Monhegan---Out-To-Sea Island

The ferry ride from New Harbor, Maine, was a smooth one-hour ride to our destination: Monhegan Island, twelve miles (22 km) out to sea. There were eleven of us---all relatives or friends---in search of hiking exercise and a restful day of meandering around this very pretty little town (population around 75).

The Monhegan mailboat ferry from where it leaves in New Harbor.

Monhegan---the name comes from Monchiggan meaning "out-to-sea island" in the local Algonquian Native American language---has a small lobstering fleet that works most of the year. But in summer the island is a tourist mecca populated on a good day by a couple hundred people who arrive from New Harbor, Port Clyde and Boothbay Harbor. Like us, most are day-trippers who leave on the afternoon ferries.

The town of Monhegan.

It's mostly a day-tripper island and the first and most famous day-tripper was English explorer and colonist, Captain John Smith who arrived in 1614. Smith is probably the best-known explorer of that time in the East Coast of what would eventually become the USA not only because of his exploits (he brought Pocahontas back to England) but because of the somewhat exaggerated accounts he wrote about his voyages. He claimed to have been captured by Native Americans and was about to be killed when Pocahontas saved his life. From one of his accounts:

Pocahontas threw herself across his body: "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown". 

Well...

The Island Inn is the big building in the background.

In fact when he brought his ships into Monhegan Harbor there was already a fishing station there and it had already been visited by another Englishman, Martin Pring, in 1603, Samuel de Champlain in the same year, "English" explorer John Cabot (born Giovanni Cabotto in Italy) and maybe various Vikings around the year 1000. And of course "discovery" takes on a new meaning when we consider that native Americans had already been living in this area for tens of thousands of years.

Very New England cedar shingle patterns.

Next year the Monhegan Islanders will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of Captain John Smith and if it's anything like Chowderfest (clam chowder) that we happened across this year along with the Island Brewery's Beerfest, it should be a lot of fun.

Burnt Head

The tiny town is on one side of the island and, under Maine law, is a "plantation" which is a local government category between a town and a township. Most of the island is parkland and never to be developed. Typical day-trippers to the island (us) land in the town and then walk around the rugged other side for a couple of hours before seeking out art galleries, chowderfests and beerfests before the ferry leaves again for the mainland. You don't want to miss the sailing because in summer there will be no room in the inn.

The undeveloped side of the island.

A brief raspberry stop on our walk.

Since the late 1800s, there many artists have either lived or just visited the island to find inspiration. Winslow Homer, George Bellows and various Wyeths were there but my favourite---at least as an eccentric personality---was Rockwell Kent who lived there year round for a few years. While living here, Kent painted a painting called "The Wreck of the T D Sheridan". It was good to find the wreck in much the same condition it was in 1949.

Rockwell Kent's 1949 painting "The Wreck of the D T Sheridan".

After 64 years the wreck has held up well.

So we walked, picked raspberries, saw whales and seals, bought a couple of paintings and filled ourselves with clam chowder, beer, coffee and blueberry muffins before returning to the mainland. A great day out.

We spotted a whale from here.

Among the other events on Monhegan is the annual circus. It began in 1912 and this year it will be on August 17th. By then I'll be back in Australia but I'd have loved to have seen it.

The view towards the mainland.

It's difficult to walk on the island without tripping over an artist's easel.

Here are some of the acts as advertised on the 1913 poster (designed by artist, Frederic Dorr Steele):

 SAVE YOUR PENNIES FOR THE CIRCUS 297 STAR ACTS INCLUDING AMONG OTHERS MLLE DOLLY DELERIA’S DEATH-DEFYING DIVE OVER SIX CAMELS * SIMULTANEOUS & SYNCHRONOUS PERFORMANCES BY TROUPES OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST PERFORMERS ON THE TRAPEZE * PROFESSOR BELLOWS’ LADY BAREBACK RIDERS * PROFESSOR DELICATESSO’S PERFORMING LIONS * PROFESSOR CAZALLIS’S MARVELOUS MONKEYS * PROFESSOR BOSS’S EDUCATED ARTISTS * COL. A BROWN’S TROUPE OF AERIAL ACROBATS DIRECT FROM LONDON, PARIS, BERLIN, & VIENNA * AND MANY OTHER CONSTELLATIONS 7 GALEXIES OF STARS * NOT FORGETTING AN ARMY OF HUMOROUS BUT REFINED CLOWNS!!!!!!

A seal pup sunning itself on a bed of seaweed.

Volunteers handing bowls of clam chowder and other food for Chowderfest.

Anyone who has dipped a toe into this water will know that jumping and
diving into it is a serious act of bravado---or stupidity.

Another week and a bit and we could have seen Monhegan's Cardboard Regatta.
Could it have been inspired by Darwin's Beercan Regatta?

Not quite Munich during Octoberfest but Monhegan Brewing Company
had its own beerfest for two hours on the day we were there.

Waiting for the ferry back to the mainland at The Barnacle.

Ice Harvesting in Maine

It was a brilliant idea: the lakes and rivers in Northeastern USA freeze solid in winter so why not chop the ice into blocks in winter and sell it around the world all year long? There were of course logistical problems like how to keep it from melting. And there was the question about who would want to buy ice and why? Did the world need refrigeration? Fish and meats had been salted and/or dried forever, people in the tropics didn't have a taste for dairy products and everyone was happy with the state of things. Frederick "Ice King" Tudor, an enterprising Bostonian was determined to change all that (and make a killing out of it in the process) when he started harvesting ice and selling it in 1806.

Frederick Tudor, the Ice King   (Wikipedia Commons)

Tudor built ice houses where the blocks could be stored in straw or sawdust and could last all summer. In fact it could be packed in straw and shipped as far away as India and China. Enough ice was left by the time the ship arrived at its destination to make the trip worthwhile. In 1839 ice shipments from New England, USA, to Sydney, Australia began although on an irregular basis.

Ice Harvesting on a river in Maine

Initially, the ice was used by commercial fishermen so that people could buy fresh unsalted fish when the fleet returned. And ice was also loaded as ballast for cargo ships going to the Caribbean to pick up sugar and, later, cotton. Tudor's idea was to sell the ice to wealthy colonists to put in their drinks. He even marketed his ice in England advertising that it came from the pure water of the Kennebec River in Maine and therefore was safer to put in a drink than any locally-harvested ice from some typhoid-ridden pond in Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Ice harvesting display at the Maine State Museum

With ice now commercially available all year round refrigerators, known as "little ice houses" were invented in Boston in 1816. Long before the advent of electricity people could keep produce in their own homes for extended periods of time and enjoy out-of-season fruits and vegetables for the first time. There's no doubt that the ice trade changed people's diets around the world and extended our lifespans. Norway---also big in shipping and cold weather---because a major competitor for the world's hunger for ice.

Refrigerator

A note for Australian readers: in 1864, after a few failed attempts, salmon eggs were transported in ice from Britain to Tasmania. This was the start of the Tasmanian salmon industry.

I'm writing this from South Bristol, Maine, where various member's of my family have had holiday cottages since 1910. There are two activities here: lobster fishing and summer tourism. Before the summer people began to arrive in the late 19th century this was an isolated community that relied on fishing. So it was that the Thompson family, 160 years ago, started sawing up their pond in winter, storing their ice in the Thompson Ice House for use by fishermen to bring in a fresh catch and for its shipment to Boston and New York.

The restored Thompson Ice House

Some February ice remaining in the ice house in August

In summer blocks of ice were delivered to summer cottages for their refrigerators. I remember these days before summer cottages had electricity and I remember Ice Thompson himself coming in through the kitchen door and dropping another ice block in our "ice box". (I don't think we called it a refrigerator because that word had been taken over by the electrical ones.)

Ice busters in the Thompson Ice House

Ice---his real name was Herbert but everyone knew him as "Ice"---was the end of a line of ice-providing Thompson's and when the business finally went under his ice house fell into ruin. Happily, in recent years, money was raised, the ice house was restored and it is now the Thompson Ice House Museum. If you come to South Bristol on any year in February you, too, can join in with a small army of volunteers and cut ice from Thompson Pond to restock the ice house. It looks like cold and dangerous work to me but when I'm sweltering in the heat in Sydney I may just watch the video of the Thompson Pond Ice Harvest to help cool off.

Herbert "Ice" Thompson

There's also an excellent display about Maine's ice harvesting industry at the Maine State Museum in Augusta; worth every cent of the two dollar admission price. (Cheaper is you're young, old or part of a huge family.)

Yesterday, while walking in the woods, Jill and I came to a small cemetery and there were the graves of "Ice" and generations of Thompson icemen and women. It's tempting to say---but of course I won't---that if any family deserved to be cryogenically preserved, it's this family.

Ice tongs
Ice seemed to be able to carry a block of ice holding just one of
the handles. I'm not sure how he did it.

Street Art of Newtown

Newtown, in Sydney, has to be the capital of Australian street art. Or maybe I just notice it more because Newtown is close to where I live and I spent a lot of time there. And for good reason: it has a vibrant cafe and street-culture so it's a good place to go walking. And back streets and lane ways are where where the street art action is.

Parked cars, trees and signs are a problem when photographing
street art.

I'm a late convert to the world of street art I think because it comes from dark places that I'm only dimly aware of: the culture of action graphic novels ("comic books" if you're over forty) and the internet blog-playgrounds of budding teenage fantasy artists.

Whether it's original or lifted from a graphic novel
street art can pack a punch.

Most of the images are lost on me but I guess it's the same with a lot of art. I'm for look and like---or not like. Life's too short to try to psycho-analyse artists.

Nefrititi is thinking something. I can make out a backwards 3, a 4 and a 2.

Still, you have to be impressed by some of the techniques. Of course they're not all Renaissance frescoes.

He's hot.

I do tend to like the spare images that don't cover everything and scream at you and which sometimes make use of a natural feature such as a crack in a wall or a window or a drainpipe.

This is a piece of a larger work. The message in the bottle in very poignant:
"Dear Tanja, I'm smiling across stormy waters to be..."

I'm not as fond of walls with a name or word emblazoned on it in gigantic, shaded saw-tooth letters, no matter how expertly they're been painted even if I can make out what they say. They're just super-size tagging.

This is also just a piece of a larger work that looks like an
illustration of a dystopian world from a fantasy novel.

I live in a house that has a big side wall on the street, ideally suited for street art, but I admit that I try to keep it just the way it is. When it does get tagged---and it does-- I'm out there quick-smart with a bucket of paint to paint it out.

If you know who this guy is, please leave me a comment.

The City of Sydney has an Aerosol Art and Graffiti Policy and crews that paint out unwanted graffiti. They must have a lot of paint on hand because they're pretty good at matching any wall colour. They do try to determine whether what they're about to paint over qualified as artwork so the "best" works remain for us lane-crawler street art voyeurs.

See pequevrs.blogspot.com for more art by this artist.

Some of these artworks are commissioned and done with the permission of the owners of the walls but others just magically appear. Garage roller doors are favourite places for the latter.

Stencil have the advantage of being quick.

Stencils are good for commando raids but they're not all as clever as Banksy.

It's sad to see a work like this tagged by every teenager carrying
a Sharpie or a Copic Marker.

There are times when I wish I knew the story.

This is only half of a larger work.

Once again, I couldn't get the whole image because of parked cars.

Finally, a reference that I recognise.

For more Newtown Street art images, click here. 

Durian, the king of fruit?

Everyone should try durian---once. I've now had it five times: twice as the fruit itself, once in durian flavoured ice cream, once in durian cream puffs and, recently in Bali, as a durian milk shake.

The first time was as durian ice cream at a Thai restaurant in Sydney and it was...well...okay. Actually, not bad. The ice cream part was good anyway. The next time was as the fruit itself when I was staying in Singapore. I was still neutral after this although I had to deal with embarrassing durian burps for the next 24 hours. Since then I've had durian a few more times and each time it gets more and more revolting.

Durian's spiky outer shell

Can anyone seriously claim to enjoy it? 

This is what's inside.

I've struggled to imagine why any sane person (and sane may be the key) could possibly call it "the king of fruits", as some people do. Durian defenders will admit that the smell is appalling. Hotel lobbies in South East Asia have signs prohibiting guests to bring it into the hotel. One whiff and the other guests would stampede for the exits. 

A Singaporean friend described it to me this way: "It's like sitting on the toilet and eating custard." Now if we change the word "custard" to...no, let's not.

The smell is nothing short of revolting.

Not only are there durian aficionados on the loose out there but some people will pay top dollar for it. When we were in Penang, Malaysia, last year there was a durian festival in the local sports ground. I wanted to go just ask a few people what the stink (so to speak) was about but Jill thought better of it and we visited a butterfly farm and later had our feet nibbled by little fish.

Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

The famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, while collecting flora and fauna in Borneo in 1856, wrote this about durian :

The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.

Here I am a year later in a different country (but wearing the same shirt) choking
down a durian milkshake while wistfully eyeing a glass of delicious guava juice.

I'm a fan of Alfred Russel Wallace. He was, after all, the discoverer of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. We would all have studied him at school but for the fact that Charles Darwin intercepted Wallace's manuscript and held up its publication so he could dash off his own tome and get it published first. Wallace could have been rich and famous, been alternately worshipped and reviled, and maybe even lived to see his book banned by educators in Tennessee.

But describing durian's "exquisite flavour" as "highly flavoured with almonds" and "wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine" sounds like he's writing tasting notes for a new release sauvignon blanc rather than something scooped out of a blocked drain. I can only think that he'd spent too long in the tropics or that he was so sick of nasi goreng that even durian tasted good. But I like to think he just had a wonderfully ironic sense of humour or that he was trying to tempt Charles Darwin to overdose on durian in punishment for his treatment.

I decided to give this a miss.
Now if they ran it through a civet first, I might be tempted.

Can anyone tell me how I've gone wrong? Should I have put sugar on it? Sauteed it with monkey brains? Maybe a fortnight-long fast would have changed my opinion of it. Anyway, leave me a comment if you think I've missed the durian boat.

I've made a "HONK IF YOU LIKE DURIAN" bumper sticker and am about to drive through Sydney just to see if I get a response. I suspect it'll be an unusually quiet drive.

Now mangosteens are another matter. They really are the king of fruit.