Inuksuit In Woodland Valley, NY

We went camping recently at Woodland Valley Campground and saw many carefully arranged piles of rocks in the stream. I have creations like this left all over the Catskills before, but did not know what they were called. I thought 'cairn' would be appropriate until I found the word 'inuksuk' (plural: inuksuit).

An inksuk is a small pile of stones, usually in a vertical stack of some sort. These are common across the frozen lands of North American where the Inuit people live. It is supposed that they are left for navigational purposes or to mark certain spots.

You can see such an item on the cover of the Rush Album Test For Echo. One might consider the symbol used for the Canadian Winter Olympics in Vancouver as an inuksuk, but I read here here that such an item is called an inunnguaq because it looks like a person.

I have seen these in my travels since about 1995 when I started hiking a lot of the peaks of the Catskills and the Shawangunk Mountains (or "gunks"). I gather people just started doing it for fun. Here are what we saw in Woodland Valley.

This is one that Jennifer and I created (that'swhy the rocks are still wet). I told her we had to dedicate it, so she dedicated it to the memory of her grandmother. 

I made this one, and Jennifer said I should dedicate it. She suggested I dedicate it to my  late aunt Roberta (aka,  aunt "Coo" or "Cookie") so I did. 

Long Dock Park Opens

We missed it. We rode our bikes through the area a week before, but the day of the opening, July 9th, we hit the beach instead. 

I went there the next day with Finn and snapped a few pictures of the kayak launch area. 

The kayak launch is just to Finn's left. Behind him, to his right, is the old Dutchess Boat Club.

At last, the kayak launch area.

An interesting sign that greets you in the parking area. I wonder who this pissed off among the more conservative visitors.

This is the Scenic Hudson River Center for arts and environmental education, near the entrance to the park.

Here is a video from in front of the kayak launch. 

A Michael Scott Field Day

The beauty of the "That's What She Said" joke is that it can be used in so many applications where you might not want to. I find myself biting my tongue when in polite company or the company of those-who-might-be-easily offended and statements are uttered that beg for the punchline to be said.

Fortunately, my daughter Cara has a sense of humor. While working on her car door last night (the electric window malfunctions a lot), we found ourselves giggling over lines like:

• I can't get it in the groove
• It slipped out again
• I can't get it back up
• It's stuck
• I need to oil it up
• If you keep it greasy it'll go down easy

The joke is used so much at our house I am surprised we're not tired of it or that the parrot hasn't started saying it. 

Even Finn uses it, but he's not quite sure what it's all about. He just says the punchline randomly, and usually he gets it right or once in a while says it after something really odd is said, creating a mind-jarring joke that gets a sick laugh from all of us. 

Independence Day

Jennifer relaxes with Biko after making pickles. 

Said product cools off on the counter after being canned.

The garden whence the pickles came. It's holding up well, though our tomatoes are a tad slower than our neighbor's (they are in the background, over the fence).

Long Dock Park

The name reminds me of my favorite character from Sixteen Candles ("Now I have a place to put my hand!") but Scenic Hudson's Long Dock Park at the Beacon waterfront has been taking shape since last year. It's been called such for a while, and there have been some works there, but this time it is all-out. A celebration is planned for Saturday, July 9th. They have some work to do. Here is the current state of the park as of last night:

For laughs, I took a video of Jennifer's train coming in.

Referring To a Person In the Room With A Pronoun

Apparently this is bad. I did not know this until I was about 22, and my friend Helen pointed it out, but not very clearly. I must have used the word "she" to refer to her when she was within hearing distance, and she said to me, "'She' is the cat." I probably stared at her blankly and she said that when she was a kid, her father would chide her and her siblings for referring to her mother as 'she', specifically if the mother was present in the room. He would say, "'She' is the cat; that's your mother you're talking about."

And if you think about it, he violates the rule in his reprimand by calling his wife 'that'. Whatever.

I told Helen I was sorry to hear she was beaten as a child and blithely lived my life little changed with respect to this usage until I started hearing more and more people speak about it. (About four or five years later when her brother Tom started working where I do, I asked him about this. He said he remembered something about this but wasn't sure).

In any event, it seems that it is rude to refer to anyone present in the room with a pronoun. So if Cindy were in the room and I told Mark that "Cindy just went to Cindy's house to get Cindy's camera bag," in stead of "Cindy went to her house to get her camera bag," I would sound dorky but I would be following the rule.

If you are reading this and YOU have experience with this odd socio-linguistic phenomenon, please post something about it here.

Why Vaclav’s Hovel?

Why Vaclav’s Hovel?

Vaclav Havel is a playwright, the last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic, and a lifelong fan and friend to Frank Zappa, one of my favorite musicians.

He said:

"I understand, especially when one is looking at me from a distance, that I might seem as some kind of fairy-tale hero who banged his head against the wall until the wall fell, and then reigned. It makes me blush slightly, because I know my mistakes. On the other hand, I do not ridicule it because people need these kinds of stories."

As a tip of the hat to the Dada of Frank Zappa, and the wonderful, surreal, unexpected event of a playwright becoming a president, I created the name one day for a sheep shed, and later for my email addresses and blog names. It now signifies all of my creative efforts.

Vaclav’s Hovel is a tribute to the idea that people can be more than what we expect, that they are not bound by titles, education, class, background, race, and so on. It is a tribute to banging one's head against the wall until the wall falls, for sometimes it takes that effort. It is also a tribute to the memory of Frank Zappa.

If Vaclav Havel ever reads this and takes offense to my use of his name as such, I apologize. I meant it only with the greatest of affection for him and Mr. Zappa.