Tag: PowerMobyDick.com

Google Doodle Celebrates Moby-Dick’s 161st Berthday Plus Listen to the Big Read!

 

 

We love Moby-Dick at Sea-Fever so it was fun to stumble upon Google’s Doodle celebrating the 161st birthday of it’s publication in England. We can celebrate again next month because it was published in the US on November 14, 1851!

As a present to Sea-Fever readers, here’s the 1st chapter of the Moby-Dick Big Read. Here’s what’s that’s all about:

…an online version of Melville’s magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, to be broadcast online in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible.

They started posting a chapter a day on Sept. 16, 2012. Tilda Swinton spins an awesome yarn in Chapter 1 – Loomings. There are many other interesting readers and the artwork on the website is definitely worth a visit.

Of course, if you need any help deciphering Melville’s lexicon, there’s no better place to go than Meg Guroff’s awesome PowerMobyDick website.

 

Moby-Monday: “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”

Jeremy Wood is a multidiscipline artist and map maker whose diverse work offers people and places a playground of space and time. In October 2000 he began to explore GPS satellite technology as a tool for digital mark making on water, over land, and in the air. He makes drawings and maps of his movements by recording all his daily journeys with GPS to create a personal cartography. (from the artist’s website)

One of Wood’s projects included a walk though London along the quote: “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

Jeremy Wood drawing

Also from the artist’s website.

The text was written over a period of three months from January 2005. The length of the line recorded on foot for the drawing was 44.2 miles, and the total distance traveled to make the drawing was 458.6 miles. I had two bicycle punctures with reinforced puncture resistant tires, the first of which happened 20 miles into a journey looking for locations that ended in having to push the bike home for 9 miles. After closing the body of the last letter, I headed as far north as the land allowed to a small pier on which the Greenwich Meridian is marked, and finished the drawing by circling around on the footpath at the edge of the River Thames for a full stop.

Via PowerMobyDick where you can find lots of other interesting Moby-Dick digital ephemera.

Don’t miss New Bedford’s Working Waterfront Festival this weekend!

New Bedford Working Waterfront FestivalIf you are anywhere near the Southcoast of Massachusetts, or more specifically New Bedford, you will not want to miss the 2009 Working Waterfront Festival. This year’s theme is Surf & Turf: Fishermen and Farmers Finding Common Ground. From the website:

Farming, like fishing, is a way of life. Fishermen and farmers share a deep knowledge of, reverence for and dependence upon the natural world. Both groups pass traditional skills and knowledge from one generation to the next, often incorporating new technologies alongside traditional practices. And both communities face many of the same economic, environmental and political challenges.

There are all kinds of wonderful activities for the entire family that will entertain and educate you about what takes place everyday on one America’s most active waterfronts. Here are the schedules for Saturday and Sunday as well as a downloadable festival map(PDF). It’s all FREE!

Here are a few videos from past festivals of the types of activities that you’ll experience:

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRWNF3N7xc0]
YouTube – Scallop Shucking

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nEzW39fC_I]
YouTube – Coast Guard Rescue Demonstration

In addition to all of the activities on the waterfront, New Bedford is like a theme park for maritime heritage/culture fans. Located on Johnny Cake Hill is the Whaling Museum (website / blog / twitter), homeport of the largest ship model in the world and which has two “not to miss” exhibits: From Pursuit to Preservation and Working Waterfront, Photographic Portraits which I’m proud to say is a great show of my cousin Phil’s photography. Across the street from the Whaling Museum is the historic Seamen’s Bethel made famous by Herman Melville in his classic Moby-Dick. A little further up the hill you’ll find the new Ocean Explorium which is the home to one of NOAA’s very impressive Science on a Sphere installations. All of this and more is located in the New Bedford Whaling Historical National Park.

Looking for some great food and refreshments? Check out the Rose Alley Ale House for great chicken wings, burgers and a wide selection of beers and No Problemo for the best Mexican around.  Want something a little fancier, Cork or Waterfront Grill would be god choices. All are steps from the festival grounds. 

If you are on Twitter and interested in learning more or if you attend and want to share your experiences use the hash tag #workingwaterfront.

Thar She Blows! Moby-Monday on the Horizon.

Logo illustration by Rockwell Kent copyright 2005 by the Plattsburgh State Art Museum.

You should have read Herman Melville’s classic American novel Moby-Dick in high school but chances are you didn’t. The dog might have eaten it or you might have left it behind on the school bus.  Heck, there’s lots of pages with lots of tricky nautical lingo and arcane whaling info. Who has time or interest for that in high school!

Well, now you’re a little older and a whole lot wiser and reading Moby-Dick, while still daunting, might be more interesting and manageable. But you are still going to encounter those tricky words and that’s where PowerMobyDick.com comes to the rescue.

PowerMobyDick is the work of Meg Guroff, a writer, who decided to tackle Melville’s classic. Meg, like the rest of us, was challenged by the language; however, unlike many of us me, she persevered and ultimately created one of the most impressive resources dedicated to a single work of fiction on the Internet. It’s an amazing project and here’s Meg telling the story in her own words.

Download MP3

I am so excited that Meg will be skippering a new Sea-Fever feature called Moby-Monday which you probably already guessed, is going to appear each Monday.  Meg is going to share some items of interest from the PowerMobyDick’s Cultural Fallout of the Week as well as anything else she chooses.

I’m excited to welcome Meg aboard and look forward to her first post next week. In the meantime, get yourself over to PowerMobyDick and start catching up on your high school homework!