Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • A Virtual Visit to Kópakonan

      There’s a statue standing on the rocks at the edge of the tidal range in the remote and sparsely populated town of Mikladalur in the Faroe Islands. It depicts a Kópakonan, or a “seal woman”, who would shed her seal skin to walk amongst the humans on land. When she wanted to return to the sea she would don her seal skin and transform back into a seal once again. A selkie is a shape shifter, which appears over and over again in mythology (Wolfman comes to mind). There’s a mythical ability to transform from animal to human and back again know as therianthropy that runs across cultures, and selkies or Kópakonan are a particularly fascinating form for those of us who feel most alive in the sea (there is a story of Kópakonan that you can find recorded in multiple languages here).

      Mikladalur is on the island of Kalsoy (which features another stunning destination, the Kallur Lighthouse). The Faroe Islands are explorer’s dream, and for those of us who explore wild places near the ocean, this is just about everything you could want in one place. Want to visit Mikladalur but find yourself locked down in a pandemic? This video gives you a lovely 4K view of what you might see. I must admit, watching the video I was ready to book a flight to the Faroe Islands today before I recalled that we aren’t going anywhere for awhile. It does serve to remind me that I’m a creature of the north, and while the tropics are lovely, there is so much to see above 30 degrees latitude.

      The statue was erected in 2014, but already has the green patina of an older statue. Living next to the sea has that effect I suppose. I can feel a patina developing on my own skin when I spend enough time near the sea (and there’s never enough time by the sea). Kópakonan also has the desired effect of being a siren call for those of us who follows whispers in the wind. Sure, Boston is a short drive away and is jammed full of statues, but the Faroe Islands are a destination for other reasons, and Kópakonan is just an attractive object framed by the stunning backdrop of the rugged island Kunoy and the frigid North Atlantic that calls for Kópakonan’s to come home once again. Why be drawn to such an isolated place to see a statue when you can just watch a video? As George Mallory would say, “Because it’s there.”

    • Prominence

      “Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Lately I’ve been contemplating prominence. It started with Little Haystack Mountain, an impressive 4760 foot summit, relegated to the role of supporting actor due to its prominence of only 79 feet from nearby Mount Lincoln (5089/180). Or consider poor North Carter Mountain, 4531 feet tall but an almost embarrassing 59 feet of prominence from its cousin Middle Carter Mountain, which by comparison is 4610 feet with a prominence of 720 feet. North Carter didn’t even have a cairn or USGS marker designating its summit. I walked right by it until called back by a savvier hiking friend with a GPS tracker.

      If all this seems like a lot of numbers, well, I’m with you. To me a summit – no matter how prominent it may be – is a worthy accomplishment and very much worth celebration. With both Little Haystack and North Carter I lingered with friends to savor the moment before considering the next destination. Prominent or not, both summits took a fair amount of energy to reach and deserved their moment of appreciation. My mind danced as joyfully on Little Haystack as it did on Lincoln. Perhaps more so because in reaching it the world opens up around you. Why negate the accomplishment because of prominence?

      We live in a world where prominence is everything. How many followers do you have? How many likes did you get on your last post? What school did you attend? What was your class rank? How quickly did you reach a C-level position? Who did you marry? Where do you live? What kind of car do you drive? Where do you go on holiday? It seems that no matter how high your personal summit, it doesn’t matter unless you’ve achieved some measure of prominence. Of course its mostly nonsense that churns away in our own brain, perhaps fueled by co-conspirators like a parent or spouse who wants the best for you, if only for bragging rights at the next cocktail party (remember those?). Your prominence is your identity to some others.

      But not all others. Some celebrate your personal summit and ignore your prominence. Those are the people you want in your life, not the posers who skip right past the lesser summits to check in where there’s status. The trick is knowing who to celebrate with, and who to ignore as you focus on your climb. I sometimes shake my head at people who leapfrogged over others to reach VP titles or collect Board of Director positions like some magnets of places they’ve been. Prominence is a game really, and the question is who do you want to play the game with? How much is enough? Who is a true friend and who is an acquaintance who pays lip service and then quickly moves on to the next summit?

      Our worst critics are often ourselves. All those questions above? How many do we ask ourselves as we compare our own prominence to that of others we know? If achievement is associated with height, comparison is associated with prominence. But comparison is a fools game that negates your achievements when stacked up next to others. Skate your lane and stop worrying about what others are achieving. Focus on what matters. Celebrate each day and each accomplishment, no matter how prominent it may be. And by all means keep climbing and stretching your limitations. Be supportive of others as they make their own climb. Give and receive support on this epic slog. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you.

    • Discovering The Photographer’s Ephemeris

      Every now and then I discover something that makes my heart flutter a bit in excitement. There is a flutter happening now that goes beyond the first cup of coffee. For I’ve discovered an app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris. And I wonder where has my mind been all these years that I’d completely miss out on something so incredibly useful for those of us who chase the light.

      Followers of this blog know of my relationship with the early morning light – that magical time between nautical start and sunrise known as civil start. On the flip side of the day, this magical time is known as civil end (sounds a lot like 2020). For years I’ve known the wonder in this time, but I didn’t put a name on it. The combined more-than-a-passing recreational interests in astronomy and photography led me to learn more about the three phases of light in the dawn and at twilight. The Photographer’s Ephemeris handily charts out these phases on a timeline at the bottom of the app. But where it becomes really exciting is with the lines indicating where the sunrise will be and where it is now. It also offers a line showing where the moon will rise. And of course you get the same effect on the western side of the satellite image showing where the sunset will be, where it is now and where the moon will set.

      The word ephemeris is derived from ephemeral and the Greek ephēmero, or something that last for a short time. Each phase of the dawn or twilight is brief and fleeting, just as life itself is. An ephemeris is a method of tracking and predicting this ephemeral information that pivots above us. Making sense of the information falls on us. An ephemeris is usually associated with astrology and the position of the planets at the moment you were born. Or with astronomy and knowing the position of the stars now. Its handy information if you want to know where Mars and the moon are in relation to each other (dancing together last night), or if you believe in such things, why you don’t get along with your coworker.

      Ultimately, information offers a measure of predictability and understanding in our lives. I had a general understanding of where the sun might rise or set, and likewise a general idea of where the moon might be on a given night. But there’s something powerful about having the information readily available on a phone app. A thrill of expectation, but also a measure of control about where you might position yourself for that epic sunset or moonrise picture. It also saves me from looking out the window on those mornings by the bay when simply looking at the time of nautical start the night before would give me all the information I needed beforehand.

      I’m sure professional photographers have known about this app for years, but its new to me and perhaps to you too. I see The Photographer’s Ephemeris quickly rising to the top of my most-used apps. For it answers many of the celestial questions I geek out about in one handy place. And isn’t that the point of an app anyway?

    • Unfolding Your Own Myth

      “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi

      There are a lot of stories out there. Stories of accomplishment, stories of conquest, stories of adventure and love and tragedies overcome. Humanity is full of stories. The ones we tell others to make them believe we’ve got it all figured out. The ones we tell ourselves to make ourselves believe we haven’t got anything figured out. Stories rule our lives.

      There are stories of who we’ve been, and what we’ve overcome to get here. And those stories are admirable. But lately I’m thinking more about where are you going now stories. Here we are, good, bad and all that lies in the middle. Thankfully we all woke up today, so what are we going to do with it?

      I like this Rumi challenge; unfold your own myth. Aren’t we all just works in progress doing the best we can with the pile of skills and experience and instinct that we woke up with this morning? Aren’t we all slowly unfolding our own myth? Is that myth a fighter of social media troll battles or a climber of mountains? Couch potato or fit and active? The person who hides in their job or the linchpin that keeps things going? Aspiring writer or actively writing?

      “Rise free before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      Today is a random Wednesday in a string of weeks that make up 2020. We all have obligations to consider and honor, of course, but what of the rest of our time? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Just what kind of myth are we unfolding anyway? Make it a good one.

    • On Discipline

      “Look at a river as it moves toward the sea. It creates its own banks that contain it. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness.” – Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes I fight active avoidance in the work I do, and find myself pushing through tasks that I have no desire to tackle. There are plenty of things that make my mind overflow the banks and wander in the wrong direction, and the pandemic has illuminated my routine and forced me to reconcile what matters in the job, in writing and in exercise and fitness. But the days flow differently when you’re constantly working from home. Work time blends into off time and vice versa. Writing time this morning was blown up by casually reading work email and reacting to the urgency of others. Discipline is not just doing the right things, its not doing other things at the wrong time. Learning, and re-learning, to say no or not yet.

      “Discipline equals freedom.” – Jocko Willink

      This is where those handy habit loops become an essential part of your day. They allow you to keep promises you make to yourself to keep moving forward. For the most part those habit loops have kept me on track, but I see some drift in my habits over the last month, beginning with vacation when the only thing I stuck with was the writing. Deep inside you know when things are off, and when corrective action is needed. Reflect on your current course, and then decide what to be and go be it.

      “It is a simple two-step process:
      1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
      2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.“
      – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      When you’re on the right path, doing the work is relatively easy. Sure, you can drift now and then, but resetting is natural, like setting the sails when the wind shifts. Discipline, when applied to the work you love, becomes natural through repetition. And that’s the trick, doing what you love. Following your path. Sounds positively dreamy, but there’s truth in it. Hate your work? You’ll be miserable as you force yourself down the trail of tears. Love your work? The word work disappears altogether and you focus on optimization instead. Yeah, optimization. I said it. There’s a business-speak word for you, but seriously, isn’t it better love what you do and focus on making the most of your day instead of hating what you do and focus on making it through the day?

      “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi

      I’m not one of those writers who pretends to have it all figured out. This blog is me figuring it out in writing. We’re all works in progress, aren’t we? Might as well enjoy the work as it progresses.

    • Our History

      “How does the country come out of a crisis stronger and not weaker?” – Jon Meacham

      “It’s just a sign of the grim moment we’re in that a basic statement about the capacity of America to reform itself can even seem partisan” – Jon Meacham

      I supposed it took an historian to jolt me back to action. I read these two statements in a New York Times article this morning, which got me thinking about these times, which were predictable in the lens of history but ignored in the self-consumed orgy of partisanship. What’s in it for me? has taken over for what’s best for the greater good? As if wanting equality for all is some dark socialist conspiracy. And with this rise of media bile and self-absorbed profiteering, the country has turned on itself. And with it, I’ve pulled away from the entire sordid mess in revulsion. But I’m doing a disservice to the country, the global community and the environment in doing so.

      American politics was once no place for the weak or meek. If you wanted to be in the arena you had to face the crush of public opinion, backroom pressure and lobbyists currying favor. But more than ever the morally compromised seek office for the power it brings and for the chance to grow rich from those who would buy a vote. The undercurrent of inequality has always been there in this country, but the American public is having a collective reaction to the bile we’ve been forced to hold down.

      Hatred and bigotry, things that simmered under the surface for years, would reveal themselves steadily as they rose to a boil. Things like mass shootings, police brutality, and riots would bubble up from below, indicating a level of rage and pathology that needed to be addressed. But instead it was thoughts and prayers and all manner of bullshit from political leaders too busy growing fat on lobbyist bribes to actually do anything meaningful. Trump, and Trumpism, is all that crap that was simmering under the surface finally boiling up and rattling the lid. Everything I believe in seems to be taking a hit from the criminally greedy swirling about in the White House today. It isn’t unlike other dark periods in history, and it will get far, far worse in a second term.

      And so what do we do about it? What do I about it? Vote? Of course. Raise my voice? Definitely. But not in a way that divides the country even further. No lecturing people who believe in something I don’t believe in. No mocking the opposition. Seek first to understand. And then to be understood. The key to selling is to help people reach conclusions, not to trick them. There are plenty of people tricking the American public right now. Educate people, but do it without smugness and antagonism. Lead with dignity and steadiness… but lead. Be in the arena, be in the game. No more recoiling in revulsion. Face the truth of what we’ve become and work to change it.

      Our history as a country is written in divisiveness, cruelty to others, opportunism and greed. But also on hope for an ideal of equality and freedom. The current administration has spotlighted the worst traits in America, but the reaction to the current administration has spotlighted our best traits. There’s a battle for the future America happening right now. This is our history being written, today, and we’re the authors. This is/there is no time to sit on the sidelines.

    • Shift Happens

      The lingering glow of immersion in salt water quickly sweated out of me when I returned home to a yard in need of attention.  Some of the attention simply needed a prompt investment in labor, like mowing the lawn and cleaning the pool.  Co-existing with mature trees means picking up a collection of branches and other debris before you can mow.  Co-existing with wildlife meant scooping six frogs out of the pool once the solar cover was removed, disrupting frog spa day, and more tree debris.  It also meant assessing the damage from the groundhog, who has raised the stakes significantly by wiping out most of the remaining vegetables, but more egregiously climbing up the potted Hibiscus, breaking branches on its quest to mow down tasty bits from the top.  This shall not stand.

      There’s a tangible shift happening with the back yard from June/July satisfaction with the joys of a private oasis in the middle of a pandemic to a feeling that maybe this work is more than I want to deal with.  I recognize this as a post-vacation reality slap and know it will subside in time.  Part of this is a recognition that the pandemic marches on with no clear end in sight, and a burning desire to just get out in the world once again.  To cross borders real and imagined.  Part of it is knowing the routine for what it is and not being quite ready for it just yet.  We’re 1/3 of the way through August and this is naturally the time when I start to look around at where we are and what needs to be done.  The garden had faded even before the large rodent accelerated the process.  Where do we go from here?

      There’s another part of the shift, and its the recognition that time slips quickly away, and our best efforts to maintain a pristine environment can be wiped out faster than you can spell groundhog.  More attention paid to those big things from yesterday’s post, and less on half-assed attempts to grow pumpkins and tomatoes and hibiscus.  Does creating a backyard paradise mean hunting down a mammal that finds a buffet paradise in my efforts?  Or do I just stop planting the things it likes to eat and go to the farm stand for tomatoes and pumpkins?  The garden, however noble a pursuit, was never about produce.

      Yesterday I woke up on the edge of the bay.  This morning I woke up on the edge of the forest.  Each offers a dose of reality that you’ve got to come to terms with.  I’m not a Rhodes Scholar but I’m smart enough to recognize good fortune when I see it.  Appreciate the good and learn from the setbacks.  That’s 2020 in a nutshell.  The world marches on, and shift happens.

    • The Four Chronometers of Greenwich

      I confess when I visited Greenwich my mind wasn’t on chronometers, it was on the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.  But after the obligatory pictures at 0° along the famous line that dictates so much of our modern lives I spent the duration of my time exploring the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and listened intently as an exceptional guide detailed the story of the four clocks that changed the world.  That all four of the clocks were on display, and three of them were still running was a mind-blowing moment.

      John Harrison invented the first clock, H-1, in an attempt to solve the most perplexing problem of the day – determining longitude while at sea.  It was such a critical issue that Parliament passed The Longitude Act 1714 with a prize of £20,000 for anyone who came up with an accurate way to determine longitude.  Dava Sobel wrote an excellent book that details Harrison’s lifetime pursuit of a final solution.  H-1 was completed in 1735, but Harrison wasn’t completely satisfied with it and went about immediately to work on an improved chronometer.  H-2 never went to trial (tested at sea), H-3 was completed in 1759 but wasn’t trialed right away because of the Seven Years War.  While they waited to trial it Harrison invented the smaller H-4, which was the size of a very large pocket watch, which went on to win the prize money after a lifetime of work and refinement and continuous trouble with The Commissioners of Longitude (some of whom were biased towards an astronomical solution to the longitude riddle).

      Part of me wishes I’d read Sobel’s book before visiting Greenwich and seeing the four chronometers that changed the world.  But there’s another part of me that is grateful for discovering them unexpectedly.  I immediately purchased Longitude when I returned from the UK.  Having seen the four chronometers side-by-side in the museum, with all in working order (H-4 is deliberately kept unwound to preserve it), I felt an immediate affinity for the story when I began reading.  But another hero emerged from the book besides Harrison.  It was Rupert Gould, a Lieutenant-Commander in the British Royal Navy who was given permission to restore the four chronometers that had been sitting in a deteriorating state for almost a century.  Gould spent 13 years restoring the clocks to their original state, and in doing so returned four examples of timeless magic for visitors to the Flamsteed House and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.  He’s a quiet hero in history, and is rightfully remembered as such.  I was spellbound by H-1, H-2 and H-3 as they earnestly marked time 2 1/2 centuries after Harrison built them.  Now that I know their history, I look forward to a return visit someday, and will re-read Longitude and linger for a spell in the presence of history.

      H-2
      H-1

      H-4
      H-3

    • The Old Indian Meeting House

      The Nauset of Cape Cod are part of the Mashpee Wampanoag and were known as the “Praying Indians” because they became converts to Christianity.  They were an important ally for the colonists against tribes that rose up against the encroachment of the English settlements.  Most famously they worked with Benjamin Church as guides in his hunt for Metacom, or “King Philip”.  It was one of the Praying Indians who killed Metacom, effectively ending King Philip’s War in 1678.

      The Nauset were clearly converts to Christianity in the 1670’s, and they met somewhere in Mashpee to pray, but the original building is long gone.  A second building was purportedly built in 1684 at the original site near Santuit Pond.  That building is generally agreed upon as the current Old Indian Meeting House, relocated in 1717 to its current location on Meetinghouse Road (naturally) just across from the Mashpee River. This would make it the oldest church on Cape Cod and the oldest Indian church in the United States.  I’ve read at least one article that disputes the original date of construction for the meeting house, with a local historian claiming the building was actually built in 1757 or 1758 by Deacon John Hinckley.  I believe that Deacon Hinckley is agreed upon as the builder of the church, so determining the actual date should be relatively easy from there.  But I’m not diving deep into this controversy.  There’s no doubt that the Meeting House is historically highly relevant and important.  It was used by the Nauset as a church, and also no doubt that it was here that the Nauset staged a nonviolent protest known as the Mashpee Revolt against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1833 over control of the tribe’s land.  Of course, that was exactly what Metacom was doing from 1675 to 1678, but he chose violence (spurred on by violence against the Pokanoket).

      I visited the Old Indian Meeting House on a quiet, hot August day.  Not a lot of Cape tourists hanging out at an old build next to a cemetery on a perfect beach day. I find that I’m often the only visitor to such places in the moment I’m there. But I prefer quiet time with places of relevance. It’s set on a small hill on the edge of the cemetery, roughly three miles from Santuit Pond, which would make moving it on logs on old colonial roads quite an undertaking.  The Mashpee Wampanoag hold this place as sacred, and I respectfully walked around the site for a few minutes, read a few of the nearby gravestones and generally tried to get a feel for the place before moving on.  A visit to their web site prompts a popup requesting that you sign a petition to help the tribe protect their lands from changes at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  It seems that the contributions of the Praying Indians are once again being forgotten by some in the endless land grab of the native lands.  That would be par for the course.

    • A Sand and Scrub Pine Kid Visits the Past

      It might say a lot about me that on a hot Monday morning on Cape Cod when I found myself with time alone I didn’t opt for the beaches, but instead made a pilgrimage to an old graveyard in the woods of Forestdale.  This was a trip back for me, for I would walk in this graveyard as a kid reading the names and the stories behind the people who once lived and died in this place.  The graveyard was a short walk from the shores of Peters Pond, a place that I’d spend many summers in my formative years.  For I was a sand and scrub pine kid.

      30 years ago you could read the names clearly on most of the gravestones, and the cemetery was well-maintained by the caretaker for the Hewlett Packard Sandwich Resort (back when HP was a different kind of place).  That place on Peters Pond was a great perk for employees – a place to bring your kids for a week or two every summer at no charge.  When you went on the same week every year, you’d build friendships with other HP families, and that would build momentum year-after-year until it became a defining part of growing up for many of us.  The summer would end and they would have one last company party with employees grilling steaks and burgers and having games with prizes on a large field up the hill from the grounds of the resort.  That field is now home to The Sandwich Bazaar Flea Market, which effectively preserved the field in just as it was three decades ago.  I was grateful it hadn’t become a landing spot for condos.

      Sandwich Bazaar Field, once a part of HP’s Peters Pond Resort

      The entrance to the field is chained off to prohibit cars, but I parked across the street and walked over.  Warning signs about deer ticks and Lyme Disease greeted me.  We didn’t think about such things when I was a kid, we’d just pull ticks off of our skin before they became engorged.  Now I guess you need to remind people.  And so I walked down to where I remembered the small graveyard being, walking in a time warp back to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when this was my escape and the rest of the family didn’t think anything of you disappearing for the entire day as long as you showed up for dinner (I never missed dinner).  I saw the fence for the graveyard well past where the tire tracks for the flea market stopped.  Just where I remembered it being.  But sadly the old graveyard isn’t maintained anymore.  Where once the grass was neatly mowed, now it was as tall as the gravestones.  More troubling was the poison ivy that spread all over the grounds.  Apparently the Town of Sandwich has decided to let this cemetery return to nature.  At least the gravestones that were still standing.  Many were crumbled piles of broken stone.  Perhaps vandalized?  But even the gravestones still standing showed they haven’t aged well.  Most were illegible as the sandstone faces curled and peeled downward.  The last three decades haven’t treated the old graveyard well.

      The Sandwich Historical Commission does a great job of posting old maps of the area.  I compared two maps from around the time that the people taking up permanent residence here would have been alive.  The first was a map from 1794 that offers a larger view of Sandwich, with delightful details on the map.  Peters Pond is clearly named, making it an easy point of reference.  The land is marked as “wast land” on one side of the pond and “good land” on the other.  But the graveyard isn’t noted.  It does show up on a map from 1857, which also notes family names on houses in the community.  Interestingly, none of the names correspond with the people who are buried in the graveyard.  Its as if all references to them disappeared.  And so now is the graveyard, quietly being swallowed up by forest and poison ivy.  I thought of that 1794 map, describing this land as “wast land”.  Its impossibly hard to make a living farming on sand, but the land isn’t a waste.  It raised countless generations.  And for a dozen or so summers, it raised me.

      Segment of 1857 map of Sandwich

      I walked the serpentine path through the graveyard where the tall grass had been trampled down.  The path followed a route to the gravestones that were still intact.  I’m not the only one to visit Tobey Cemetery this year.  Which made me wonder, was it other sand and scrub pine kids returning to their childhoods as I was?  Or curious flea market people wondering what this remote graveyard was all about?  I’d like to think the former.  There were so many of us once.

       

      Tobey Cemetery

      One of the few intact and legible gravestones left