Maggie's Farm

Labor Day is more about unions and marking the end of the summertime mentality than anything else. But, on Labor Day, I like to remember all the folks who are working today like cops, doctors, nurses, pilots, firemen, lifeguards, EMS crews, farmers, mini-mart clerks, chefs and cooks and dishwashers, junior financial analysts, soldiers - and, today, plenty of service folks and National Guardsmen are on duty down on the Gulf Coast.

None of those folks is doing burgers and beer today (except maybe the farmers, once their chores are done).

Since Labor Day is not, for me, any sort of patriotic day, I'll do two photos from our Brit farmer friend (and honorary Maggie's Farmer) who has just finished his harvest in our ancestral homeland:

 and will be heading back to the office job:

A friend brought me this CD of Rosa Passos this weekend. Excellent. Here's a duet with Henri Salvador:

Not her best song by any means, but it might give you a sense of why she was my pop favorite in 1964 - before I had heard of Joanie Baez.

Note to you youts - they made films like this long before MTV existed:

Thanks for this photo from yesterday, reader:

This is where Duck Creek empties into Wellfleet Harbor.

Sonny Boy Williamson

Sunrise in the Catskills, 1826

We'll recycle things from the archives, but nothing new during vacation break.

Here's my final big batch of Wellfleet architecture photos. Our prayer is that Wellfleet be never yuppified, and that it remain ramshackle, weather-beaten, weedy, and perfectly imperfect. Like Nantucket, before the Beautiful People discovered it in the 1980s as an alternative to the Hamptons.

Hatch's has been there since before I was a little kid, with the same sign with a Striper eating a lobster. If you ask them to keep some Toro (Bluefin tuna belly), they will have it for you the next day, if not sooner. It's the best food in the world (flash-grilled over charcoal, not as sushi).

This grand old boathouse on the harbor is a great place to rent for the summer, but it's booked years in advance, and it ain't cheap. Yes, that is�low tide. There is water against the pilings at high tide:

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That piece we posted on semi-colons this week reminded me of this one from 2 years ago:

You can thank Isabella Stewart Gardner. She knew what she liked. The Tragedy of Lucretia (1501):

"Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

That makes me feel insecure because I like to use semi-colons. Story at the Globe.

Smokestack Lightning, 1964

A foggy morning at Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet, 2 weeks ago

Our friend sent us these pictures he took yesterday, experimenting with his new Leica:

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Back by popular demand!

This funny but handsome hodge-podge of a place�is called Morning Glory, now undergoing long-delayed major renovation and necessary graffiti:

�I like this simple�look very much. It could use a garden, though. Or maybe not.

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We linked Vanderleun's Frame Up photo essay yesterday, but I thought it was worth further highlighting - or framing, as it were. Especially because my photography teacher friend thought that his idea was cool, and plans to use it in her classes. A few random thoughts and a quote:

- Vanderleun is apparently a big Hopkins fan, as am I. Hopkins was a student of the medieval metaphysician Duns Scotus, from whom he seems to have come up with his notions of "inscape" and "instress." While Hopkins never defined these terms, he attempted to realize the immanent presence of God in his poetry with rhythm and imagery (eg, here.)

- Are photographers simply artists with ADD? I am (obviously) no photographer. I specialize in minimally-composed, poorly-lit, half-focused snapshots with a camera I don't know how to use, which are more intended to document a thing than anything else. In my youth, I drew and painted but I never developed those interests. I have always had too many interests - a dilettante in the perjorative sense of the word. However, I know that when you paint a thing you enter fully into it, of necessity, with brain, soul and hand. Same as playing a song with piano or guitar.

- Framing has, indeed, a magical effect. It has always been a wonder to me how putting a frame on a canvas transforms it. Or how a wall, fence or hedge gives structure and architecture to a garden. Or how framing a fact with context does the same. Or how putting a quote in a "quote box" inclines one to read it. Are frames our tools or are they our protection from TMI, or even from the terrors of the infinite and of chaos? Or both? I'm in over my head now. One day, long ago, I took a B&W random photo of an old dock piling with a spike in it and some weeds next to it, on the West Side of Manhattan. It was one of the 20 photos I've taken in my life that came out well. Produced it in the darkroom myself. I put it in a $1.99 black frame and it looked like art. It's long lost, though.

- In a comment on Vanderleun's piece, the internet metaphysician and master neologist Gagdad Bob has this to say:

This is an extremely provocative subject. The other day I posted about the importance of boundaries in the creation of meaning. In the absence of a frame there is no art or science. But who knew that simply providing one allows one to appreciate the superabundance of beauty that is always pouring forth from virgin nature?

In fact, you may remember the young videographer in American Beauty, who was able to perceive beauty by virtue of framing it with the camera, whether is was a paper bag blowing in the wind or a dead animal by the side of the road.

I often go mountain biking in my area, and just by virtue of taking along a camera and framing the shots (even if I don't even take a picture), a different level of beauty suddenly emerges. You start to see things from a "God's eye view," for what is creation but a finite limitation on infinite possibility, i.e., the imposition of boundary conditions on the infinite?

One could say the same thing of the formal structure of a poem, or of the structural narrative of a great novel that elevates the mundane to a higher plane, or the stage in theatre, which is also a kind of frame.

Bottom line: in the conduct of your life, choose your frame very carefully. It makes all the difference. On one level the frame is an artifice, but on another level it is the doorway into the infinite and eternal.

I guess it goes without saying that I see theology as a frame though which we may see, know, and experience all sorts of things (i.e., truth and beauty) that will go unnoticed in the absence of the frame.

Image is from Vanderleun's piece.

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The BA degree was created for scholars, and as a foundation for the professions. It meant that you knew Latin and Greek, probably German and French, the sciences, math, and history - but it mostly meant that you wanted to be a scholarly person who intended to study stuff for the rest of your life. I think I'm on safe ground in saying that that is no longer the case. Education is such a huge, entrenched industry today that things are unlikely to change, but it's still worthwhile thinking about rational alternatives.

A small harborside boathouse in Wellfleet, at low tide

A witty friend once said that the most fashionable thing to have parked in your driveway is a green dumpster.

Well, I've had that for the last two weeks, but the mess and the cost and the dirt and the dust and the inconvenience of the demolition and slow reconstruction of the master bath isn't fun anymore. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, tile guys, new fixtures and vent fans... Turns out the leak had spread further than initially thought, so the entire bath had to be gutted. If you are interested, we did decide on a honed limestone floor instead of marble. Not just cost: it's a warmer, more homey look.

And now I see why we had that mysterious, very occasional leak in the downstairs coat closet: the shower stall had a leak too. Homeowner's insurance, I have learned, doesn't cover chronic leaks, just the acute ones. I had both.

Indeed, water and houses do not mix. Outhouses weren't such a bad idea, and outdoor showers are the best idea ever. I am inclined to cut back on a bit of my previous grand plans, not only because of the cost but because of the disruption of normal life routine. I can't find anything after having moved out of the master bath and halfway out of the bedroom.

My only question: Where's FEMA?

Bush obviously doesn't give a damn about my problems.

Photo:  Some nice limestone floor tile.