Goatdog Triumphs against the Elements

Hello from New Haven, home of some damn fine pizza, some of the best I've ever had (Chicago residents, imagine pizza from Piece but with a slightly better crust). We're back from gorging ourselves on some of that damn fine pizza. I'm here until Thursday, while my favorite art historian will be here for the rest of the month on a fellowship.

My stay in Maine was a lot of fun. We got a lot of progress done on the documentary about MFAH's great-grandparents; we interviewed her charming grandmother and great-aunt for nearly an hour apiece. I also got some minor work done on the artistamp documentary, as one of the major artistamp artists happened to live and work in a small town nearby, so we were able to drive up and get some shots of the studio.

Our two days on Monhegan Island were perfect. I'm not much of an outdoor type, so when I found myself panting, sweaty, and exhausted halfway up a rocky trail, I thought of Donal Logue in The Tao of Steve and started humming the Lemonheads' "I Lied About Being the Outdoor Type." We hiked and hiked and hiked, stopping every once in a while to rest, look for wildlife, or read; then we hiked some more until it was time to eat, after which we hiked and read. Our stay was pretty much like that, and it was an immense amount of fun, although my poor feet and legs are still in semi-revolt against me.

There's something incredibly gratifying about sitting on a rock ledge overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and reading, say, Richard Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, about his 1830s trip on a merchant vessel from Massachusetts to California and back, or reading one of Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander novels, and being able to look down and see a bit of the oceans you're reading about. I hope I remember those moments forever, and I hope that years down the road, I will be able to pick up those books and be transported back to last weekend.

In one particular woodsy-type area, visitors built little structures called "fairy houses," made of bits of twigs and moss and bark. There's a controversy on the island about them, because some people uproot live saplings and moss and strip the bark off trees to make increasingly swanky fairy penthouses and fairy gated communities. I was going to take a photo of one of them to post here, but I'll be darned if the things didn't disappear when you tried to snap your picture. Weird.