Thalassotherapy

Lambert's Cove Beach ~ Lia Potter

Thalassotherapy is the medical use of seawater as therapy. Since the days of the Roman Empire, people have known they feel better after a swim in salt water. My skin, eyes and sinuses are always clearer in the summer months. Come on summer.

An Analog Christmas

Lots of books under the Christmas tree this year.
Everyone has their nose in the right place, a good book.

Vineyard Haven ~ Bunch of Grapes

Secret Santa

Leave it to New Yorker magazine cartoonist Roz Chast to rethink Santa Claus in the age of Anthony Weiner.

The New Yorker ~ Roz Chast

Perfectly Imperfect

I scanned a headline online last week that Patti Smith forgot the lyrics to Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall during her live tribute at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies in Stockholm. Like a lot of things you read online, this particular headline missed the larger story of why Smith was there in the first place, how she came to choose and sing that particular song, and how her "flub" became artistry that moved me and others to tears.

Read her story, How Does It Feel, and then watch her sing.

Bloomberg Legitimizes Fake News

The editors at Bloomberg legitimize fake news with their Pessimist's Guide to 2017.

These "predictions" are headed with the Bloomberg News logo and Breaking News graphics, and are enabled for one-click tweeting and social media sharing.

What Bloomberg, no prediction about Michael Bloomberg's 2020 presidential run?

December 7

Etude

Closing the summer house this week. Always a melancholy ritual.

As  the days get shorter and nights colder, this sheet music promises the next summer and warmth to come.

Globalization

The New Yorker ~ David Sipress

Hindsight's 20-20

Michael Ramirez

Last sail of the season

Ding-Dong

Newsweek

New York Magazine

Danny Shanahan ~ The New Yorker

Vote!?

As reported last Sunday on CBS's 60 Minutes:

Focus group reflects nation's dark mood ahead of Election Day.

The New Yorker ~ Barry Blitt

And that's the way it is

We were watching the CBS Evening News the other night when anchor Scott Pelley took a moment to commemorate the 100th birthday of former CBS News anchorman, Walter Cronkite.  Having grown up in a family where both my grandfather and father were employed by CBS, watching Uncle Walter, "the most trusted man in America," was a daily event in our and most living rooms.

Nice to see this Google Doodle. Here are some of Cronkite's more memorable broadcasts, the moon landing being the one I remember most.

Halloween 1942 & 2016

The New Yorker ~ Rea Irvin

The New Yorker ~ Barry Blitt

Rainy Day Randomness

It's a rainy and windy morning on the Vineyard and I'm looking at Historical Pics on Twitter. Then I jumped to shorpy.com and came upon this photo of the kind of cigarette vending machines that were commonplace in the entrances to supermarkets and restaurants in the 1960s.

Marion S. Trikosko ~ U.S. News & World Report. 

It reminded me of how my black sheep of an older brother used to hustle change out of these machines by sticking about half an inch of a lollipop stick under one of the plastic pull-out handles, usually one of the less popular selling menthol brands on the lower right of the machine. This wasn't discernible to the eye and prevented pulling out any other handle or using the coin return lever. He'd go back a few hours later, remove the stick, pull down the coin return and it would rain coins like a slot machine.

Years later he stole this book from The Remarkable Book Shop on Main Street.

Alas, there is no honor among thieves. According to Wikipedia:

"Hoffman would not respond to accusations that he had plagiarized the book, as claimed in an article by Izak Haber in Rolling Stone magazine (No. 92, 10 September 1971), entitled 'How Abbie Hoffman Won My Heart and Stole Steal This Book.' Haber is acknowledged in the book as having done a great deal of the research."

Debate Yoga

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

Series of Dreams

The only thing we have to fear is . . .

How 21st century, a survey about Americans' top fears.

According to The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Americans have a lot of worry on their minds. Our biggest fear at 60.6 percent? Government corruption, for the second straight year.

Number two? Terrorist attack. Such fears could be overblown. Remember, President Obama said we're more likely to slip in the bathtub, which incidentally, did not appear in the survey's findings.

Three of the top 10 are government-related: government corruption, gun control and Obamacare. Sounds like Americans understand what's going on.

Off to yoga class.

Post-Debate Polling

The New Yorker ~ David Sipress

October Surprise

The New Yorker ~ David Sipress

NHL Centennial

The National Hockey League's 2016-2017 season begins October 12. And the league's 100th season will be celebrated starting next January.

Drop the puck!

In 2017, we proudly celebrate 100 incredible years of the NHL. Here are all the highlights planned for our Centennial Celebration. #NHL100 pic.twitter.com/3MimbZl3In

— NHL (@NHL) September 27, 2016

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years

Love.

As the audience slowly left the Jacob Burns Film Center after the sold-out premiere of the new Ron Howard film, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years, the word heard most often was love. Yes, we loved the film, but we especially loved The Beatles.

The film combines footage from their live performances around the world (166 concerts in 90 cities across 15 countries), their epochal February 1964 appearance on CBS' The Ed Sullivan Show, and many very funny and endearing behind-the-scene moments where the Fab Four laugh in wonder at their popularity and success. This narrative runs in parallel with the band's album releases, demonstrating their evolving song-writing and recording brilliance, the unprecedented cultural phenomenon of Beatlemania, and their profound love for each other.

A bonus after the film was a screening of a new digitally remastered 4K print of The Beatles' full performance at New York's Shea Stadium before 56,000 fans in September 1965.

Marble Map of New England

Austin Purves ~ Marble Map of New England at Boston Fed

Commissioned in 1953 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, aka the Boston Fed, which serves the First District of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, Austin Purves' marble relief map of New England measures 18 feet high by 12 feet wide and weighs more than four tons.

When the Boston Fed moved to new headquarters in the late 70s the map was left behind and claimed by the Boston Globe who installed it in the paper's lobby. Now the Globe is moving to new and smaller headquarters and they're looking for someone to take and save the map.

I wish I had the space.

Marble Map of New England at The Boston Globe

Map Detail

Map Detail

Lost Film

Westport, Connecticut in the late 1960s.

Fascinating.

Dreamland?

Brought to you by Big Pharma and your doctor's prescription pad. And when that runs out there's heroin from Mexico. Yes, chronic pain can be devastating, but the solution should not exact this cost.

Read Dreamland.

Sunflowers

Arrived 30 minutes before Morning Glory Farm opened their doors in hope of buying one of their prized blueberry crumb pies. Enjoyed the time watching swarms of honeybees on the morning's fresh-cut sunflowers.

Waterfront or Water View

Alex Gregory ~ The New Yorker

No doubt some real estate speculators are divesting expensive waterfront properties, but are they doubling down on water view parcels . . . next to be waterfront?

According to the Vineyard Conservation Society:

"On the shoreline, the warming of the ocean caused by emissions trapping heat in the atmosphere will cause the water to expand, the resulting rise is base sea level will cause coastal erosion and inundation of wetlands."

News Bias

Yep.

The New Yorker ~ Kim Warp

Martha's Vineyard Signs

Up Island Automotive ~ West Tisbury

Menemsha Fish Market ~ Menemsha

Pohogonot Farm ~ Edgartown

On Time II ~ Chappaquiddick

Holmes Hole ~ Vineyard Haven