Month: October 2009

FotoFriday: Patrick Harris – The Boat Dweller

NYTimes One in 8 Million - Patrick Harris

The New York Times has a great multimedia series called One in 8 Million which features stunning black and white photography coupled with interesting audio interviews. This week Todd Heisler photographed and Tanzina Vega interviewed Captain Patrick Harris – The Boat Dweller.  Give a look and listen, it’s a nice piece about maritime life on the island of Manhattan.

Moving Day at the North Pole

How do you move 18 polar explorers, a dogs and more than 150 tons of cargo from one of the most desolate and harshest environments on the planet?

Simple, rent a big moving van or the 23,ooo displacement tons, 490 length over all nuclear powered icebreaker Yamal. Here’s a rockin’ video of it all.

Here’s one of our earlier posts with video of this extraordinary ship.

 

Moby Monday – Boo Who? (Updated)

Clarence as Moby Dick, a contestant in the New Yorker "Critterati" contest
The New Yorker is marking Halloween with a “Critterati” photo contest—pix of pets such as Clarence here dressed as literary figures. The contest closed for entries yesterday, but you can still peruse all the contestants at the New Yorker site. (Don’t miss another fave, Puppy Longstocking.) Winners selected by a panel of judges will be announced October 28. Team Clarence!

UPDATE: Clarence won “Best in Cats”!

Pumpkins at Roger Williams Park Zoo, photo by Robert GuroffYou don’t have to be a pet owner to mark the holiday as it should be marked—that is, with sly references to Moby-Dick. At the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, a set of Moby-Dick themed pumpkins depicting Herman Melville and scenes from the book somehow made it into this year’s Jack-o’-Lantern Spectacular on the theme of “Fables of the Great Writers.” Other stories featured include Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Rumplestiltskin. Don’t they know Moby Dick was (sorta) real? The literary pumpkins are on display at the zoo through November 1.

Margaret Guroff is editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick.

First pirates. Now mutiny! What’s next, sea monsters?

Messing About In Ships banner

Messing About in Ships podcast is back! Last night I interviewed Captain Doug Pine who told an amazing sea story about what happened to him after replying to this ad.

Here’s the rest of the story. Grab a beer and popcorn because it’s a long but good one!

Leadership Lessons from a Modern Day Mutiny(download)

Cross posted at Weekly Leader

Moby Monday — The Old Ball Game

What, no Pierre?
Two enterprising Brooklyn residents recently launched Novel-T, a line of baseball jerseys for literature lovers. The first team’s lineup features Moby Dick as catcher and Ahab at the mound, with Bartleby at left field for good measure.

Confidential to M.D.: we’re not sure what Ahab is throwing, but if it looks at all pointy: duck!

Margaret Guroff is editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick.

Maldive Cabinet to get to the bottom of things in tomorrow’s meeting

Maldive President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet have been training for weeks in order to hold an official government meeting underwater to sign a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. To get their work done, they will communicate with white boards and hand signals.

The Maldives stand an average of seven feet above sea level and the nation faces being wiped out if oceans rise.

James Balog’s amazing time lapse photography and how it may impact your home (#BAD09)

If you write a maritime or any other type of blog and are not participating in Blog Action Day 2009 Climate Change, please consider linking to this post. Thanks.

imageRegular Sea-Fever visitors know that I am particularly passionate about two things: the sea and photography. You’ve probably already seen this amazing TED Talk by photographer James Balog of his time-lapse imagery of the fragile nature of some of the earth’s most extraordinary glaciers. If you haven’t, please take the 15 minutes or so to watch it.

These types of things become more relevant when you localize them. I wrote a bit of a tongue in cheek post last month about what rising sea levels would mean to our family’s 170 year old home which is only two shots of chain away from the current high water mark (if the sea level rises just 1 meter, we’re screwed!). Again I suggest readers might want to go here to check out what it means to them.