to be rung.

Here's one of a couple that were "rung down" for safety, being close to the hatch that gives access to the bells from the ringers' room below:
This one being smaller, and unobscured by the sturdy girders that brace the tower, I think you can see the whole mechanism. When ringing, the bell starts in the mouth-up "stand" position. Once the ringer pulls the rope to begin ringing, the bell swings through a full 360 degrees, slowing as it reaches the top of the arc, stopping for an instant and then reverses, swinging back the way it came.

Did I say "smaller"? It's all relative - here's a little perspective:

That's Greg. He was the organizer of the weekend, and the current leader of the Trinity Ringer. He was the one who gave me a lesson.

Perspective, part 2 - that's me getting my lesson again (photo by my dad). I am five feet, seven inches tall:


So that gives you an idea of the size of these bells. My lesson was on one of the smaller ones. My dad told me later that the one I was using was probably in the five to six hundred pound range. I didn't know exactly what the weight was when I was ringing it, but I knew it felt oddly reminiscent of handling the lines on the big schooner I used to crew on - the force on the other end of the line was simply such that trying to "muscle" it, instead of following it & working with it, would be a really good way to get hurt. My instructions at first were just to follow the line with my hands, trying to keep the rope moving quietly - if you can't do that, you can get a good scare, or possibly even get hurt. I did OK, but first attempts like mine have to be very closely supervised. I was reading a handbook at one point during the ringing, and in the chapter about introducing beginners, there was a warning that nothing scares off a potential ringer like getting yanked off their feet on their first try!

Eventually, once you've got everything more or less in hand, you start to add a little extra "oomph" at the end of each swing of the bell. That keeps the bell going (otherwise it would eventually just ring itself down & stop).

So how do you play music when you can't really "control" your bell in the same way that the carillonneur is able to control each clapper-strike in the carillon?
***************
to be continued!

Wall Street

Because everybody looooooooves Wall Street these days, right?

Naaaah, actually it's just because I was in the area last weekend. Wall Street ends right across the street from Trinity Church, which is where the bellringing event my parents came to attend last weekend was held. I went to watch for a while on Saturday morning. The organizer even gave me a lesson while they were waiting for people to filter in - towers are always looking for new ringers, so they're always glad to give a newcomers a lesson (especially if you live in the area).



I had gotten a little backed up at work last week, so I only hung out in the tower for part of the morning. I left around 11 to head up to my office in Soho. I took a few more pictures of the exterior of the church as I was leaving (I believe I promised both interior shots of the inside & exterior shots of the outside & I didn't want to let anybody down) - and then it hit me that I was right next to Wall Street & I figured it would be sort of timely to post a picture of Wall Street. Wall Street being so popular & all, these days.

More bellringing pictures tonight, unless I get stuck at work.

It's Practically a Frog Parade!

This one's from my friend Brian (A Moveable Bridge). It was hanging out on his parents' deck in upstate NY. I love this one, so perfectly compact and tucked into itself. It reminds me of the ceramic kaeru charm that one of my friends from Iolani gave me when my family left the islands in the way it fits into such a smooth little shape. "Kaeru", in Japanese, means both "frog" and "return", so if you put such a charm in your coin purse it's supposed to make the coins return. Travellers also carry them for a safe return to where they came from. I should've held onto that charm more carefully - it was from Hawaii.

Does anyone know what kind of frog this is? I've never seen one that looked like this!

Wood Frog

Back to the ranid theme - here's the frog photo I'd mentioned in the comments on the Frogma Frog Post, which I didn't have time to post earlier, but I'm home now & wanted to post it. Interesting color, almost looks coppery, doesn't it? Thanks, Gail!


Here's a wood frog I saw in one of our vernal ponds last weekend. They live in the woods (duh!) and come into the pond to mate and lay eggs, then back to the woods. Wood frogs make a loud quacking sound which is quite distinctive when they gather in large numbers. In a pond perhaps 75 feet in diameter I could count at least 100 of them floating on the water, quacking away.


Gail


And I can't resist linking to a post I always liked (well, since she posted in in February of last year) over on Smokey Mountain Breakdown. Sadly, Rosanne has to sell her Appalachian farm - I'll miss reading about that place in vignettes like this one. Like Ckayaker Michael's spring peepers (check the Frog Post comments), frogsong has been Rosanne's first harbinger of Spring.

Robins aren't so reliable - I've seen flocks of those around here in January!

Signs of the times in the New York Times..

If a boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money, and you suddenly find yourself without enough money to really have any to spare for that hole, I guess you might be tempted to just make the hole go away.

Frogma Frog Post

This was going to be a Froggy Friday post but work is pretty busy right now & I'm not foreseeing really having time to do a proper post, just a quick lunch break one, I thought today would be a good day to bring up O-Docker's frog question, which he'd left in the comments back when I did my recent explanation of why this blog is called what it's called.

Here's O-Docker's comment, with a question that some of you midwestern paddlers (or other freshwater folkd) might be able to answer better than me:

If you're entertaining ideas for new posts, maybe now's a good time to ask about the frogs themselves, Ma' Frogma.

Biologists report a huge reduction in global frog populations over the past few decades. Who better to see this than paddlers, wanderers in the wetlands that you are? Have you or your paddling readers noticed any changes in the frogs? Do you see or hear frogs when you paddle?

We live just a few blocks from the American river and occasionally one of these guys finds his way into our yard. It's a real kick to hear froggie sounds in the garden at night, especially in the semi-urban neighborhood where we live. But it's a reminder of just how rare this is becoming.

Now I can't really answer that, because although the name "Frogma" might lead you to think I'm out communing with Kermit's wild cousins on a regular basis, I'm not, for the simple reason that I'm almost always paddling salt water. I think there are only one or two frog species who can tolerate salt water, and neither of them live this far North.

So I don't see a lot of frogs. That's why I had to take a picture of this little bitty frog who was hanging out on the rainfly of my tent one night when I was up at Croton Point for the Hudson River Greenland Festival last June!



I know that there are some coqui frogs in Hawaii who are doing fine to the point that they keep people awake at night. They're not an endemic species, so that's not necessarily good news.

Another random frog story - here's a link to an article about some very tough Irish frogs who survived the ice age. Appropriately posted on St. Patrick's Day on Yahoo.

So how are your frogs doing?

Praying Mantis Egg Case in the garden at Sebago

A very good thing to find in your garden.

Henry's Obsession

Well, FrogmaMa and FrogmaDa have arrived in NYC for one of their adventure in campanology (heh, and you thought MY hobby was odd). They are crashing at my (lily)pad so I think things are going to be a bit quiet here 'til next week.

In the meantime, here's something fun I've been following, and meaning to link to, for a while -

Live from 1609, it's Henry Hudson's Blog!

Enjoy!

Firewater...

ur doin it wrong.

4/2 note - the original thing I'd linked to was gone but I found it elsewhere & fixed the link - that now shows what it was supposed to, not something about the fashion sense of the women connected to the G-20 summit!

Seriously, though - buried somewhere in my sorting-things-out-on-natural-gas were some points about something that I was surprised wasn't more the focus of the evening's efforts. This video might be a good illustration of the sort of drilling-related problem that look to be very real, very nasty, already happening & maybe more worthy of environmentalists' efforts than this fight against "planned" drilling in the NYC Watershed (which seems to be "planned" in about the same way I had "planned" to go paddling with Marco and René in Venice this year - I was looking into it, I sure would've liked to, but it just isn't going to happen, not this year anyways, nor next, big sigh).

Here's a quick set of excerpts of the stuff that got buried:

I didn't come away with the idea that the Paterson bill from last summer suddenly legalized anything that was illegal before. Actually it sounds like what really opened things up to some possibly questionable drilling practices was the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which made it easier to use public land to energy production and included a loophole a mile wide for hydraulic fracture drilling - that's a fact, here's wording from the act's official summary:
"Provisions are also included to increase access to federal lands by energy projects — such as drilling activities, electric transmission lines, and gas pipelines. In addition, the law prevents the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating hydraulic fracturing to protect drinking water sources...
*********
Hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking", seems to be the specific bad guy here - other forms of drilling were mentioned, and most of the people in the room want a complete ban on drilling in the watershed - but hydraulic fracturing sounds like it's the one that would really threaten the water supply if it were used in the NY watershed.
*********
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office has put together a report on the subject. That includes some 20 summaries of articles about cases where things had gone horribly wrong with drinking water in areas where hydrofracking was being done. I suspect that having your toilet erupt isn't nearly as funny as it sounds.
*********
H.R. 7231 is likely to resurface in Congress this year. That's a bill to put hydraulic fracture drilling back under EPA regulation.

If you're worried about this stuff, the absolute best thing to do right now might just be to write to your representative asking them to support H.R. 7231.

I don't have time to go into a lot more depth right now (I wish I did) but although the video I linked to doesn't specifically link that one Colorado household's tapwater trouble to hydraulic fracture drilling, a similar "firewater" effect is one of the sorts of unpleasant problems that came up again and again in Scott Stringer's report. Many of those reports are from Colorado, and it's actually a Colorado congresswoman who sponsored it in the 110th congress. I can't find ANY info on the bill beyond it being referred to a subcommittee during the 110th congress.

I don't quite get why pushing to get HR 7231 passed wasn't the main focus of the folks who were in that room last week. Somebody actually DID ask, during the post-panel Q&A, why the focus was so NYC-centric, when it sure seems like there are people all over the country who are directly affected by the same issues. Seems like focusing efforts on HR 7231 would do a lot more good for a lot more people.

As it was, the bill was just sort of mentioned in passing, sort of in an "oh, yeah, our new administration is taking care of that, nothing to worry about there" way.

Adam Has A Cool Idea - Let's Make April 22nd Something Special!

No, that's not Adam, that's Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, winner of a tremendously famous sailing race, and Suhaili (image copied from YachtPals.com).

This not being a sailing blog really (although it sort of used to be, weird how my sailor self apparently went on shore leave & never found her way back - well, you know how those sailors are - maybe this summer will be better), I won't assume everybody knows about him or that famous race, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race -- it was a race to become the first person in history to singlehandedly sail a sailboat around the world non-stop. For more info, here are Wikipedia articles about Sir Knox-Johnston and the Golden Globe Race.

April 22nd, 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the successful completion of that first ever non-stop solo sail around the globe, and Adam from Messing About In Boats has sent out the call for sailing bloggers one and all to make April 22nd Robin Knox-Johnston Day on the web. I think it's a great idea, I'll definitely be joining in the fun - any other kayak bloggers (or rowing bloggers, or windsurfing bloggers, or other assorted boating bloggers) want to join in? Adam said sailing blogs, but heck, don't need to be a sailor to appreciate an amazing feat like that!

After all, who among us hasn't at least pipe-dreamed of a epic voyage around one rock or another?

Sebago Kitteh.

Sebago Kitteh...


enjoyz teh Spring...


But kitteh's work is never done. Ceiling Cat noez, dem hoomins needs supervising.


Good thing Sebago Kitteh too bizzeh to readz LOLCATS...

thank u "Kayak-Boy & Kayak-Girl!

cross-posted at teh Sebago Canoe Club Blog.

First Recorded Cookie-Cutter Shark Attack on Living Human...

Fascinating! Ever heard of cookie-cutter sharks? I'd learned about them while doing research for a team reporting project in 7th grade at Aiea Jr. High School. We invaded the icthyology department at the Bishop Museum, the staff icthyologist there was great & we learned about a number of fish species we'd never heard of. I don't think I've ever seen them mentioned in print before. Here's the true story!

Time for another Jaws sequel?

Signs of Spring on the Paerdegat!

....O
:D/>
.O

Hoboken Boathouse Public Meeting, Tuesday March 24th - plus Sad News - No Gateway Bike and Boathouse.

This notice came out on the NYC Kayaker email list* today. I can't make it, but it sounds like fun!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 6-8 PM, Maxwell Place Park Boathouse, Frank Sinatra Drive & Maxwell Place, Hoboken, NJ

Come tour the new Boathouse and beach at Maxwell Place Park and learn more about the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse organization. Presentations will include an overview of Hudson River boating and how other NY Harbor boathouses – like the Long Island City Community Boathouse, Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, and the Downtown Boathouse – operate. We are also looking foryour input on the types of boating programs and activities Hoboken residents want and your help to make these goals a reality.

Meeting is open to all interested participants – beginner, expert, and non-paddlers alike.

Please RSVP (or for more information), by email at info@hobokencoveboathouse.org.
-- David DownsPresidentHoboken Cove Community Boathouse
http://www.hobokencoveboathouse.org/

david@hobokencoveboathouse.org

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36210028096

For more information about the NYC Kayaker email list:

http://www.hrwa.org/nyckayaker-list/

************

Oh, and this reminds me of a piece of sadder news. You may not recall it, but earlier this winter, I was really excited about these guys - http://www.gatewayboathouse.org/ - opening up across the bay from us. One of the fun things about the Hudson River Park (and there were a lot of fun things, which is why I sort of kept my finger in the political stuff even after I dropped out of Manhattan Kayak Company - it wasn't always exciting but I always thought it was worth the time I spent on it) was having so many different human-powered boating organizations in such close proximity - you'd always run into people from the other places when you were out, you'd say hello, sometimes you'd join up with them for paddles, sometimes you'd just wave as you passed, whatever the interaction was, it usually added a nice extra social dimension. In Jamaica Bay, we're the only club, and I thought it was going to be great having another club in the bay. I thought I might be able to paddle over and try that-there windsurfing thing that's always being talked up on some favorite blogs of mine; I thought it would be fun for me & TQ to go over & rent a couple of bikes for the afternoon (they've got some beautiful bike lanes out there); and I thought it would be fun for us to invite them over for a barbecue (and hopefully be invited over there for something), or just plain stop by to say hello when we were paddling out that way.

So I was saddened to hear, earlier this winter, that they won't be opening this Spring. Sounds like the Parks thought they were getting a Downtown Boathouse-style operation when Gateway was more picturing themselves more in the Sebago model & the misunderstanding ended it.

http://www.rockawave.com/news/2008/1226/community/018.html

Random thought about gardening.

It's a funny hobby, when you can try to bribe your friends with dirt.

Crabby.

Naaaah, not really. Just missed both fun events tonight, kinda tired from staying up too late last night, and I had this picture of a crab in Chinatown. Just seemed to fit.

CB2 Public Hearing re Gas Drilling

Premise 1: It's got to come from somewhere!

So I went to the hearing to hear what I could hear,
And what did I hear? I heard the herd!

No, not really, I'm just playing with words again, hard to stop after the ogma ogma ogma fun.

But I was going to try to be serious for a little while here. I did go, I listened for 3 hours, I walked out undecided but in possession of a lot more information. It was pretty interesting. I'm not going to try to give a blow-by-blow, but I am going to try to jot down some impressions while they're still fresh.
******************************
I'll start with my biggest criticism of the evening:

That wasn't a hearing. That was a freakin' pep rally.

Every public hearing I've ever been to, you hear both sides of the issue. Tonight's meeting was the choir was preaching to the choir. I was the only non-chorister person in the audience. I had suspected that but it was confirmed while Siobhan Williams, the legislative policy analyst who was there representing Speaker Christine Quinn's office, was making her brief presentation. Now she was in an interesting position because Quinn has not taken an official public position on the issue, although she's been supportive of the anti-driller. Somebody put her on the spot about that, and suddenly somebody with a mike was saying "Hey, how about everyone who want Speaker Quinn to come out with a statement against drilling in the watershed say so with a show of hands" - and EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE ROOM EXCEPT ME RAISED THEIR HAND. That was sort of weird.
******************************************
Got some interesting background on NYC Water. There were a few things I did clap for - one was City Council Environmental Protection Committee Chair James Gennaro's beginning his speech by looking at the Fiji Water bottle in his hand & saying "You know, I shouldn't be drinking bottled water. Somebody handed this to me." I thought that was pretty sharp of him to recognize the irony. Anyways, Mr. Gennaro talked about how hard NYC worked to win "Filtration Avoidance Status" back in the 70's. There are very few cities in the country that have that status - I think he said 4 - and the others are all drawing their water from unpopulated, undeveloped areas. NYC's watershed is populated; there are towns, and farms, and industry & highways & all that stuff. The EPA & a panel of water-quality experts were initially reluctant, but rules and regulations were upgraded, buffer lands established, various inspection requirements put in place & finally, with the cooperation of city, state, Federal Government & towns in the watershed, the city's request was granted.

Mr. Gennaro said that failure to win that status back then would've cost the city 6 to 8 billion dollars. Who knows what it would cost now?
*********************
I didn't come away with the idea that the Paterson bill from last summer suddenly legalized anything that was illegal before. Actually it sounds like what really opened things up to some possibly questionable drilling practices was the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which made it easier to use public land to energy production and included a loophole a mile wide for hydraulic fracture drilling - that's a fact, here's wording from the act's official summary:
"Provisions are also included to increase access to federal lands by energy projects — such as drilling activities, electric transmission lines, and gas pipelines. In addition, the law prevents the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating hydraulic fracturing to protect drinking water sources." That exemption, coupled with runaway fuel prices, led to a whole lot of drilling, as described in that Times article I posted yesterday. The Paterson bill sounds like it was basically just an effort to milk that by allowing a little more density.
***********************
Hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking", seems to be the specific bad guy here - other forms of drilling were mentioned, and most of the people in the room want a complete ban on drilling in the watershed - but hydraulic fracturing sounds like it's the one that would really threaten the water supply if it were used in the NY watershed.
***********************
The first commercial use of hydrofracking was in 1949. The pioneering company?

Halliburton.
************************
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office has put together a report on the subject. That includes some 20 summaries of articles about cases where things had gone horribly wrong with drinking water in areas where hydrofracking was being done. I suspect that having your toilet erupt isn't nearly as funny as it sounds.
*************************
All that being said -

I still can't believe the threat is as imminent as it's being made out to be.

2 main reasons:

1. The NYC watershed only covers about 9% of the Marcellus Shale formation that was the focus of all the interest. If I had a gas company and I were looking to drill, guess which area would be the LAST area I'd even dream about drilling? That would be the NYC Watershed. I just can't imagine that anyone would voluntarily drill somewhere where if something goes wrong, you're not going to just end up trucking drinking water to the residents of the poor little hamlet whose wells have turned to gobs o' goo...you're going to have every resident (including & especially every resident lawyer) of one of the biggest cities in the world after your hide. Might as well just tie yourself between two teams of horses facing opposite directions & then set off a few firecrackers. It'll be a lot more pleasant.

2. As was outlined in that Times article which I linked to, the economic picture that was driving all the drilling madness has totally changed. That was one very odd thing about the hearing - it didn't seem like any of the speakers had taken that into account. It's like the figures they were using were all based on forecasts done in June 2008. And they were stating those figures like they were hard, cold facts. As it is, just like I'd said in my earlier post, the silver lining here is that I'd bet that new drilling in the Marcellus is going to come to a screeching halt for a while, just like new development on the waterfront. In the meantime, H.R. 7231 is likely to resurface in Congress this year. That's a bill to put hydraulic fracture drilling back under EPA regulation.

If you're worried about this stuff, the absolute best thing to do right now might just be to write to your representative asking them to support H.R. 7231. There's time now.
*************************

Gotta wrap this up now, it's getting late.

On the whole, it was an informative & interesting evening.

There were a couple of moments where I felt like I'd sort of fallen through the looking-glass into extrema-eco-lefty-land...

One was when when Deborah Goldberg, Managing Attorney for Earth Justice's NE office, was talking about one possible strategy they've been looking at, which would be pushing to get control of regulation of mineral use away from Albany and into the hands of local authorities. this was in response to a question about who the "decider" is & who people can go to if Paterson doesn't want to listen - the answer is well, really Paterson's it, then she touched on the idea of letting local authorities make their own regs. The idea was that the regs become such a patchwork that the gas companies run screaming from NY - but what made me think "Did she just say what I thought she said?" was when she mentioned one thing she thought was a drawback to this plan:

"Of course, you run the risk of having areas that actually want (drilling)".

The other was actually what inspired the picture for this post, and the "Premise No. 1" caption.

Someone asked a question about why the groups that had speakers there tonight were all so focused on NYC & the NYC watershed. They felt like the efforts needed to be more inclusive to get any real traction. For some of the participants, that was an easy question - the elected officials have to answer to their constituencies. The Riverkeeper guy was sort of able to take the same track - he works for Riverkeeper, and Riverkeeper's mission is to protect the Hudson & surrounding watershed. But then he started into a very sensible additional bit about practicality & picking your battles.

As an example, he asked:

"Should we ban natural gas drilling across the entire country?"

A truly shocking number of people in the crowd shouted:

"YES!"

Even he looked a bit taken aback.

I really wonder how many of those people went home tonight & turned on their stoves to cook dinner.

I wonder if they even think about where that gas comes from. It's got to come from somewhere.

It's sort of like a person who says all people should become vegetarians, then goes home & has hot dogs for dinner.

Anyways, pardon the massive wandering off into Serious Stuff. We now return you to your regularly scheduled frivolity.

CB2 Meeting Tonight - Either The Sky Is Falling, Or It's Not. Or Maybe It's Falling a Little Bit?

Well, I wasn't planning to go to a public hearing tonight, but I might just have to, just to hear what's said for myself.

Don't have time for a long post right now, but here's the deal. Last night, I noticed this on a street lamp in Soho near my office:

My gut reaction was, "That sounds improbable". The reasons behind my having that gut reaction are the sort of thing I don't have time for, but that's how it was.

So I got home last night & checked in on my email and found this, posted to NYCKayaker -

New York City residents finally have a chance to voice their concerns on the threat natural gas drilling poses to their drinking water supply--

*Manhattan Community Board 2 Holds Public Hearing on Natural Gas Drilling Planned for
NYC's Upstate Watershed *

The hearing will address the threat posed to 90% of New York City’s drinking water supply by a plan to drill for gas in the city’s upstate watershed.

*When: 6:30pm on March 18, 2009 *

*Where:* *Judson Memorial Church Assembly Hall
*239 Thompson Street
Washington Square Park South

*Among the speakers at this public hearing will be:
*- New York City Council Environmental Protection Committee Chair James
Gennaro
- Dr. Stephen Corson, Policy Analyst for Manhattan Borough President Scott
Stringer
- Joe Levine, architect and co-founder of NY-H20
- *Craig Michaels, Watershed Program Director for Riverkeeper
*- Deborah Goldberg, Managing Attorney for Earth Justice’s Northeast Office
- Jared Chausow, specialist in the issue of gas drilling in New York City’s
Upstate Watershed, for New York State Senator Tom Duane.

*More information on this event*http://river.convio.net/site/R?i=MMEYZJLD67c8rL23XQ1awg
*More infomation on gas drilling in the NYCWatershed*http://river.convio.net/site/R?i=7FZKXO518ecf9weRKtOUQw

I went to the "More info on gas drilling in the NYCWatershed" link & according to that, oh my, scary stuff. Sky is falling, cats sleeping with dogs, etc.

But although I usually tend to fall on the conservationist side of things, I also do have something of a skeptical streak, and when you tell me that the sky is falling, my reaction tends to be "Really? Let me do a little looking into that for myself".

So I did that and I found this:
http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/46288.html

and that had a whole bunch more info including this statement made by the Commissioner of the NYS DEC, back in September of last year:

http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/46795.html

Which included stuff like this:

"First, DEC has not received any applications for Marcellus Shale horizontal drilling in the New York City watershed. Accordingly, there is no imminent threat of harm to the city's water supply and most certainly no 'emergency' action is needed. Even if we were to receive an application, no permits will be issued until the completion of a full environmental review specific to the special sensitivities of the City's watershed"

My mild skeptical streak applies to government statements too. I don't know if the info on the DEC website is too optimistic any more than I know if Riverkeeper's stuff is too pessimistic, but I'd rather have both sides of the story & reserve judgement. Although I'm suddenly thinking of my original pseudo folk-saying, "She who stands in the middle of the road is most likely to get hit by a bus".

I found another interesting piece of info in the New York Times. The article was just published on the 15th, and I don't expect to hear it in the testimony that will be shared tonight, but the article is about how falling fuel costs have ended the "drilling frenzy" that was going on not too long ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15drilling.html

Interesting - it's not much of a silver lining, but the real estate bust has relieved a lot of the pressure that was being put on our waterfront by developers. Seems that maybe the fall of those crazy fuel prices could do the same for our watershed.

Just mulling things over out loud. That's what blogs are for, right? Anyways, I'm curious enough that I'll probably go, just to hear what's said.

Revenge is a lunch best served cold.

Someone (not me!) posted this on the refrigerator at work today:


Glad I'm not the Sandwich Bandit!

:D

Spring Flowers, a Veddy Fancy Fish, and Ogma Ogma Ogma.

Remember my bad scrod poem the other day? Well, on Saturday, The golden koi did indeed delight mine eye - this one especially! Check out the fanciness!

And a few nice early spring flowers, and promises of more to come...



All taken in Green-Wood Cemetary - TQ was in town & since he was coming from PA & didn't have gear, I had to come up with something else. So I took him for a walk in a graveyard. Romantic, huh? No, seriously, we went on one of Steve Baldwin's Brooklyn Parrot Safaris. We didn't have the raptor-parrot drama that my friends & I were lucky enough to see the last time I went (You can see my slide show from that day here), but it was another thoroughly enjoyable experience. Thank you, Steve! I took plenty of pictures, and there will probably be a parrot themed post or two this week.

Possibly pizza pictures too. It was pretty special pizza. There's always room for parrots & pizza on this boat blog!

Speaking of that slide show, did you realize that "raptor" and "parrot" are anagrams of each other?

And speaking of wordplay - I didn't really set this up as a challenge, specifically, but I had the best time reading some of the "Ogma" variations people came up with in the comments after I explained the origin of the name of this blog. They really need to be up here in a post!

Pandabonium, who is a flyer, sort of started it trying to come up with a similar term for aviators, who apparently have similar self-appointed Safety Squads..."Fly-ogma? Flogma? Aviogma?"

Things really started going downhill when the Puffin himself checked in:
"I've also now imagined Clogma for shoe dogma, Togma for clothes etc, because I'm a pretty simple guy. Eggnogma?"

Being pretty simple (or at least easily amused) myself, I couldn't resist jumping in:

A Harley rider could start Hogma.
A rum fancier could write Grogma.
A cultured European traveler could write Praguema.
A fan of, uh, de-regulating industry could write Smogma.
An easily amazed person could write All Agogma

ok, I am stretching it with that last one or two there. What else?

O-docker rose (or maybe sank) to the challenge with:

Sail on the Bay - Fogma
I'm a Lumberjack, I'm okay! - Logma
Run around outside - Jogma
Fit to be tied - Flogma

O-docker has not got a blog, but keeps those of us who do on our toes by being one of the slyest commenters in boat blogdom, for which service I believe Lord Admiral Tillerman has appointed him, what was it, Poet Laureate and also Secretary of the Navy?

Stan from Kayaking Dreaming came in with:
"I like this post. Kind of nostogma." Yes, Stan, you're right, that was stretching it, but keep posting about stuff like actual ice rescue training & all is forgiven!

Peconic Puffin came back in with:

"hating digital...Analogma" (I almost died rolling on the floor laughing)

And Don's got the last word so far with "Parental abuse - Flogma".

I am indeed all agogma.

A Beautiful New Arrival!

Everybody should go offer congratulations (and/or advance sympathy) to Pandabonium! YAY!

What's A Frogma, Frogma is Four and Change, and a pseudo-milestone which involves the Kill Van Kull

That could be my longest title ever. I've done posts that were shorter.

I'm kind of up past my bedtime here because I didn't want to leave that Guild-related crankiness sitting up on top when I had left something in the comments the other day that according to the Peconic Puffin should have been in a post. Thought I'd post it as requested!

It ended up in comments because I got asked what the word "Frogma" meant & this turned out to generate quite a bit of speculation, so since there was an actual story I told it. If you've been reading my drivel for a long time, you might know, as I told sort of a looooong version of the story as my Very First Post and tend to link back to that on my "bloggiversary". I missed that this year because...oh, let me go look...oh YEAH, because TQ and I had gone on the best snow paddle the day before & getting a trip report up for that blew all thoughts of bloggiversary out of my brain. Then there was that friendly fur seal, and Sita, and a visit to Nathan's in Coney Island & lion dancers & the Cold Water Workshop & an Irish music party, and then there was an inauguration I was really, really happy about, even though I don't think I ever posted about it, didn't have anything to say that hadn't been said better on a thousand other blogs. With that much good stuff, I just didn't bother doing the "Frogma Is Four" thing this year.

Speaking of things I missed because I had too much other stuff going on, there was one more pseudo-milestone I passed right after the day of our Boat Blogger Get-Together in February (time for another one yet, guys?). I'll get to the explanation in a minute, but first - hey!

My sitemeter hit count hit 100,000!

I say "pseudo-milestone" because I have been posting fairly regularly for 4 years now. There are 1,209 posts in this blog, very few of which are unpublished. Every time you publish, it generates a hit. Furthermore, I have been known to check in from other computers & I really don't feel like my own hits count. So hitting 100K doesn't really mean I've hit 100K. But it was fun to see the count go to 6 digits & I did note that although the IP address was one of those ones that don't give you the location, the referral was a Google search under somthing like "Crossing the Kill". That brought them in to a post I rather enjoyed seeing again myself, a trip report from February 07, when I got to go on a fantastic frostbite sail from Liberty Marina to Tottenville on the Rosemary Ruth - a day that was also notable for being the first time I met Tugster Will in person. There was a lot of traffic in & out of the Kill Van Kull that day & in the post, I mention how much I dislike crossing the Kill in a kayak (it feels way too much like a giant, slow-motion, real-world, first-person Frogger game, and you only get one frog). That's what the Google search that brought in the Hit That Was Not Really Hit Number 100,000 found.

Oh, speaking of the Kill, one more sidetrack before I get to the explanation (this post is going to be about twice as long as I planned but the Puffin wants a post and the Puffin shall have a post) - Bowsprite has a very nice post on A Day in the Kill Van Kull. Don't miss the earplugs, everybody loves the earplugs!

Awright, back to the comment - it was supposed to be the short version but it still came out pretty long. Oh well. Without Further Ado, here it is, the story of the name of this blog:

I'm on a kayaking email list that tends to get a bit contentious on safety issues, especially late in a long winter. One year, in January or so, a particularly good flame war erupted when a friend of mine mentioned that he and a friend of his were paddling out of x-and-such beach that weekend & asked if anybody wanted to join them. The Safety Squad went to town on the poor guy because he failed to do the full insurance-waiver type announcement of proper gear & hazards. If I'm remembering correctly, Miles was eventually accused of trying to lure innocent beginners to an ICY DOOM!!!! When really, he just wanted to see if anybody else wanted to go paddling. It was effin' cold, I think that was a year we had ice in the Hudson down here in the city, Miles was assuming that people would have the brains to look outside & realize that this was not flip-flop & t-shirts weather; furthermore, if anyone had wanted to go, there would probably have been a pre-trip email exchange during which ability & gear could've been discussed, and if somebody HAD just turned up at the beach with the wrong gear, Miles & his friend would not have let them go! The Safety Squad disagreed, though. I think that was the last time anybody tried to organize a winter paddle through that list - who wants to open themselves up to getting jumped all over that way?

And I sat there reading this thinking, "Wow, these folks are all so dogmatic...only they're kayakers, so it's more like...hey, it's FROGMA, there's a fun word!"

Sort of along the same lines as that silly joke about "My grandma ran over my dogma in her carma".

Anyways, I was curious to see if anybody else had come up with the Frogma variety, went on line, found an English folk band & a video game going by the same name. Think there's an artists' collective that uses it too. I actually didn't start blogging for a few years after that but when I started, I thought "Hey, I finally have a use for that word!"

Date Update for Marcus Demuth event at the Downtown Boathouse

Marcus had had an event he's doing at the Downtown Boathouse listed on his website as being on April 8th. That event (also featuring the NYC Premiere of the Eastern Horizons sea kayaking movie by Bryan Smith) is actually on the 7th.

Posting here (despite the Hudson River Paddlers' Guild connection that turns out to exist*) on the infinitesmal chance that somebody could have clicked through to his website yesterday & added the 8th to their calendar.

* It has been a long time now since the Guild set themselves up as the spokespeople & leaders of the "storage hold" set during the shutdown of Pier 63, and the organization may have evolved, but some of their leaders & supporters left me feeling seriously stomped-on back then. They put together the occasional interesting event, like this one, but I generally just stay away from them. It's sometimes been really hard not to "talk stink" about them here, but there are some people who are involved who I respect a lot (like Marcus himself!) & who didn't act like I needed cutting down to size the way some of them did. Because of the former set of people, and because other friends of mine HAVE enjoyed some of the Guild's events, and because vendettas are a really sad & ugly use for blogs, I mostly try to follow the "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" rule.

Upcoming Events, and the NYC Watertrail Calendar

Quite a few events coming up in the next 2 weeks!

This Thursday, 3/11/09, from 6 pm to 9 pm, the Long Island Community Boathouse will be holding a fundraising Bongo Surf Party winter fundraiser at The Foundry, one block south of the Queensboro Bridge. Entertainment, prizes, Indian, Thai and Italian food, and more, all for $20.00. Full details at www.licboathouse.org (plus you can find more information about their free public paddling programs in Long Island City, which will resume once the water warms up!

Marcus Demuth is doing the rounds with another slideshow, this time of his Falklands adventure in January '09. He's a great guy, a great paddler, and a great photographer, and I think I can guarantee it'll be a fun evening there at the Pier 66 Boathouse! Next week Tuesday, 3/17/09, at 7PM. Yep, St. Patrick's Day, hey Marcus, you should drop in a couple of your favorite Ireland slides at the end! More info at the Manhattan Kayak Company blog. More about Marcus's adventures (including dates for appearances at the Downtown Boathouse & my own Sebago Canoe Club) at www.MarcusDemuth.com.

And as next week Thursday, 3/19/09, turned out, there are 2 really neat-sounding, no-drysuits-required events going on. I'd have a terrible time deciding, except that lucky for me (mirthless laugh, ha ha), I probably won't be out of work on time for either one. Plus my folks are dropping into town for one of their adventures in campanology (this time at NYC's historic Trinity Church, I may get an interesting picture or two out of that) so phew, no pesky decision-making for me. The duelling events on Thursday, March 19th are:

1. Kate Williams, Executive Director of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, will be giving a talk about the Trail at the Arsenal Gallery at 6:30pm. The Arsenal Gallery is located at 64th Street nd FifthAvenue inside Central Park, NY. I'd posted more about this back in February, full details here!

2. Dr. John Waldman, author of Heartbeats in the Muck, an absolutely fantastic book about the history & ecology of the Hudson River & a great addition to any Hudsonophile's bookshelf, will be giving a talk at the Beczak Environmental Center in Yonkers. That begins at 8 PM. A flyer with full details can be found here.

Advance notice, but somewhat timely insofar as I've got stand-up paddling on the brain (and the blog) after last weekend's fun - want to try this SUP thing for yourself? Live in the NYC area? On May 24th, there will be a SUP try-out day at New York Kayak. I'd mentioned my try-out to one of my co-workers today, he was really intrigued, wanted to know where a person could try this, so I checked in with Randy & that's the day!

Finally - just want to put in a plug for the NYC Watertrail Calendar! This is something that a couple of my favorite local "kayaktivists" have been working on over the winter; the idea is to help maximize the public benefit of the NYC watertrail by having a calendar showing all the various events on or around Watertrail sites, many of which are free, open to the public, and require NO paddling experience! Another goal is to have a central calendar that groups can consult to avoid schedule conflicts - for example, Marcus's presentation came very close to happening on Thursday the 19th too - an event in Yonkers & an event in Manhattan will most likely not impinge upon each other too badly, but add in Marcus in Manhattan & you're definitely starting to play tug-of-war with the potential pool of audience members.

I've actually volunteered to help out with this a little - I don't put in a fraction of the volunteer hours that some of our area human-powered boaters do 'cause I just don't have the free time, but the calendar is something that fits in well with my blogging hobby anyways. I'm posting stuff here all the time anyways, I can always take a couple more minutes & add them to that calendar, too. It doesn't require a huge time commitment - I can do it in ten-minute increments here & there if that's all I have & that works well for me. And whenever I'm finally able to get to updating my sidebar (Blogrolling.com is back, YAY!) that calendar will make a good addition. Much more helpful than the 2006 Cruise Ship Schedule I think I still have over there!

Ever laugh at something you felt really bad about laughing about?

Sleepwalking fail.

How To Show Your Kayak You Really Care...

Forget the Thule rack system. Buy your carbon kevlar baby a camper van!

From Long Island Paddlesport Symposium 2009 - Unabridged Version!

Guess What I Did This Weekend?

(BIG thank-youu to Adele the Gardening Chair for this one!)

Sita Sings the Blues - now online, and TONIGHT on WNET-13!

image from www.sitasingstheblues.com
Remember my totally-off-topic post a couple of weeks ago, where I posted 4 little clips of an animated retelling of the Ramayana, using Annette Henshaw songs, from the film Sita Sings the Blues, by cartoonist Nina Paley?

Well, anyone in the area served by New York's Public TV station WNET-13 can watch it there TONIGHT at 7! It's also being streamed online on www.thirteen.org, or you can download it from a number of sites which are hosting versions. Lots of links on the Sita site!

Enjoy! I went to a screening last weekend at the NY International Children's Film Festival. Lots of fun, and listening to the children asking their parents all sorts of "Why" questions as they came out of the theater was quite entertaining, too!

The coolness of photosharing sites...

If you looked at the Seal Watching 2 With Bonus Snowy Owl gallery I put up over on Flickr, you'll know that I utterly failed to come through with a picture of the Snowy Owl.

Instead, I offered this:



with the title "There's a snowy owl over there, I swear".

There really is. And actually, knowing where the owl was, I think I can see a little light spot that I swear could quite possibly be our owl:



Or maybe the owl is the other little light speck in the sand patch to the right. Hard to tell.

Yes, great little toy that it is, I an resigned to the fact that I am not winning any wildlife photography contests armed with my Pentax Optio W20.

However, my picture in which I swore there was a snowy owl was enough to prompt a birdwatcher who goes by the nom de Flick "davidlepnyc (on a break)" to send me a Flickr-mail asking me where we'd seen this invisible bird - he wanted to go find one himself before the birds all head back to the tundra.

I told him the location (we were in the corner of the parking lot of the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center), wished him luck & asked him to let me know if he found one.

Well, he did - and he's got much better camera than mine!

Sometimes the Intrawebs are just too cool.

How Does My Garden Grow?

In disorderly, but exuberant, fashion...


2 years of my little 4x6 plot. Just sorting through pictures & did this on a whim.

Winter will eventually end, right?