All our friends start to yawn, start to tire,
“Is it time to go home?” they inquire.
In the Vero Beach scene,
Nine o’clock seems to mean,
“It is midnight, put out the bonfire.”
It’s a well-known fact that “midnight” in Vero Beach refers to nine o’clock. By that definition, we stayed out until “two am,” enjoying a bonfire and sharing stories with friends on a deserted island. Then we put out the fire, were towed back to the marina, rowed back to Flutterby in the moonlight, and we still rang in the new year aboard our own boat!
“Oh, these masts are such pretty, tall things,
I will sit here and dry off my wings,”
But a cormorant’s big,
When he sits on our rig,
Unaware of the chaos he brings.
We broke off conversation, mid-word,
When such banging and thumping was heard,
And we ran up on deck,
But all’s clear — what the heck?
Then we looked up. “Hey! Scram, you dumb bird!”
We were down below when the sound reverberated throughout the boat. We were sure that either a) another boat had collided with us or b) our anchor was dragging. But it was just an effect of the hollow mizzen mast carrying the sound down to us!
We are doing some rigging today,
And then we will get underway,
Tomorrow avail
Of north winds and sail,
Downwind to my Dad’s house — hooray!
These south winds are perfect for motoring today, but tweaking the rigging and waiting for northerlies is more fun. In the meantime, here’s another picture taken by Traveling Soul yesterday.
What we needed to fill was the role
Of photographer: That was our goal
Then along came a yacht
And they took this fine shot
Of our sails. Thank you, Traveling Soul!
12-23-2012 UPDATE: The guest limericks just keep pouring in. Do you have one for us?
12-19-2012 UPDATE: Make that three guest limericks!
Two guest limericks, from opposite corners of the USA, were inspired by the news that Flutterby is now sailing!
This one comes from x x, also known as Kevin Keane. In 2010, he shed his own precious blood to help us launch Flutterby:
I wish I could write a good Limerick
not a poem, but truly a Limerick
but try as i might
I can’t get it right
I can’t find a word rhymes with Limerick
Here’s one from Pat McNeely, who wants to paint Flutterby’s portrait (Columbia, South Carolina):
When Hank told me about your fine rig,
I almost danced a big jig,
It’s finished, Hank said,
As he went off to bed
Saying sailing’s your favorite gig.
This comes from Roger, of Jo Hee (Key West):
Let go of that nasty ol funk
Put all the tools in the trunk
Cause this is the day
You two sail away
On your just-completed junk!
And this one is from Limerick Nick, of Valkyrie (Seattle):
The sailing is your happy spot
After so many bad days of not
Barry fixed the frigging
Messed-up old rigging
Now Meps thinks he’s totally hot!
Though the weather was cloudy and gray,
On the thirteenth, that red-letter day,
All our friends round the world,
Heard our sails were unfurled,
And they joined us in shouting, “HOORAY!”
All our plans for the evening were made,
When our friend, Ken, who crews on the Jade,
Made us just chuck them all,
For he gave us a call,
And said, “Come on, be IN the parade!”
Brunswick lighted boats, ready for the parade
You may ask, what were our plans for the evening? We had dressed up in Santa hats to watch the parade from shore! A huge thank-you to Pete, Ken, Deb, and Chuck for letting me practice my parade wave.
The experience brought back memories of the first (and last) time we cruised in a lighted boat parade, in 2003 in New Orleans. I wrote a limerick about that, too — one of my first!
A couple of years ago, when Barry and I joined Facebook, we found out what happened to some of the folks we’d gone to high school with. We were especially interested in the ones who’d left Columbus, Ohio, that place known as “Cowtown” that inspires long-distance travel.
Now I have to admit that one of the most interesting is still living in Central Ohio. Back when she went to high school with Barry, in a class of about 100 kids, she was known as “Kathy.” Now she’s “Kate.” For a couple of years, I’ve listened with growing irritation to Barry’s constant chatter about her, always prefaced with, “On Facebook, Kathy said…” She has the kind of big, successful life that makes me green with envy: A writer and video producer, single parent to two adorable adopted kids, funny, charming, good-looking.
OK, I can look past all that. Kate Koch Gatch is a real, live hero.
For the past five years, she’s collected brand-new bikes, helmets, and locks to donate to foster children in Central Ohio. This year’s goal of 750 bikes brings the total to almost 2000 bicycles.
Kate is known as “the Bike Lady.”
It’s a passion, not a job. She volunteers her time and covers all the administrative costs, so that every dollar donated goes towards putting kids on bikes. Kate points out that the public funds that cover the foster care system cannot be used for holiday gifts, so these are kids who wouldn’t have bikes otherwise.
Kate, herself, is not into cycling. She just recognizes what a bicycle represents to a kid — a big-ticket item that demonstrates love, respect, freedom, and hours of fun.
Me and my first bike. What was your first bike?
It certainly brings back memories for me — what was my first bike? It was red, a hand-me-down. When it was time to take the training wheels off, my Dad was at work, and I had the impatience of a small child. So Mom grabbed a wrench and wrestled them off. Then there was my first new bike, a blue-green one-speed with coaster brakes, high handlebars, and a banana seat. You could carry one friend on the handlebars and another one on the back of the long seat, if you could balance your bike with three people on it!
This morning, I woke up thinking about all the people in my life who I want to share Kate’s story with:
Barry’s rambunctious nephews, who are growing up with their own bikes in Columbus.
A dear friend in San Diego who years ago experienced the foster care system in Central Ohio.
A friend in Central Ohio who used his bike to commute to work in all weather when he couldn’t afford a car.
A friend in the Bay Area who is an advocate for adoption, who lets her kids bring their bikes into the living room.
My sisters and their families in Eugene, Oregon, where bicycling is a way of life, despite the rain.
Our friends in Virginia who lost their daughter in a cycling accident, but still want kids to know that bicycling can be safe and fun.
And all my Sou Digna friends, who know that grassroots projects can make a huge impact in any community to remind people that they are worthy.
Thinking about all of them, there was only one thing for me to do this morning, to kick off the holiday season: Go to the Bike Lady’s website and “put a kid on a bike.” It’s just one of the 750 that Kate will give away. Reading about this project makes me feel really, really good about the world. So if you are feeling down or blue, looking for some inspiration, or wondering if you can do anything to make the world a better place, check out the page on her site called “Start Your Own.”
It feels great to know a person who is doing something to bring happiness to so many kids in difficult situations. As Kate says, “So many kids will be over the moon and riding down a hill in 3 weeks thanks to people like you who get it, understand it and take action.” That’s what we all have to do, with the emphasis on taking action.
A little inspiration and a lot of action can go a long way. To use her own words, Way. To. Roll. Kate.
“It’s the fruitcake of stew,” said the young man in a chef’s hat, stirring a gigantic pot over a propane burner. His companions from the Altamaha Technical College Culinary Arts program laughed, but they all nodded their agreement.
That Saturday morning in November, I’d gone looking for the tiny Brunswick, Georgia farmers’ market, and instead stumbled onto a city-wide event, the Brunswick Rockin’ Stewbilee. The highlight of the event was the stew-tasting, 35 booths offering a sample of the stew that was named for this small city.
Or was it? One of the first people I spoke with was a woman who told me, “We do this every year, because Brunswick stew was named after Brunswick.” She laughed. “But it might have been named after Brunswick County, Virginia. They make a lot of stew up there, too.”
I asked the young man in the chef’s hat, “What’s in Brunswick stew?”
“Chicken, pork, beef, lima beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, spices…it’s a fridge-cleaning stew.”
At that point, I decided to talk to the chefs and find out whose fridge they were cleaning out. I walked up to a couple of guys and asked them, “I heard this is fridge-cleaning stew. If so, whose fridge are you cleaning out?”
“That would be mine, I guess,” said Tom, a retiree from the pulp mill who was on the stew crew of the hospital auxiliary. When he worked for the pulp mill, they used his recipe, but since they’d switched to someone else’s, the hospital was now using Tom’s recipe in the competition.
It was a lively competition. When you purchased a ticket, you were given two votes to cast for the People’s Choice award. There was also a Judge’s award, selected by local celebrities, and a Presentation Award. The teams represented not only restaurants, but local businesses, clubs, and a few dedicated families. From what I could tell, the entire town was there, plus tour buses full of tourists.
Brunswick, Georgia Rockin’ Stewbilee
One local business was giving away schwag with their samples. “Are you trying to bribe the voters?” I asked. “Oh, no, ma’am, I would not stoop that low!” said the volunteer. He turned to hand a stew sample and a frisbee to a woman, saying, “Here, go taste that and then come back and give me your vote.”
I made my way around the booths, looking for the trophies indicating previous award-winners. One group, from the Ole Times Country Buffet, had several 2nd- and 3rd-place trophies. They were attracting a lot of attention by making the most noise in the place, ringing ear-splitting cowbells every time someone tasted or voted for their stew.
“We tried that last year,” said a woman from the hospital auxiliary. “It backfired on us, and we didn’t get as many votes as the year before.” When I cast my vote for Tom’s recipe, she picked up a cowbell and rang it rather gingerly. “There’s a sleeping baby behind you,” she said, by way of explanation.
I wandered from one booth to the next, tasting and asking questions, trying to figure out what makes an award-winning Brunswick stew. More than one person told me, “It’s about balancing the flavors.” Among the samples I tried, the chicken, pork, and tomatoes were consistent, but the flavors ranged from sweet to salty to spicy to bland. The top award-winner, from a group called Renessenz, was the sweetest one I tasted, and I suspected their secret ingredient was sugar.
That was before I looked Renessenz up on the internet. According to their website, “Renessenz produces a wide range of integral ingredients for fragrance, flavor, coolant and industrial intermediate applications.” Their site lists 47 products, unpronouncable chemicals ranging from “dihydromyrcene” to “tetrahydromuguol.” Perhaps their competition is using ingredients like sugar, salt, and pepper, but is the key to Renessenz’s award winning stew was something a little more intriguing?
The truth is, the secret ingredient in Brunswick stew isn’t really a secret. Everyone was proud to tell me their “secret”: “Tender-loving care,” “You know how Grandmother used to cook? That’s my secret.” The county commissioners admitted that they didn’t cook the stew, their staff did. “Our secret is teamwork.”
The simplest, best secret ingredient was that of Gateway Behavioral Health Services, a group that had won many awards over the years, including the People’s Choice, the Judge’s Award, and the Presentation Award. These folks had given their stew a name: Happy Stew.
“Love is the secret ingredient in our stew,” said a volunteer named Jeff. When I pressed him for details, asking how they measured how much love to put in, he replied, “We measure it by the width of unicorn hairs, and the intensity of the dreams of pregnant mermaids.”
Another volunteer, Barbara, chimed in, “It’s a tablespoon of happiness…”
“No,” said Jeff, “it’s half a tablespoon. We were a little too happy last year, we had to cut it back. People started a drum circle, started playing Age of Aquarius, and we decided that was just a little too much for around here.”
By then, I’d already cast my two votes, one for the hospital auxiliary and one for the students at the culinary college. But my real vote goes to the folks with the Happy Stew. It doesn’t really matter what ingredients you put in there, as long as you cook your Brunswick stew with love.
~~~
Wanna clean out your fridge? Try the Quick and Easy Brunswick Stew recipe on my food blog, the Foodie Gazette. It’s nothing like the ones in Brunswick, Georgia, but I can remedy that the next time I make it. I’ll add a full tablespoon of happiness.
This is my third blog entry about Choose ART. You might also enjoy the gallery itself, and the entry about the construction of the piece entitled, “Grabbing a Tiger by the Tail.”
In 2012, for the first time, I got a “fluffy.” It was a proud moment for me, and I felt more validated as an artist than when I received my B.F.A. in painting and sculpture.
With the help of her Winnie-the-Pooh backpack, Meps drives the fluffy into the ground, showing where CHOOSE ART will be installed at Burning Man 2012.
The “fluffy” is nothing more than a silver disk, actually a CD, with a construction nail and a tuft of pink plastic whiskers. On the disk are written, in black magic marker, the name and number of your art piece. On the vast surface of the desert at Burning Man, the fluffy’s importance is to show where your art goes.
By the time you’ve gotten your fluffy, you’ve not only created a large piece of art, you’ve documented that art. You’ve made sketches and submitted a written description of it to the Burning Man organization. You’ve told them how you plan to light your art and keep it safe, and how you will make sure it doesn’t leave “moop,” or trash, behind on the surface of the playa.
Based on your written submission, the art team has decided where to situate your piece. That way, the city is totally full of art, without it being concentrated in one place. They also give a map to every person who comes through the gate, showing where all the art is.
To get our fluffy, my artistic partner, MacGyver (aka Philip), and I went to a place called “The ARTery.” Like a real artery, this place is the lifeblood of the event, yet we take it for granted. We were greeted by volunteers who treated us like royalty, who made it clear that our title is Artist. They reviewed our submission and showed us where they’d placed us on a large map. “Is this OK?” they asked. After we asked to be moved further away from the loud sound stages, a couple of field operatives armed with a GPS took us out in a golf cart.
When we arrived at our spot, they again asked, “Is this OK?” We nodded, and then they handed me the fluffy. I personally drove the nail into the ground with a mallet, and when I stood up, we had a little ceremony of congratulation, with hugs all around.
Of course, this simple, exhilarating moment was followed by three days of exhausting setup in driving dust storms.
It was worth it, because I like art. I like it a lot. I like to make it, and talk about it, and look at it, and play with it. I like to encourage people to think about it. I love to inspire it. I’d worked hard to inspire this art — it wasn’t just mine.
Many artists listen to music while they work. In 2011, I had an idea to take that one step further. Just as we convert music into dance through our bodies, I wanted to convert music to art, and then take that art to Burning Man.
The progression goes like this: An artist chooses a song that inspires them to create a piece of art. A passer-by chooses that piece of art, which starts the music playing. That music, combined with some intriguing lights, inspires them to dance. Now we’ve merged music, art, and dance into one experience. What will come from that merged experience?
With this in mind, I created a list of 30 eclectic songs, ranging from the Weiner Blut waltz to the Hokey Pokey. I sent them to artists and photographers, and eight people began creating art for the installation.
For myself, it was exciting, as well as completely intimidating, to sit down and make “real” art on paper. Despite having a degree in painting, I haven’t given myself permission to do this in many years. But Burning Man is about giving ourselves permission to try all kinds of things. I even gave myself permission to fail, knowing that I might have to tear something up and start over.
As I was finishing up my last painting, the other pieces of art began to arrive, and I was completely awed. Wow! I wanted everyone in the world to know about the incredible artists I had discovered, who had been inspired to make beautiful pieces simply by sounds. I was the proudest curator on the planet.
We sent the art out for high-quality scanning and had it reproduced on special material used in the sign industry, so that it could be backlit at night. To my surprise, when it came back, the images were vivid both ways, with or without the backlighting. Now, instead of a nighttime-only installation, we had art that could be enjoyed 24 hours a day.
The problem was, playing music without the dancing lights didn’t make sense. So I contacted the artists and asked them to record an artist’s statement that we could play during the day. The recordings I received were not only thoughtful and interesting; some were theatrical and others poetic or lyrical. In them, I heard the same creative spirit that inspired the art.
In August, I turned my attention to signage and final painting of the installation. I needed something that would draw people’s attention and give them some instructions, but I didn’t want to upstage the art itself.
I’d originally envisioned a big sign at the top that said “Mating Shadows,” but as the time came to create it, I dragged my feet. I later ran across this quote, by Tom Price of Burners Without Borders, that explains exactly what I was struggling with:
“(Burning Man) is the epitome of an unbranded event. It is the anti-brand.”
How could I make a sign to attract people without branding the art? That’s when a bolt of inspiration struck me:
CHOOSE ART
It was so simple! In just two words, I could provide the instruction: “Come over here and choose a piece of art” as well as deeper meaning: “Choose art as a way of life.”
Barry and I designed and created the CHOOSE ART sign together. It was one of our most satisfying collaborations.
To avoid creating a brand, I accidentally created a movement.
As I designed the lettering and did the woodworking on the sign, something inside me was changing. I gave myself permission to play the piano every day. I gave myself permission to sing. I got up and sang a solo, a capella, in front of 50 people. I wrote poems. I made theatrical recordings layered with music. I danced. I didn’t just appreciate the creativity of others, I reveled in it. I was the poster child of Choose ART.
Once the art was installed at Burning Man, I went to visit it every day. It was far out in the desert, but it was never lonely. Every time I went out there, people on foot, bicycles, and art-cars came to look at the pictures and talk. Often, they snapped a picture of the Choose ART sign.
We’d had some t-shirts made, and I noticed thoughtful smiles and nods when people read the words on the front: “Choose ART.” We began to talk about where we could set the installation up after Burning Man. We began to talk about how to improve it, keep it new and fresh. We began to call it “Choose ART,” instead of “Mating Shadows.”
The movement was taking on momentum.
Today, it is still gathering inertia. We’ve modified the design to make it easier to set up in a variety of environments, and tweaked the electronics to make the lights work better. You can sit at home, view the art, and listen to the artists’ statements right here on mepsnbarry.com.. I even made a CafePress store where you can buy a shirt or a canvas bag to show off your favorite piece of art and spread the Choose ART message.
How do you Choose ART? Do you make it, talk about it, look at it, play with it? Let yourself be inspired by our project. Give yourself permission to create, and watch what happens.
