sisu

"Comparing him to Obama, though, I LOVE the big old lug"

Chelsea Chamber of Commerce automobiles go tire to tire with earth-moving equipment across the street at Eastern Salt as respectable local business people take off on a cruise of Boston Inner Harbor to embrace for a few hours the "ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity and simultaneity of Everyday Urbanism.

"I think that the years of captivity truly rattled his brain, as it would," writes our imail correspondent, taking the ball of Daniel Henninger's rhetorical "Is John McCain Stupid?" and running with it:

I think he's an idiot, in many ways. Comparing him to Obama, though, I LOVE the big old lug.

That's pretty much where we've been as of late in this disingenuously who-me? race-bating race from Hell, from the moment in December of 2006 that we got a glimpse of the cynical heart of darkness that is Barack Obama's game plan. That so many of our fellow Americans are buyin' his snake oil reminds us of how nothing changes but the date. McCain's new "Celeb" ad linking Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Barack Obama was a breath of fresh air to those of us on the right side of the aisle. The shock, shock and outrage of our friends on the other side of the aisle told us the McCain folks had hit a nerve.

"I have a blogpost in mind but haven't found the mental space to pursue it," we further imailed our sis, following a blow-by-blow accounting of a day of wall-to-wall cooking in preparation for the après ski  part of Saturday's Eastern Minerals Maritime Festival:

She: What is rattling the cell?

We: Having to do with that walkable neighborhoods thing and a ridiculous Chelsea Record article about Eastern Minerals' Maritime Festival. The first paragraph is right out of the liberal playbook.

She: Oh, no. Is the Record panning it already?

We: And I quote: "Chelsea's working waterfront can often seem like an unfriendly, uniniviting place." They introduce the concept with boilerplate anti-salt and then go on to praise the events: "Heavy machinery, mountainous piles of road salt and large seagoing ships are among the drawbacks that make the waterfront a less than ideal place to go for a stroll or take a leisurely walk. However, that will change this weekend as the Eastern Salt Company plays host to the Sixth Annual Eastern Salt Maritime Festival."

The search for beauty in unexpected places that is the essence of our worldview and the paradigm of Everyday Urbanism eludes the close-minded, inside-the-box thinkers of what we have called the "permanently angry folk of the Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, who 'demand' that Eastern Minerals 'find an alternative site for the salt' and 'any remaining salt be covered with a solid structure, as required by state law.'" Chelsea Record reporter Joseph Domelowicz, Jr. appears to have bought their story, no questions asked. One man's drawbacks are another's romance of the sea.

More about "walkable neighborhoods" — ours is "Very Walkable" and Goomp's Camelot-by-the-Sea" is "Car-Dependant" according to Walk Score's algorithm —and how they may make you fat or thin as soon as we come up for air.

A vertical delivery on the salt dock

Everyday Urbanism will out. "Between 12 and 2 pm next Saturday the USCG will perform a vertical delivery on the salt dock" across the street from us here at Chelsea-by-the-Sea, emails Dan Adams re the highlight of Eastern Salt's Chelsea Maritime Festival 10 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, August 2:

A helicopter hovers high over the ground, and USCG personnel repel down cables onto the dock … It should be a really spectacular demonstration and vision.

"The newest and most powerful tractor tug in Boston is Leo," according to Professional Mariner. Leo will be dockside across the street for tours August  2 for Eastern Salt's Chelsea Maritime Festival.

We're hoping for the totally awesome repro of Darwin's Beagle with state-of-the-art innards for sometime next year, but while we're waiting, the "newest and most powerful tractor tug in Boston," Leo will be lying alongside Eastern Salt next weekend for interested boarding parties:

Boston’s traditional tugboat company, Boston Towing & Transportation, has had to make room this year for an expanded, refinanced and revitalized competitor — Constellation Martitime, acquired by Foss Maritime of Seattle in 2006 …

Out at the end of Pier 1 in Charlestown, near the autoport at the end of Terminal Street, just north of the Charlestown Navy Yard, it’s beginning to look like a Foss Maritime satellite yard with half a dozen green and white tugs tied up around a couple of work barges, one of which houses a maintenance facility and offices. What’s left of the old Constellation fleet — tied up around the corner — is totally eclipsed by the newer and more powerful green and white Foss tugs. While a couple of new Foss tractor-style tugs get the headlines these days, a handful of very capable twin-screw tugs are also there to do the heavy hauling.

Most of them are being renamed after stellar constellations, except the newest and most powerful — the 5,080-hp z-drive tractor, Leo, which arrived in Boston in mid-March already bearing a constellation name. Leo and another Foss tractor, the 3,000-hp cycloidal-drive tug America (just renamed Orion), were both towed around from the West Coast as dead ships, arriving with a disfiguring coating of ice at the tail end of winter.

Boston Towing, with 13 tugs including two LNG-capable, z-drive tractor tugs, still has the majority of ship-assist work in this mid-sized port — estimated to be at least 75 percent market share — but Constellation, backed by an aggressive parent company eager to build itself as a national brand, is sure to be coming on strong in the near future.

We're totally into the USCG these days, our nephew's beloved's being a member of the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Tahoma of cocaine-busting fame. Our exhibition at Pearl Street Gallery just up the street from Eastern Salt will be open for tours during the festival, and for friends of sisu there'll be food and drink at Chelsea-by-the-Sea following the formal event. If you're in the area —or if not, feel free to go out of your way — please stop by.

The authenticity and energy and "beauty in unexpected places" of Everyday Urbanscapes

Dan Adams (above departing Chelsea's Pearl Street Gallery Monday), took some of our best working-waterfront blogposts out from behind the computer screen, blew them up and hung them front and center in the window of his work in progress, the "Landing Salt" exhibition now showing at 100 Pearl Street, Chelsea. The young man we call the Eastern Salt Imaginator discovered the Chelsea salt piles 3 1/2 years ago during a Harvard Design School course, "Listening to the City," taught by Professor of Architecture Margaret Crawford, co-author of Everyday Urbanism. Her subject is one of three mutually contentious paradigms in contemporary urbanism, the other two being New Urbanism and Post Urbanism. In the words of Doug Kelbaugh, who wrote the book's introduction:

[Everyday Urbanism] "is nonutopian because it celebrates and builds on everyday, ordinary life and reality, with little pretense about the possibility of a tidy or ideal built environment. Indeed, as John Kaliski and others in Everyday Urbanism point out, the city and its designers must be open to and incorporate 'the elements that remain elusive: ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity and simultaneity.'"

Nonutopian. Right up our alley. Ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity and simultaneity. Right up Eastern Salt's alley.

When we arrived at the gallery around 5 o'clock Tuesday evening for the "opening event," a gorgeous bouquet of ivory roses from our greatest blogfan, the Goomp himself, was waiting for us. Tuck Willis photo.

Dan stood up and gave a whirlwind guided tour to the assembled guests of all things salt — photographs and paintings, of course, but also his own totally awesome computer-generated diagrams and charts and other explanatory material tracing the history and methods of extracting the salt of the earth. That's our stuff hanging in the window behind the artist, pretty in white. The maroon bag isn't a bag in the purse sense but in the bag sense, a lightweight but super-strong partitioned wine-toting bag the folks at Hannaford's give you to carry your bubbly home in. In our case we carried our silver party shoes, camera, business cards, house keys and such. Teresa Hummel photo.

"OMIGOD! You are so beautiful in your outfit!!!" imailed our sis as we deconstructed "The Outfit," first fashionable ensemble we'd bought in years, a personal milestone made possible by our loss of 40-plus pounds since jumping onto the Cold Turkey Cookbook bandwagon just over a year ago:

She: The maroon "evening bag" is the perfect complement. And THOSE SHOES!!! But, was there a swatch of turquoise at your waist, or is it just my eyes?"

We: Your eyes. It looks like a swatch and acts like a swatch but is my little t-shirt peeking out from behind the jacket.

It took over two hours and the tender ministrations of three different Macy's employees to locate the perfect pair of white lined linen pants — no pockets, concealed side zipper and lightly elasticized waist — and matching top with puffed sleeves and two oversized fabric-covered buttons just below the lapels.

A specially commissioned tiny replica of Eastern Salt's signature Manitowok crane and bucket — with moving parts! — a painting whose vibrant color and energetic brushwork capture Kelbaugh's "ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity and simultaneity" and Dan Adams's photographs of the original "Chelsea Projections" light show animate the gallery walls. Teresa Hummel photo.

A closer look at the detailing of that little linen jacket as we engage in conversation with sub rosa blogfriend Jill of The Business of Life. Update: We liked Jill's casting of several of her conversational partners as archetypes: "It was a pleasure to be able to talk to the Manager, the Teacher and the Politician." Teresa of Technicalities was there, too, taking a lot of pictures — including this one — with her fancy new SLR digital camera. Our old green shirt, shorter than today's trendy tees, was the perfect length to fill the gap created by the jacket's unorthodox buttoning scheme.

"And when I looked, the salt had turned to gold" was sis-in-law Ellen's favorite. Ours too. What a treat to have her and brother Ben with us on our special night. Ditto that other Ellen of Grove Street in Chelsea. Our own sis couldn't make it but touched our hearts and minds with a sentimental gift of gardenias, the kind girls used to wear on their wrist to the prom. Teresa Hummel photo.

Dan said wonderful things about our work. We share a fascination with the authenticity and energy and "beauty in unexpected places" of those Everyday Urbanscapes. He's talking about maybe using that felicitous phrase to rename the whole show.

VIPs left to right: Paul Lamb, dock manager of the Eastern Salt working waterfront, our man Dan, company president and charming hostess Shelagh Mahoney and her daughter Molly. Teresa Hummel photo.

Teresa caught Chelsea City Manager Jay Ash checking out some of our work. Cool, huh?

Update: Here's Teresa's take of the evening's festivities. Thanks again, doll, for being there with us and taking all those pictures!

Update II:  Be sure to check out Carol Ward's excellent comments re the dueling utopian and nonutopian Urbanisms. This, re New Urbanism, is a gem:

There can be no beauty in unexpected places, because there are no unexpected places!

It called to mind the humanizing individual remodelings of the rows of virtually identical Levittown houses. Something there is that doesn't like to be fit into a one-size-fits-all template.

"Where do they think the salt comes from?"

When it came down to the cutting-room floor for the final iteration of the "Landing Salt" exhibition, new synergies emerged as we edited out a few things and rearranged the keepers in new combinations. Above, Dan Adams's favorite of all our photographic images of the light fantastic from the front porch (left), the Greek bulk container Anangel Success out of Piraeus docking at Eastern Salt one snowy night, mutually energizes our own personal favorite, a bucket of salt releasing its precious cargo in the early morning light in our post "And when I looked, the salt had turned to gold."

"I think you are more or less writing my next post for me," we wrote our sis this afternoon as she imailed — with reference to our part of the "Landing Salt" group exhibition" that will open on Tuesday evening from 5 to 7 at the Pearl Street Gallery in Chelsea — "You, truly, are doing your civic duty":

She: I'm just so excited about what you're doing for Eastern Salt and its image within the community. All these spoiled hybrid-car drivers … where do they think salt comes from, when it's nicely strewn on icy roads? You have said, "YES!!! IN MY FRONT YARD!"

We: And the work speaks for itself.

She: Your pictures fairly thrum with the life of the tankers unloading. Static on a radio drives you mad, but the noise of unloading precious salt is music to your ears.

Different drummers were always our thing. Sub rosa blogfriend Greg of Sippican Cottage caught the conscience of the king the other day with a snippet of one of his brilliant who-knew discoveries, C.H. Spurgeon's Farm Sermons:

He who despises truth because it wears in this case no other adornment than a garland of the flowers of the field about its neck, or a wreath of barley around its brows, has no eye wherewith to discern beauty, which is as fascinating in rural dress as in classic attire. So long as the soul is fed it is small matter whether the subjects were suggested by the palace or the barn.

"Beauty in unexpected places," the tagline of sisu, is the title of our body of work in the "Landing Salt" exhibition. Writing about our series of daybreak portraits of the view from Goomp's front porch Down East awhile back, we blogged "Had Monet lived here in Southern Coastal Maine, he might have been known for his sunrises instead of his haystacks." The same could be said of the views from our own front porch down Chelsea, where Monet might have been known for his painterly studies of the ever-changing play of light on the working waterfront across the street.

Ships that pass in the night

"Sissy, you have to get your tripod and take some pictures," insisted nephie Christian, here on overnight layover on his way to Grand Cayman to meet his sweetheart, whose Coast Guard ship's laying in for a brief stay there tomorrow. Tuck will ferry him to Logan early morning.

Lazy of a Friday evening, we would never have bothered to trot out our photographic gear without his sweet whisperings. This one's an oil tanker  — Jasmine Express — hottest thing in the international marketplace these days, now slipping the surly bonds of Chelsea Creek after disgorging black gold from its innards upriver.

Branding "beauty in unexpected places"

"And when I looked, the salt had turned to gold," we blogged a couple of years back of this dazzling image of cargo being unloaded from Turkish bulk carrier "Ince Atlantic" in the early morning light across the street at Eastern Salt.

"I have to say — I really like the whole collection. They're beautiful. They will be a great addition to the whole exhibition," emails Dan Adams, co-curator of the evolving "Landing Salt" group show as we tie up loose ends in preparation for the incorporation of twelve of our working-waterfront blog images into the exhibit now showing at Chelsea's Pearl Street Gallery. As we blogged the other day, our pictures will be mounted between acrylic sheets and hung in the gallery windows. The "opening event" will be held a week from Tuesday, June 24, from 5 to 7 p.m. Please join us. Delicious doibs and potent potables will be served. Map.

"A mountain range of salt emerged from the hold of a gigantic self-unloader bulk carrier at Eastern Salt across the street yesterday," we captioned this daybreaking image last fall.

We had been going to go the snail route, printing out our own business cards — to have on hand at the gallery — on the Canon MultiPASS MP700 and trimming 'em by hand with the X-ACTO, the way we do with our Xmas cards. Fortunately we thought better of it, burned a disk with our image file and handed it over to the local Sir Speedy's, who made short work of it.

Update: Blogdaughter Pat of Pat's Pond links:

Just as I dearly love my Chemung River and the surrounding countryside, so Sissy grooves on Chelsea.

It's the spirit of the place.

Working a working waterfront

"How do I look … snappy?" The Father of All Chelsea Salt Piles, patriarch and founder (?) of Eastern Salt Leo Mahoney as a Master of the Universe back in the day, photographed against the backdrop of an immense salt pile as attribute illuminating the character of the portrait "sitter." The image is featured in "Landing Salt," an exhibition currently on display at The Pearl Street Gallery in Chelsea.

"It seems we may have some great events coming up in a couple weeks at the gallery," emailed Eastern Salt Imaginator extraordinaire Dan Adams the other day, offering a showcase for some of our blog's "light fantastic" waterfront images. We're talking huge blow-ups that would be mounted between acrylic sheets and hung — together with quotations from sisu — front and center in the windows of Chelsea's Pearl Street Gallery as part of the "Landing Salt" exhibition, with back-to-back prints so they would be seen from both outside and inside.

"I have looked through the photographs more carefully now and have edited the collection down to twelve photographs, which I am envisioning presenting in six pairs," emailed Dan. "These would also be paired immediately next to quotes off your blog." Above left "Life imitates art" in a closeup of the superstructure of salt ship Storm Ranger (right) in the early morning light that "would have pleased the eye of Modernist/Precisionist painter Charles Sheeler," we blogged four years back.

Dan's the bright young Harvard Design School idea man behind Chelsea Projections, a visionary project — blogged here from time to time — begun three-plus years ago when he was still a student to "reveal the spirit of the place [the salt piles across the street] and generate an enlivening dialog between the city and its citizens." Right up our alley, as opposed to the good intentions of certain self-appointed community "activists" whose delicate sensibilities are offended by the "visual presence and unsightliness of the stored salt." The "Landing Salt" show — latest iteration of Dan's ongoing project — was originally curated and designed by Erin Urban and Ciro Galeno of the Noble Maritime Collection of Staten Island, NY, in collaboration with our man Dan, who is now working on a "new, improved" version of the show. Enter Sissy's "beauty in unexpected places," stage right.

"Always in search of 'beauty in unexpected places,' I've found [the working waterfront across the street] to be a motherlode of visually stunning and thought-provoking imagery through the seasons, grist for my photographic eye and politically philosophical tongue," we wrote members of the Chelsea Zoning Board of Appeals in support of Eastern Minerals' "proposal to redevelop the Coastal oil terminal" last year. Above left, salt-ship cranes and a lonely gull in the early morning light; right, Christmas card design based upon the view from our side yard at Christmastime.

"One immediate question I'm having is a resolution one," Dan wrote:

I'm returning to thinking about how to translate your blog-work into a medium that could be presented in the gallery context.

Is there a way to take your blog images and text and beef up the resolution so that if printed out in a large-ish poster format, we'd be able to avoid drastic pixelation?

Or do we accept the pixelation as a simple reality of the media?  Do you have the images saved from their original files in higher resolution?

Talk about beauty in unexpected places, feast your eyes on photographer and gallery director Joe Green's "Henza," where white swans, white depth marks and white ship's name become calligraphic flourishes scrawled across an abstract color-field painting of horizontal stripes created by a close cropping of weatherbeaten hull and water. Update from our imail correspondent: "'Yet, a secret life awakes … silent only sails a swan …' in the throb of salt-unloading. Great juxtaposition."

And here it gets technical, so feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not as determined as we were to beat the computer. We did, indeed, have the high-resolution originals somewhere in the nethermost parts of our iMac's C drive, but finding them wasn't going to be easy. One day last September, all of our thumbnails — going back to the summer of 2005 when we "Made the switch" from Dell/Microsoft XP to Apple/Tiger — had suddenly disappeared from our easy-view iPhoto digital contact sheets. Imagining the worst, we went through the various stages of grief before jumping back into the ring and wrestling this thing to the ground. Googling for help didn't help. Eventually we stumbled upon the originals, filed away obscurely in hundreds of individual folders — each presumably containing the images from one photo shoot — with no indication by title or date of what was in them. To find a specific photograph would be needle-in-haystack territory. And that's where we've been at during the last couple of days, trying to blog the issues of the day between bouts of tearing our hair and banging our head against the computer screen. But the blog's loss was the gallery exhibition's gain. Our brain addled, at one point we opened iPhoto, stared at the screen and robotically checked out the drop-down menus along the top. Under "File," we clicked on "Add to Library." Up popped an "Import Photos" window. We typed "originals" in the search box, and up came the list of those hundreds of files. We selected all and clicked on "Import." There were over 5,000 files to be imported, and it took perhaps an hour or so for the computer to complete the task, but when it was all done, the digital contact sheets were back where they belonged. Feeling our oats, we went back to our external hard drive, which stores our pre-iMac photographs, and imported those too. Now every one of our digital photographs is at our fingertips in full, glorious color. End of technical section.

"Moonscape" salt mines by Michael Falco from "Landing Salt" exhibition.

"Can you also start thinking of a 'title' for the eventual collection … as a whole," Dan had written after receiving our hard-won original image files yesterday:

I think it's really an interesting characteristic that most of the photos are taken from a relatively consistent vantage [the Willis porch or yard] … the consistent vantage subtly illuminates how much the salt pile landscape changes in time … which is one of the most interesting characteristics of an active port. I think we should emphasize that in the title.

We sent along some links and quotable quotes this morning, and back comes this:

More and more I like your theme/title "Beauty in Unexpected Places."

Not unexpected, but we found dozens of cute kitty pix we hadn't seen lately when we imported all those files into iPhoto. Above Tiny and Baby go eyeball to eyeball with things we don't see.

Our virtual images stepping out from behind the computer screen into the real world: Beauty in unexpected places isn't just about changing light effects anymore. The show opens to a Boston HarborWalk audience on Tuesday evening, June 24. Let us know if you'd like an invitation.

He moves in mysterious ways

Boston's Hancock Tower as Star Wars light sabre. The view from the front porch late afternoon with East Boston's "affordable" housing in the middle ground.

"We may have to put up with truck traffic, but who wants to live on a residential street," comments Tuck re the tradeoffs of living on a working waterfront. Even as we blog, an early-spring thunderstorm is rumbling off in the distance.                      

Could anything be sweeter from the front porch than the steeple -- center of photograph -- of Charlestown's St. Francis de Sales?

Update: "You make such INCREDIBLE pictures out of what, to the lame eye, would go unnoticed" says our imail correspondent.

Road salt is "running critically low"

The view from the front porch this morning, freezing our arse off to get the perfect shot of the bulk carrier Alam Mesra out of Singapore, disemboweling a hold full of salt to feed the hungry maw of the Northeast highway system in this "global warming" winter of our discontent.

Did you know that road salt is "running critically low" in these parts? "Local governments in New England and in the Midwest are running critically low on road salt, the result of a stream of winter weather that has hit the regions in recent months," reports the NYT:

“We are, for all practical purposes, out of salt,” said Bruce Hoar, director of public works in South Burlington, Vt., adding that other towns in the area face the same problem.

With so many municipalities in need of salt, suppliers cannot ship it out quickly enough. Public works departments are left waiting for days or weeks to receive their orders.

“It’s supply and demand,” said Richard L. Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute, a nonprofit trade association. “We’re scrambling. We haven’t heard of any agency that hasn’t been able to keep the roads open or safe, but there’s a lot of anxiety.”

We know it's Bush's fault. If only those chads hadn't hung wrong, Al Gore would be making the world safe for global warming cooling.

"This is exceptional"

Sunset from the front porch this afta looking towards Charlestown with McArdle Bridge in the foreground, Mystic River Bridge approach in the middle ground and Bunker Hill monument beyond, stage left.

"Where the blue of the night Meets the gold of the day Someone waits for me." Sigh.

A faint whiff of romance -- the way to a man's heart and all that -- was in the air as Tuck tasted our latest Cold Turkey Cookbook offering, Pork Stir Fry, this evening and declared "Whipple. This is exceptional."

Pork Stir Fry with Corny Cornbread minimuffin stoked the fires of romance this evening.

Pork Stir Fry

Slice and dice one pork tenderloin, garlic, leeks and mushrooms. Cut off ends of sugar snap peas. Heat sesame oil in frying pan or wok and cook pork briefly till it loses the pink, grinding a little pepper over all to taste.

Remove pork from pan and set aside. Add a little more oil to the pan and cook the veggies till soft. Add 1/3 cup red vermouth and 1/3 cup soy sauce and continue cooking till liquid becomes syrupy.

Return pork to pan, reheat briefly and serve on a bed of perfect rice.

This IS exceptional.