Tag: Ephemera

Poppy Poems

Poppy, the haiku of flowers (Source: @virtualdavis)

Poppy poems! At last I’m bundling a batch of verse celebrating my favorite blooms. Poppies. Papaveraceae. Coquelicots… Most of these poppy poems started out as Instagram posts inspired, at least in part, by daily snapshots of poppies blooming in Rosslyn’s gardens. For this reason I’ll include links at the end of the poem if you’re interested in seeing the original posts. Just click the link and a new window will open with the poem as it originally appeared with accompanying image(s).

Haiku Poppy Poems

Almost ephemeral brevity, stark minimalism, and — at best — a tingly eureka moment overlap haiku’s distinctive hallmark. Delicate. Vigorous. As unlikely a juxtaposition as poppies. Exuding a fragility and sparseness, but remarkably robust and resilient, the poppy is the haiku of flowers. And so I initiate this slowly evolving post with a collection of haiku poppy poems.

·•·

Pink-Tinged Poppy (Source: @virtualdavis)

From velvety spokes
a supernova outburst,
ivory crushed silk. (@rosslynredux)

·•·

Unfettered, unfazed
by cloudburst or thunderclap,
sensuous stalwart. (@rosslynredux)

·•·

Papaver flashbacks
bloom in frosted flowerbeds,
daydream confections. (@rosslynredux)

·•·

Come coquelicot,
come crinkly crepe paper kin,
come and laugh and lift. (@rosslynredux)

·•·

Poppy blossoms pop
into crepe paper fireworks
and flamenco skirts. (@rosslynredux)

Longer Poppy Poems

While poppies and haikus strike me as cousins (or perhaps even as one and the same being at different stages of transmogrification), there are times when a poppy poem’s florescence exceeds the restraint of micropoetry. There are instances in which a poppy poem’s petals bloom into a lyrical sketch or rhapsody.

·•·

Papaver rhoeas (Source: @virtualdavis)

Amongst vegetables,
fruits, herbs, and spices
pop, pop, populate
floral fireworks,
flamenco skirts, and
crepe’s crinkly kin,
the coquelicots.

So sensuous, so
beyond beguiling,
so delicate yet
robust, resilient,
as exotic and
mysterious as
the whispering wind. (@rosslynredux)

Poppy Portraits (Visual Poetry!)

Sometimes a poem is crafted out of words, letters and spaces coalescing around a moment, an experience, a sentiment. Other times poetry is so visual that an image better conveys the poem. Please think of my “poppy portraits” as visual poems. Maybe you’ll agree that visual poems can sometimes eclipse the letter-tethered lot!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CgSOV5-g-WL/

She short video in the post above essays to distill the grace of a poppy in motion, buffeted by the breeze, petals fluttering, stem swaying. I’m not 100% pleased with this series of moving images, but it’s a start. I’m still learning the nuances of video, especially phone video. I’ll get better. Hopefully soon!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0a6ufKgWpj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I’m as smitten with the poppy pods as the blooms. Once the papery petals yield to the wind or gravity, a handsome hull plump with poppy seeds remains. Ample. Memorial. Geometric.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0GlMkNAh-1/

There’s something profoundly compelling in that image, don’t you think? A mystery unraveling. Or re-raveling. Wonder is summoned, and it answers eagerly.

August 2, 2022
Artifacts & Ephemera: Regattas & Ferries

At a time when we’re inundated 24×7 with digital marketing and messaging, it’s fun to flip the calendar back 60+ years to some equivalent pre-digital promotions for regattas at the Sherwood Inn and Lake Champlain ferries (including the Essex-Charlotte ferry.) Today’s post highlights a few quotidian artifacts that offer a bridge into an earlier time.

Artifacts & Ephemera: 6th Essex Regatta (Photo: Geo Davis)

The Essex Regatta, a still legendary Sherwood Inn event in the 1950s and 1960s, is the heralded summer celebration featured in the first two promotional posters.

Artifacts & Ephemera: 11th Essex Regatta (Photo: Geo Davis)

Open to a wide range of water sporting contestants and spectators, I’ve been the fortunate audience to several area residents who’ve been gracious rniugh to share recollections with me.

Artifacts & Ephemera: Essex Ferry Lake Champlain (Photo: Geo Davis)

I imagine that the ferry posters may have been used during the summer months to alert motorists that ferry boats has been reopened for the season.

Although this vintage artifact from the Essex-Charlotte ferry crossing has been a personal favorite given the omnipresent sounds and sights of the ferry boat during our years at Rosslyn, the second ferry poster is deliciously vintage. From font to graphic design (and even colors) this poster seems likely to have been used during the 2969s and 1960s.

Artifacts & Ephemera: Scenic Line Ferry Lake Champlain (Photo: Geo Davis)

But even more intriguing than the colors and graphic design, it is the idea that “scenic line” might’ve been considered a reasonable way to distinguish one ferry crossing from another. After all, this certainly describes *ALL* of the fairy crossings!

April 1, 2023
Chronicler or Artist

Chronicler or Artist I: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

I really *should* post an update on our loft flooring “research”, copper flashing (aka drip edge) installation, east elevation gable window framing, revised drawings from Tiho that address a few outstanding items like column, stairway, railing, and other trim details (plus lighting, electric, and mechanicals),… But I’m going to postpone these already postponed updates a little longer to talk instead about a recurring subplot in recent months.

Okay, maybe it’s unfair to dub it a subplot since so far it’s defied definition. At heart it’s a grappling with mission. And permission. As I pour over sixteen years’ worth of memories and plans and artifacts and notes and photos and stories and poems and intertwined lives and ephemera there’s an inner struggle at work. Am I simply gathering the strings of a vast collection, curating its diverse snippets into a sort of chronicle, a history, a retrospective map? Or am I creating from these fragments something new and unique? Am I more of an historian or a mosaic maker? Am I chronicler or artist?

Chronicler or Artist II: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be the chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf (Source: The Art of Biography)

There’s an inevitable tensions between the duty of stewardship and the affinity for storytelling and poetic truth. Between the responsibility to document important details for future Rosslyn homeowners and the creative freedom to explore textures and layers, melodies and harmonies, whimsical what-ifs and errant adventures.

But it’s more than this. It’s verisimilitude. Veracity…

I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

And so I pendulum between two muses, each jealous of the other, both second guessing, both casting aspersions.

Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost. Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist III: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And there’s the not too subtle complication of recollection. My memory muddles — more of the composting variety than the austere archival variety — appreciating the possibilities of parallax, and grafting whimsical paisley’s onto sturdier scions to ensure that they survive the tempestuous toils of time.

I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time. I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

So there it is. I’ve flirted with this truth before, and I double down today. Caveat emptor. Ask not of me the court stenographer’s unblinking authority. And I’ll not ask of you the jury’s verdict or the judges conviction.

According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Recollecting, filtering, imagining, choosing, curating, synthesizing, sharing,… This is the map I use. Chronicler or artist? Yes, but mostly the latter.

Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable… Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist IV: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And yet the challenge of a dual mission permeates this 16-year exercise. There’s an inevitable tendency, a responsibility even, to document. To archive. To showcase. And there’s the omnipresent siren song of wonder and whimsy. While I still endeavor to provide a responsible accounting of our life, love, and toil at/with Rosslyn, I’m succumbing to the beguiling song of the sirens.

My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready… (Source: Quest for Permission)

Fair warning, then, while I dive into the reflective waters simultaneously mirroring the misty morning and revealing the pebbly depths. I’ll be back. Soon.

December 11, 2022
Creative Collisions & Happy Accidents

Boathouse, Essex, NY (Credit: Paul Flinn)

A few days ago I came across a provocative Facebook post that artist Nick Bantock had shared on December 30, 2022. The date’s not particularly notable, but the author is. Familiarity with Bantock’s work adds context and texture to the explanation about his creative process, specifically how he moves from found ephemera to finished artwork.

I keep an in-between tank, a collection of part-constructed smaller pieces that are in a state of flux or transition. Resonating bits that touch or brush-up against one another, in a pre-morphing box (or in this case, a studio drawer)… Ideas are rarely plucked out of the ether, in my experience they come from creating an environment where happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur. (Source: Nick Bantock, Facebook, December 30, 2022)

I’d be wise to leave his words to stand alone. Unsullied. Undistorted. Unaccompanied. A beacon.

And I’ll try.

But trying isn’t enough. Temptation is building, like a wave rising higher, gaining momentum, wisps of foam falling from the curled lip.

And so I succumb. Slightly.

Creative Collisions

The image above, an illustration of Rosslyn’s boathouse by Essex resident, Paul Flinn, was documented by Tony Foster. Between upcycling garapa decking boards into distinctive wall paneling for Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab he popped into Essex Town Hall, spied this handsome architectural sketch, snapped a photo, and pinged it through the ether to me.

Collaborating with creative characters; emphasizing the merits and possibilities of adaptive reuse while repurposing collected curios, salvage, and surplus; and generally endeavoring to create an environment where “happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur” just might be working. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tony.

Happy Accidents

Fusion. Collage. Combinatorial creativity… It’s been immensely satisfying to help catalyze the morphing. And it seems that everyday their are more happy accidents. They’re not all tidy or comfortable. Sometimes there friction and frustration. Sometime fission in place of fusion. But we’re in a flow state that, like an undertow and a strong surface current, are pulling us forward. Where? Too soon to say. But creative collisions and happy accidents suggest we’re trending in the right direction!

January 7, 2023
Bowtie & Broken Memento
Bowtie & Broken Memento, January 25, 2023 (Photo: Geo Davis)

Bowtie & Broken Memento: Poem
```
Amidst broken memento
and fragmented hope,
fractured sculpture
and ruptured carpentry,
a bowtie binds bitter ends.
A patchwork harvest
of homegrown cherry,
felled and milled,
cured and crafted,
offcuts conjoined,
scrappy remnants
sewn in singalong,
cradling conversation,
cutlery, crockery,
and nourishment.
Sun soaked, finger
tipped tenderly,
inadvertently
in thought,
in conversation,
in fast breaking —
the only breaking
the bowtie abides — 
there's comforting
contrast and real 
reassurance
in an inlaid
joint pulling
the pieces
together.
```
Bowtie & Broken Memento: Afterward

Sometimes, as I shared with a friend the other day, a hug is more articulate than a hailstorm of words. The same is true with a passing shower, a mist passing over, passing through.

This draft poem is still prenatal. Preliminary. A furtive foray into the curious coalescence of still tender fractures and ruptures that drew me back to Rosslyn (and that continue to disclose themselves each day of my stay, reminders of quaking in recent weeks) but also the durable bonds and the abiding beauty that hold it all together.

I reflected on the shell in the photograph above (when still unbroken) in an Instagram post a little over a year ago.

Muscle shell “name tags” for seating arrangement at a wedding reception celebrating Elizabeth — one of Susan’s clever cousins — and Nick in Maine some summers ago. We were invited to keep them, so we did, and they’re now nesting in a maple burl bowl on our morning room table. This beautiful vessel was gifted to us by our friend Pam in memory of her late husband, Bob. He had gathered the burl from a fallen maple at Rosslyn, an immense centenarian, perhaps even a duo-centenarian, that succumbed to a windstorm, nearly striking the house. I watched it fall. Bob had intended to craft the character-rich burl into bowls, but his honorable journey was abbreviated prematurely, suddenly, tragically by the mysterious fates. Pam fulfilled his plans with the help of another friend, Ron Bauer, a local woodworker who built for us the black cherry harvest table upon which this burl bowl rests and where we eat virtually all of our Essex breakfasts and many of our lunches and dinners. Ron turned this bowl, and Pam presented it to us last spring, a year after she lost her husband. So much life and memory and gratitude resident in a few vignetted artifacts, a daily memorial, commingling the stories and characters and nostalgia and beauty that enrich even our most quotidian moments. This is the abundance and texture that invests a poetics of place. This is the “singing underneath”. This is the art of wabi sabi living… — @rosslynredux, October 3, 2021

Today I met with Ron to collaborate on a new table. We talked about bowtie inlays, turning burls into bowls, wood, joinery, and the unique cutting boards he has made for us out of this same cherry that once grew just west of the icehouse and that we gift to some of guests at ADK Oasis.

This evening I will hold in my head the memory of our conversation, a meditation on bowtie joints as well as other acts, art, artifacts that resist fragmentation and fracture. I will dwell on the humble bowtie instead of broken mementos.

A butterfly joint, also called a bow tie, dovetail key, Dutchman joint, or Nakashima joint, is a type of joint or inlay used to hold two or more pieces of woods together. (Source: Wikipedia)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUlQoPrPovB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
January 28, 2023
Champy Spotted at Essex Ferry Dock (circa 1980?)

Champy spotted at Essex ferry dock?!?! Once upon a time…

Champy Spotted at Essex Ferry Dock (Photo: Kathryn Reinhardt)

I’m gambling that it was around 1980 for no reliable reasons except the look and condition of the Old Dock Restaurant, the presence of ice shanties on a throughly frozen lake with no ferry canal, and the incredibly well executed snow/ice sculpture just north of the Essex ferry dock. It’s this last one that triggered a cascade of memories and lead me to hope that the photograph was taken by Jan Peden around 1980. More on that in a moment.

I make no effort to disguise my enthusiasm for hyperlocal ephemera and other artifacts, especially yesteryear photographs and other representations of our fair village. So you just might be able to imagine my excitement when I received this message from friend and neighbor, Kathryn “Kathy” Reinhardt.

Sorting papers and I found two Essex postcards you might like. One of the Split Rock lighthouse with a postmark and message from 1910. The other card was not used and shows the snow covered ferry dock with a frozen Champ swimming alongside. Photo is by Jan Peden; card was published by ECHO.” — Kathryn Reinhardt

I’ll get to the historic image of the Split Rock Lighthouse in a moment, but let’s pause a moment to appreciate the legendary Lake Champlain monster (aka “Champ”, “Champy”).

Champy & Nostalgia

I’m hoping that this post might rekindle community memory enough to learn who helped sculpt this superb likeness of our favorite surviving dinosaur. The uninitiated may remember Champy from the Sid Couchey painting/illustration of the friendly monster cavorting off the end of Rosslyn’s boathouse. I shared it waaayyy back on April 27, 2012, so it’s say it’s time for a resurface.

Champy in front of Rosslyn’s boathouse (Art: Sid Couchey)

Ostensibly a cousin to the Lock Ness monster, our Lake Champlain mystery monster is considered a myth by some, a fundamental fact by others. Happy hour sightings along the lake’s waterfront apparently offer particularly plausible viewing opportunities, though I’ll admit having never witnessed the friendly fellow (or is Champy a she?).

I suggested earlier that my instinct to date this postcard photograph sometime near 1980 derives from vivid memories of the years prior to and after the 1980 Winter Olympics which took place in Lake Placid. I was a boy, so my memories are likely ripened with nostalgia, but it seems that there was community-wide embrace of winter in those years. Likely catalyzed by preparations for the Olympics and then the afterglow, it seems that there were abundant winter happenings — toboggan runs, outdoor jogging contests, cross country ski races, skating rinks, fish fries with freshly caught smelt, and snow sculptures — that drew people outside into the out-of-doors from community revelry. I remember competing in a cross-country ski race on the Westport Country Club golf course, and “red nose runs” in Elizabethtown. I remember fish fries at the old Westport beach, and the most horrifyingly thrilling toboggan chute down the hill and out onto the frozen lake. I believe that much of these memories are clumped around an annual midwinter event that was called the Westport Outdoor Weekend (WOW). And one of my favorite parts of this annual festival was the snow sculpture contest. Homes throughout the area competed for the bet snow sculpture. We used to drive around and admire them all. I believe I recall the Valley News even showcasing winners some years. And so this flood of nostalgia underpins my suspicion that this handsome facsimile of Champy might date to those years.

It’s interesting to me that the postcards, produced by ECHO, drew attention to the Essex-Charlotte ferry pier and history of service without a more inclusive mention of the Essex waterfront or the handsome snow sculpture!

Back side of Champy at Essex ferry dock postcard (Photo: Kathryn Reinhardt)

Split Rock Light

Let’s turn now to the second postcard that Kathy sent me. Although I and others usually refer to the historic lighthouse presiding over the dramatic geographic promontory jutting out into Whallons Bay as the Split Rock Lighthouse, I’ve notice this older references, especially the further back into history they fall, refer to it as Split Rock Light. That’s neither here nor there, but I find those little linguistic shifts intriguing.

1910 postcard depicting Split Rock Lighthouse (Photo: Kathryn Reinhardt)

I recently shared an almost identical postcard of the Split Rock Light, likely created from the same source photograph. The coloring, layout, and captioning differs between the two, but I imagine both images were late at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century and then repurposed. It’s a compelling angle, especially because this same view today is less open. Here’s the postcard that I published on November 21, 2022.

Split Rock Light, Essex, NY (Vintage Postcard)

It’s fun to flip back and forth between the two images to see what’s similar and what differs. Back in November I was struck then as well by how thinly forested the Split Rock Light grounds were at the time.

The historic lighthouse located at Split Rock in Essex, NY reigns over a promontory bearing a curious resemblance to an arboretum, more landscaped and less wild than today. A copse of diverse specimen trees here, a granite outcrop there, a grassy bluff here,… I can’t help but see a sort of Split Rock botanical garden. (Source: This is Not a Metaphor)

That notable difference with the same location a century or so later vies for my attention, but so too does the message on the reverse of the postcard that Kathy sent.

In many respects this is the most formulaic, most universal postcard missive. We’ve all read (and possibly written) versions of this, right? But there’s a personal pleasure in the final two lines:

Having a delightful sail on this. — B.H.

As a boater in general, and a sailor in particular, this subtle sign-off hooks me. So often Susan and I spy this beautiful, historically significant spot by boat, and often by sailboat. So even though B.H. mostly went through the motions in the message area of the card, the fading memory of a sail on Lake Champlain, indeed on the enchanting broad-lake-to-narrows transition, appeals to my romantic imagination.

Back side of 1910 postcard depicting Split Rock Lighthouse (Photo: Kathryn Reinhardt)

I’d best conclude this post (definitively in need of an editor!) before I wander too much further afield. And yet I can’t resist acknowledging that one of the great satisfactions of these artifacts is not just the bridge across time, but the invitation to meander. To wonder and wander. And this post is proof that meandering is a favorite pastime for yours truly.

Thank You, Kathy!

This Rosslyn blog and the Essex community blog have been meaningful projects in large part because they have catalyzed a sort of community crowdsourcing, gathering all sorts of curious anecdotes, memories, stories, renderings, and relics from current and past members of Essex and environs. Any time I receive a message like the one that Kathy sent, my heart skips a beat. My anticipation builds and builds until the meeting or the phone call or the email or the letter completes the excitement provoked by the initial “teaser”. And so I close off this post with a holiday hug (stretched by distance but invested with bountiful gratitude) for Kathryn “Kathy” Reinhardt.

Kathryn Reinhardt preparing to “polar plunge” on May 1, 2016 (Photo: Geo Davis)

I hope she’ll chuckle good-naturedly at this fun photo that I took a half dozen years ago. It perfectly captures her perennial joy, her contagious laughter, and her warmth. I couldn’t resist mentioning this last 100% accurate description of Kathy’s character because she’s about to take an early springtime plunge into Lake Champlain in the photograph. Brrr…

December 15, 2022
New Year’s Eve

It’s New Year’s Eve 2022. I’ve just returned from a provocative exhibition by Shirin Neshat, with whom I originally became acquainted by way of Essex friend and photographer, Larry Barns, a dozen years or more ago.

New Year’s Eve: ephemeral folly (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)

Land of Dreams is a solo exhibition by Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker based in New York Comprising photography, film, and video, the exhibition brings together two bodies of work, Land of Dreams (2019), and Dreamers (2013-16), a trilogy of video installations.
Source: SITE Santa Fe

While there’s much to say about Neshat’s work, that will wait for another time as this day’s, this year’s minutes are too quickly sifting through my fingers and falling into a new year. It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. And a fresh start.

Instead of responding to Neshat’s portraits and films, I’ll allow this post to follow the footfalls of my afternoon, out of Neshat’s Land of Dreams and into Max Cole’s Endless Journey. This New Mexico-based painter’s meticulous meditations slowed my senses and my sensibility. Cole’s “Thoughts on Art” leapt from the wall and into my dream-addled skull, tickling the tattered leaves of my inquiry these last five months.

And “knowing how way leads on to way”, one fragment falling upon another, and another, and another,… I’ve decided to resist looking back — for now at least — for answers and assurance that this afternoon’s wisps and tatters and excerpts are what they appear to be. I’ll trust the “singing underneath” and trace my index finger aling this newfound map, starting with a few snippets from Max Cole’s “Thoughts on Art”.

There is nothing to say without first knowing yourself.

Choices have to be made and parameters established. All that remains should be only essential means. This process of definition occurs over years.

Art is something that must be lived. It is long and there are no shortcuts.

As in life, in art nothing exists removed from the past or separated from the present.

Most of reality is not visible. Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence. It is content which is the soul of art.

[…]

The motivation for making art is art and its insights into that which transcends the material. Nothing else. There can be no compromise.

[…]

All creativity draws from the same source regardless of discipline and eventually merges at a common point which is philosophical.
Max Cole, “Thoughts on Art” (SITE Santa Fe)

It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. A fresh start. An interstitial moment, part conclusion and part beginning. The common point where deconstruction couples with construction, the philosophical rebirth. Death. Birth. Phoenix from ashes.

And that photograph above, a folly fabricated by Hroth, temporarily framing my future desk view, is in fact a fleeting and false perspective. Delightful. Whimsical. An old window and frame repurposed from the historic icehouse’s former life, propped in an incongruous aperture in the icehouse’s future life. A meeting of of past and future in the present. Ephemeral. Art rendering for a moment the invisible visible. “Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence.”

December 31, 2022