Turtle Tuesday

Start your week off with this video of a unique Coast Guard rescue.

Posted by Go Coast Guard on Monday, June 29, 2015

I've never tried embedding a Facebook video on Blogger before, but this is too good to not share. Poor turtles shouldn't have to tangle with our stupid plastic, but since they did, at least they got some good help in time. This is actually the 2nd turtle rescue video I've run across recently, but this one's especially nice due to the alacrity with which the turtles zip away once freed - the other one, the turtle wasn't moving the flipper that had been the most entangled and I wasn't sure of his chances. This one, they look good. Go Coast Guard indeed!

Petals on the Paerdegat - a farewell to a friend

Saying a quiet farewell to friend & Sebago clubmate Joe Glickman on Saturday afternoon. Several Sebagoites attended his memorial service on Monday evening. That very moving service (Joe had so many friends) ended with a small paddle-out - one of the OC-6's from NYO came out with five paddlers and one symbolic empty seat, while Joe's surfski, covered with rose petals, was paddled out by two of his best friends from the racing world that he loved so much. One of our Sebago attendees suggested that we take some of the extra petals out to the club to scatter on Jamaica Bay; yesterday, on a day when Joe would've been in his element in the wind and the waves, I scattered mine on the Paerdegat.

Here was the story I put together for an upcoming tribute to Joe in the club's newsletter:

At Joe's memorial service, one of the themes his eulogizers kept coming back to was how he had this way of seeing you as somehow much better than you saw yourself. I loved that because that's exactly what happened the last time I saw him. 

It was back in March. I'd gone to the club to do something or other, maybe paddle, maybe putter, can't quite recall, but I was out in front of the club when Joe comes around the corner with a friendly-looking tower of a man. I recognized the tower instantly of course - you just can't mistake Oscar Chalupsky for anyone but Oscar Chalupsky. At first Joe assumed I must know Oscar already; when I told him that we'd never actually met, Joe of course proceeded to introduce me. 

Now, I'm a good paddler. I know that. But standing there with these two I was feeling very very ordinary -- Glicker's Glicker, and Oscar Chalupsky is a total surfski god -- but then Glicker did that exact thing that everyone was mentioning at the memorial service, telling Oscar a short story with me as the star. He recalled a day when there was a tropical storm moving through NYC and he decided to go out on the bay and have some fun in the wind and the waves. "So I'm out there, blasting around, having a great time, and I'm thinking I've got to be the only person crazy enough to be out there, but then I see another boat and I paddle over to see who it is and it's Bonnie, and she's bobbing around in the waves -- taking pictures!" 

Being me, I instantly had to explain that I was in my Romany, which is a super-forgiving sea kayak (and I think John Huntington was out there with me too) - but still, for those last moments I spent with him (and I had no idea that that would be the last time I saw him, he was a little on the lean side but his usual warm and happy energy seemed undiminished), Joe made me feel like a little bit of a rock star too. 

Goodbye, Joe, we'll miss you. 

Clearwater Festival 2015

I had a wonderful weekend attending my first-ever Clearwater Festival at Croton Point Park. The Clearwater Festival, more formally known as the Great Hudson River Revival Festival, was founded by Pete Seeger in the 1960's to raise funds to build a dream of his - a replica of one of the sloops that hauled cargo on the Hudson River before the advent of steam, to serve as a platform for educating people about the life and lore of the abused river (or estuary really). His dream came true and although Seeger left us a couple of years ago after a very good life, his handsome sloop Clearwater still sails the river today, educating kids and grown-ups alike. The photo in the last post was actually of the Clearwater and the Mystic Whaler, a CT-based schooner they bring in to help out with the education in the spring, settled in for Friday evening at the barge they bring in as a temporary dock for the event.

I tend to think of the festival today as a music festival, but it's always had a strong environmental focus, and still looks to the river and the sloop, so this was the perfect place to go talk to people about the Hōkūleʻa's current voyage. Unfortunately there was a direct conflict on Saturday - remember the big Hawaiian music and dance festival I enjoyed so much during the Liberty Challenge outrigger races last year? Well, Hālāwai (organization that's coordinating the Hōkūle'a's NYC welcome) actually PRODUCES that, and it's not just Hawaiian, it's actually considered to be one of the biggest Pacific Islander festivals on the East Coast. I think we sort of knew that would be an issue back when we signed up, to the point that I actually said I would go on my own on Saturday if necessary - well, in the end that's what I did, took on Clearwater as my "kuleana" (personal responsibility), creating a portable table display and being up there talking story on Saturday, with 3 Hālāwai board members then joining me on Sunday (which was beautiful and I'm still kicking myself for totally forgetting about my camera - that doesn't happen often but somehow it did).

Now, back when I originally said I would do that, I wasn't too confident about my ability to actually tell people about Hōkūle'a properly -- at that point my wa'a talking points were pretty much:

1. She began her voyaging when I was a kid growing up in Hawaii
2. She and the Polynesian Voyaging Society revived Polynesian navigation
3. We were all really proud of her
4. Now she's sailing around the world
5. Isn't that cool?

Better than nothing but I was still worried that I was just going to "make a" (Hawaiian pidgin for "make an idiot of yourself", generally couched as a warning to someone who's about to do that - "Eh, brah, no make a!"). Fortunately I've attended several really amazing events with Hālāwai and the Polynesian Voyaging Society since then, listening to stories told by Nainoa Thompson (one of Mau's original apprentice navigators and probably the most apt and driven one, now chief navigator of the Hōkūle'a and president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society), Sam Lowe (Nainoa's cousin and author of Hawaiki Rising, the story of the Hōkūle'a and the people who made her happen), members of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and the folks at Hālāwai. My recollections from "small kid time" were full of admiration but  otherwise shallow, I've had a wonderful time learning more, and I had a wonderful time sharing what I've been learning on Saturday.

I was still very happy to see the others arrive on Sunday (of course I ran off twice to play with boats, I got into a Harbor School rowing gig in the morning, extra cool since the Harbor School will be the primary host for Hōkūle'a while she's in NYC, and then David from Balogh Sail Designs took me for a sail in the afternoon, both lots of fun) but I felt pretty good about Saturday. 

Attendance was a bit light because of the weather, but instead of dozens of people paying brief visits, I would have a person or two or three stop by, and we'd talk story for ten or twenty minutes before they moved on - real quality discussions, I thought, and hopefully effective in helping build awareness, I'm hoping the people we talked to will read more, start following the journey, and tell others about it. Great weekend.

 Click here for flickr album

And as always, for more about the Hōkūle'a, visit www.hokulea.com   

Clearwater

 Schooner Mystic Whaler and the sloop Clearwater docked for the night at Croton Point. Friday, 6/19/2015  

New Yorker Magazine Talk of the Town - A Paddle with New York Outrigger and the Polynesian Voyaging Society (with a plug for NYO's Liberty Challenge on Satruday!

And I was lucky enough to get to go!

Back in the middle of May, Nainoa Thompson and some of his colleagues from the Polynesian Voyaging Society visited us here in New York as part of the preparations for Hokule'a's visit here in June 2016. They spent the weekend here with 3 different official events. I went to all 3 and it was great - there was an educators workshop, where I was amazed the range of ways teachers in Hawaii are incorporating Hokule'a and her voyage into their lesson plans (social studies, geography, ecology, biology, art, music, history, all of those and more can and do incorporate lessons from the wa'a - I was almost jealous of the kids in Hawai'i these days getting to learn so much this way, but mostly I just think it's rather wonderful), then there was a fundraising cocktail reception at the Harvard Club where Dr. Sylvia Earle welcomed Nainoa, who then gave us a marvelous talk about the history and the voyage. I think my favorite moment was when Nainoa decided to give Dr. Earle the beautiful maile lei which had been presented to him at the beginning of the evening, and as he took his lei off an draped it around her neck she took her own orchid lei and gave it to him in a lovely moment of warm mutual respect - but then Nainoa's stories were wonderful too. 

The next day there was a planning meeting at NYY that was pretty exciting to be part of. As we wrapped things up at the end of the day I thought I would be heading for home, but then I was talking to Lehua from the PVS and she said something about needing to get Nainoa and everyone else up to Pier 66 for a paddle with NYO. I jokingly said "Oh, I wish I'd brought my paddling clothes, I would invite myself along!" - totally totally totally TOTALLY kidding, but then, gesturing at her jeans and t-shirt, Lehua said "Well this is what I'm wearing. You should come."

WOW. There was a split second when I was for some reason sure I couldn't do it, I don't always deal perfectly with abrupt changes of course and my immediate response is sometimes to try to stick with my original plan even if there's no reason to, but then it sank in that I'd just been invited by a member of the current generation of Polynesian navigators to go paddling with her and another of her compatriots and Nainoa Thompson himself and...heck, I went, and it was wonderful, and you can read an absolutely wonderful article about it in New Yorker Magazine's Talk of the Town this month (click here). 

And speaking of the nice folks at New York Outrigger - their big Liberty Challenge race is this Saturday! Festivities kick off tonight with a screening of a Hokule'a documentary by 'Oiwi TV (see yesterday's post for full details), and then the races run over the day on Saturday, starting and finishing at Pier 26 on the Hudson River, where the East Coast's largest festival of Pacific Island culture will also be going on all day. The canoes will be all over the upper harbor, the northern reaches of the race are 23rd street on the Hudson and the Brooklyn Bridge on the East River while the southern portion goes south of Governor's Island and over to the Statue of Liberty. It's a terrific day - I'll be up at the Clearwater Festival talking story about the Hokule'a but if I could be 2 places at once, Pier 26 would be the 2nd place I would be!

Wrapping up with a few pictures from that paddle with the PVS. I didn't have my waterproof camera along because I never in a million years expected to end up on the water, but here are a few pictures from pre-launch on shore. 2nd picture is Nick Paumgarten, the author of the Talk of the Town piece, interviewing Nainoa. What a great evening that was. 

Latest project (plus Hokule'a film screening info - Thursday night in SoHo)

For more info about the Hokule'a's worldwide Malama Honua voyage, click here; for more about her stop in NYC, click here. 

Latest project. Never did anything like this before but I'm putting together a Hokule'a table display to take to the Clearwater festival. Most of it will be Polynesian Voyaging Society materials from their old website, where they still have an excellent archive of teaching materials. The organizers had been hoping that I could get a model of the Hokule'a; the PVS does have those and if I was driving up I might have looked into trying to get one, but I'm taking the train up and I just don't think I could transport a real model. However, I had a block of carving foam around from some other idea I'd had and not done at some other time, and the request for a model gave me the idea  to make a little toy sailing canoe to bring along.

It was a fun project - got off to a slow start as carving foam is a little harder to cut than I'd expected and what I had at home wasn't working at all, but I had the idea to take it to the club on Sunday and after we'd finished the day's event, I told a clubmate who's on the boatbuilding committee about my project and he let me into the toolshed and showed me where the basic hand tools that I needed were kept and that was just infinitely better. I did the hulls there, then picked up some odds and ends at Pearl River Mart to finish it off. Best find was a shelf of batik fabric samples - one of those made a very nice sail! I am SO sad that store is closing. Anyways, I stayed up way too late putting the boat together and I'm a little amazed at how much of a mess I created in my foyer with this silly little project, but in the end it came out kind of cute, I think. 

And speaking of Hokule'a - New York Outrigger is one of the organizations that is working to welcome her to New York City. NYO's Liberty Challenge is this coming Saturday; I'll have more about that and that wonderful paddle I went on with them and the Polynesian Voyaging Society tomorrow, but the festivities for the race actually kick off on Thursday night with a screening of the 'Oiwi TV documentary, Hokulea: Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage. The screening will be held at the Patagonia store at 72 Greene Street in SoHo. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and Sam Low, author of Hawaiki Rising, will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A session. Should be a very interesting evening. Please visit the Liberty Challenge Film page for more details.

National Park Service "Ecology Village" at Sebago Canoe Club, 6/14/2015

We had a really fun Flag Day event at Sebago yesterday, with veterans and their families spending the day with us. This was a joint production of Sebago Canoe Club, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Jamaica Bay unit of the National Park Service's Gateway Recreation Area, and the Wounded Warrior Project. Sebago ran paddles for everyone who wanted to come out on the water (at one point I actually ended up as the bowman in one of our nice old 1930's "war canoes", great big boats that are excellent for taking out families with younger kids) and of course hosted the event at the club in Canarsie; the other organizations provided lunch and various on-land activities, including this very cool "Ecology Village" display that was run by the National Park Service rangers. 

This is something they usually do for school and scouting groups that come camping at Floyd Bennett Field and it was really well done; they bring laminated information cards to read but the real stars of the show are the various critters that they actually go out and catch right there at the venue at which they are presenting. They bring a seine net and hip waders and a couple of other sampling devices, plus various little tanks and bubblers and a whole bunch of viewing devices. Our bit of waterfront wasn't seine-friendly but they were still able to catch a good selection of small animals to display for the day using their other collection contraptions right off of our dock -- they said they particularly like crabs and shrimp for the table because they're much tougher than fish and, when held aerated tanks kept in the shade, will usually survive to be released at the end of the day, and they got plenty of those! I for one was very impressed at the amount and variety of small animals that are living right here at our dock. 

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Staten Island photos

Haven't had time to sort as much as I should or put captions, but it's going to be a busy weekend so I'm going to just share the Flickr album from that excellent Staten Island camping trip from a couple of weeks ago as is. I've described the basic float (and land and float again) plan in the album description - read that and you should be able to follow along just fine!

Click here to visit.

And CUE The Trombone Of Failure!

Yeah, that one.

For the entire morning of June 10th, I thought I'd finally pulled off the thing I've been trying to pull off for a while now. I joyfully announced it on Facebook. I'd composed the blog post in my head. It was going to have a blank picture repeated twice and they were going to be labelled, "All the plastic that I acquired today!" and "All the plastic I threw away today!", followed by written representations of celebratory exclamations (woohoo, yeehaw, yippee ti yo ti yay and so forth), mention of how it would've been nice to do this a day earlier in honor of World Oceans Day but still, I did it, happy happy joy joy, etc., etc.

Yes, I'd gone to bed last night completely believing that I had finally managed a net zero plastic day - meaning a day where I only used plastic that I already owned, didn't acquire any new plastic of ANY sort, and didn't throw any plastic away. This is a game that I've been playing with myself as an offshoot of a more general effort to reduce my personal contributions to the world's plastic litter problem; as I explained in a post back in May, I've been aware for ages that there were two ways that I was being needlessly wasteful with disposable plastic (went through this in a post back in May but in case you missed that here they are again):

1. Plastic shopping bags: Although I try to keep my plastic shopping bag use down by taking bags with me when I go shopping, I wasn't very strict with myself about ALWAYS doing that. I've got  an actual purpose-made grocery bag -- an incredibly awesome grocery bag that my friends Steve and Camilla brought me from Hawaii in fact, check 'um out -- 

YEAH! DA KINE! :D

and then because my intentions are basically good there's a GINORMOUS bag of plastic bags under the kitchen sink for theoretical reuse - but then if I was on the way home from work and I realized I needed something I would just go ahead and get it even if I didn't have a bag. Trying to be better about NOT being lazy that way - go home and get the bag first, or just don't get whatever if that's not practical (I suddenly find myself carrying a bookbag regularly as that's very handy for on-a-whim purchases).

2. Lunch in disposable clamshells: I almost always eat lunch at my desk. I used to almost always bring it down from the cafeteria in one of those flimsy disposable plastic clamshells. I felt a little weird the first couple of times I handed members of the cafeteria staff a clean reusable plastic container and asked them to put my lunch in that, but they turned out to be completely amenable to the idea. The only time anyone's questioned it at all was once when I got salad bar, which is sold by weight, and the cashier pointed out that my container was heavy and so I was paying more than I should. I don't usually get salad, there'd just been something extra-good in the salad bar that day & I was willing to pay a bit more to stick with my plastic-reduction program. She was fine with that, just wanted to make sure I knew.

This has been so easy that I'm kicking myself for not doing it ten years ago, it's not like I haven't been aware of the waste, but when I got involved in the NYC welcome committee for the Hōkūle'a, I was finally motivated to work on these as my own little "Mālama Honua" (Care for the Earth, the theme of the voyaging canoe's amazing worldwide voyage).

The zero-net-plastic idea came in a while after I'd started. I would say that it is virtually impossible for a person living an average life here in the USA to get through a day without USING plastic - heck, it would be hard to get through an hour, it's useful stuff, that's why it's everywhere - all I've been trying to do is cut down on the disposables. Naturally, there have been days when I've done better, and days when I've done worse, and at some point there was a day when I realized that I've gone most of the way through a day and hadn't directly and personally moved any specific plastic items on through the waste chain - hadn't gotten any new, hadn't discarded any old. Decided to see if I could carry that on through the rest of the day - made it home but then emptied a bag of frozen corn into some soup I was warming up for dinner, and there I was holding the not-really-reusable bag - end of that try. Subsequent attempts were stymied by a q-tip (you really can't do anything with a q-tip after you've cleaned your ears with it but throw it away), a plastic-frilled decorative sandwich pick (given to me in the sandwich which I'd so carefully had the chef at the sandwich station put in my reusable plastic container), and a little bar-code sticker on a piece of fruit (I almost let myself slide on that one but then I decided that there wasn't much point in self-imposed rules if you are going to go and cheat on them).

What blew my latest close one in such a sneaky way that I didn't catch it until halfway through the following day?

A takeout container.

An old friend from my Pier 63 days had been following all of this silliness and commented this morning's triumphant Facebook post that she was inspired to try it herself. She asked what I thought of adding cardboard and I started to respond that that would be an interesting addition but that if I added that retroactively I would have to undo my successful day because I'd had leftover Thai food for breakfast and thrown away the little cardboard container in which I'd brought it home the night before.

I was halfway through typing that comment when I was suddenly hit by a most unhappy thought. Cardboard isn't ordinarily completely greaseproof - those little foldup takeout buckets have to be coated with something to keep them from just soaking up all the grease and moisture from the food and just collapsing into a soggy mess in the fridge. Maybe at one time it was wax - but I bet these days...

A quick Google confirmed that these days, a lot of containers of this sort are rendered leakproof by being "polycoated".

Yup, sounds like plastic to me. My zero-net-plastic attempt had most likely been blown by 8:15 a.m. the day of the attempt.

Waah waah waah waaaaaaaaaah.

 Click here for an interesting short history of the foldable takeout box, or "oyster pail", as it turns out they are also called. Turns out they're as Chinese as fortune cookies!

Happy World Oceans Day

Malama moana!

Evening in Staten Island

A few more shots from last weekend - twilight through nighttime. No more writing, click on the first picture for a slide show view. It was a lovely evening. 

Lost and Found

Not much time for blogging this week, a rather large forecast collided with year-end close at work and there's tons that has to get done - but in the middle of tonight's drawn-out evening at work, I took a Facebook break and found that a friend had posted that she'd just lost a treasured piece of jewelry, a diamond pendant her husband had given her for for her 40th birthday.

"In a strange twist," she said, "I realized it was missing when I went to take it off to be appraised for our new homeowner's insurance. Someone please tell me I'm not the only person this kind of thing has happened to." A number of stories with both happy and sad endings had already been shared, and I decided to take a bit of a breather from work to tell a story that I'd actually meant to tell here a few years ago (hence the existence of the photo above) but never got around to. It's a little off my usual topics, but I think it's a sort of funny story, and since I finally took the time to write it, I figured I'd go ahead and share it here, too.

Oh, goodness, I've lost a few pieces of jewelry in my life and mostly am able to let them go, but there one the time I got so obsessed over a missing pendant that I had a replica made.

It was my "granddaughter" pendant. My grandmother on my dad's side was a stylish lady and liked her some bling, and she had an absolute chandelier of a ruby and diamond cocktail ring that was a constant source of amusement to her children. When she passed away, most of her costume jewelry was passed out to whoever in the family wanted it. Most of us were able to get there for the memorial service so at one point during the visit, we brought her collection out into the living room and took turns choosing. I took a circa 70's jointed owl pendant that I remember absolutely adoring when I was little, and also a lovely art deco amethyst pendant that nobody remembered her ever wearing but that I liked very much and wear pretty often. 

The cocktail ring was held aside from the distribution, I think both because it was real and because of the particularly sentimental value it had by virtue of its very flashiness. My dad and his brothers and sisters weren't quite sure what to do with it until one of them had the brilliant idea of having the multitudinous little stones of which this sparkler was composed taken and reset into pendants for the five granddaughters (plus at least one of the granddaughter-in-laws, who later had hers re-reset into a lovely pair of almost-matching rings, one for her and one for her daughter). They hired a local jeweler to handle the design and he came up with a sort of a flame shape, each one accented with a three little rubies and a couple of diamonds. Really beautiful, and such a great idea from my dad and aunts and uncles. I wear mine pretty regularly, and always think of Grandma when I do.

Well, one day I was getting ready to go paddling at the club when I discovered I had it on. I was afraid of losing it somewhere in Jamaica Bay, so I took it off and stashed it in the backpack in which I'd brought my gear.

And that was the last I saw of it for a very long time. The next time I went to wear it, it wasn't in the jewelry box where it usually lived. I instantly remembered taking it off to paddle and pulled out the backpack, fully expecting it to be in one of the small pockets where I would ordinarily stash a small item. Nothing. Emptied out the bigger sections, sifted through everything in there. Nothing. Looked all over my dresser to see if maybe I'd stuck it in another box. Nothing. Went to work, came home, ransacked apartment further. Nothing. Posted a description to the canoe club email list in hopes somebody might have picked it up there (although I didn't have much hope there, it's a very nice club and if someone had, I'm 99% sure they would've posted a "found" notice immediately). Nothing (no surprise). Scoured the changing room the next time I went to the club. Still nothing - and at that point I had to admit to myself that I'd actually lost it. Rats, rats, rats, rats, rats.

Only instead of being able to shrug and move on as I have with less sentimental pieces, I found myself still looking for it for months later - somehow I just always had this hope that it would turn up again. Even found myself looking at displays in a jewelry shop windows hoping they might have something similar. Missed this thing in a way I've seldom missed any particular thing.

Finally it hit me that these pendants had been made for us in the first place, and there were others in existence -- since I was being so bonkers over the loss, why not splurge and have a replacement made?

I thought that one of my cousins lived near the town where the originals were made and I asked her if she could take hers to the jeweler and ask if it could be done and how much it would cost. The original jeweler was farther away than I'd thought but she went to a jeweler in her own town who took a look at it and said "Yes, we can do that". It was expensive but within reach, so I said yeah, let's go for it! The jeweler used my cousin's to make a mold to cast the gold for the pendant, so what I got in the mail a couple of weeks later was a perfect replica (as you can see above). Amazing! I was SO happy!

Well, it can't have more than a week after the replica arrived when I was cooking something and decided garlic would be good in it (that happens a lot in my kitchen, I love garlic). I usually keep garlic and onions and packets of nuts and other small food items that don't need refrigeration in a bowl on top of the fridge. There was a partial head of garlic in the bowl, but I wanted more (I must've been making pernil or something) so I took down the bowl to see if there were any loose cloves rolling around in the bottom and Oh My Gosh -- THERE WAS MY PENDANT!

I think that what had happened was that I'd dropped the pendant into the plastic bag in which I'd brought a few snacky things for the paddle, just so it wouldn't be rattling around loose in the backpack. I didn't eat all of the snacks, they went back in the bag at the end of the paddle, and then when I got home I just emptied the bag into the non-perishables bowl on top of the fridge.

I suppose I could've tried to sell the replacement, but at this point there was such a ridiculous story attached to it that I decided to keep it in the family. The cousin who'd made the replica possible has a wonderful daughter who'd been very close to Grandma - I told her the story and asked if she would like to have the replacement as a gift. She was very happy to accept it.

I still have the original. I still think of Grandma when I wear it, but now I also have a little laugh at myself.

In Staten Island, They Have Rainbows In The Showers

and they roof them with a canopy of blue sky and flowering trees. Sweet.

And they were hot! Lovely surprise when I was fully expecting to spend the weekend marinating in an unsavory glaze of sunscreen, sweat, and salt. Clean and dry, ahhhh. Hey there Steve the Paddling Chef, this was another great trip you cooked up here. Thanks! 

And here's a photo clubmate Minh just sent, which I think will make the perfect initial Northeastern urban environmental fieldwork submission to the study recently proposed at the Coast of Illinois, a "comprehensive, real-time analysis seeking a direct correlation between morbid lethargy proportional to repetitive tasks and its resolution when treated with random, pleasure directed activities". Yes indeed.

How's this for a campsite?

Yes, that IS the Verrazano Narrows Bridge back there behind my little blue tent!