Author: Marty Luster

Barbara and I are fortunate to have as a house guest Brad Dimock of Flagstaff, Arizona. Brad is the brother and brother-in-law of our dear friends Doug and Nancy Dimock who live in Tuscon.

Brad is a master builder of a type of dory called the Oregon Drift Boat. They look a lot like our Gloucester dories above the waterline but have a much more shallow draft. That’s because they are used to navigate the shallow and swift rivers of the west where Brad, in addition to building boats, guides them down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon.  In his spare time, Brad writes about the history of the Grand Canyon and his adventures on the river.

Having visited our friendly rivals in Lunenburg, NS to see their dory building and after a stop in Maine to take an oar building class, Brad stopped by here with the hope of meeting some of our local boat builders.   His timing was good. Brad met and had nice chats with Geno Mondello of the Dory Shop and Harold Burnham builder and skipper of Ardelle.

Please visit Fretwaterboatworks.com, Fretwater.com and Fretwaterlines.blogspot.com to learn more about Brad and his work. Geno and Brad talk about dories.Brad meets Harold on Ardelle.

“What’s your name,’ Coraline asked the cat. ‘Look, I’m Coraline. Okay?’
‘Cats don’t have names,’ it said.
‘No?’ said Coraline.
‘No,’ said the cat. ‘Now you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Celebrating the 4th at the Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY.

The Summer Glare

Aboard the Pequod, Ishmael describes the

Japanese Sea as illumined by “freshets of effulgences”

or overflowing streams of brilliant light.

Did he, while in Nantucket, not experience

what we, in Gloucester, find daily in our summer sky?

Here, where the ocean cleanses the air and

allows the sun to reach us without filter;

where most summer days produce an explosion

of light that washes out the brilliant colors

around us and makes us squint to get around town;

Where shadows are not soft and moody, but

are stark and sharp, and walking down a flight

of outside stairs requires most careful placement

of our feet, and where we learn to recognize

people and places by their silhouettes,

and where sun and sand and sea glare so that we

sense the beach, rather than see it, like actors

looking past the footlights to an unseen audience,

and where patterns in the sand go unnoticed

as we walk the shore into the cauldron’s fearsome light.

It’s as if we cannot be trusted with

the airs of summer; that we must be

protected from the magnificence around us

lest we succumb to this abundance of beauty

if we should see all that is within the glare.

© Marty Luster 2012

Hi Ho Hi Ho , Its Off To Work We Go!!
We did dig dig dig dig dig dig dig
In our Mine the whole day through
To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig
Its what we like to do
It aint no trick
To get rich quick
If ya dig dig dig
With a shovel or a stick

Regina (2nd from right) and visitors at this morning’s mug-up at the Yupo Gallery on Madfish Wharf in Rocky Neck.

on the Boulevard.

Don Raphael, a middle school art teacher in Peabody, was in town visiting with family.