Funny… That first panel has totally different meanings for me now, than when I was drawing it.

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Here in America, it’s Labor Day Weekend, which may explain why it’s gone a little quiet lately on the Lorelei. Not many of you at your computers, these fine last days of Summer?

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FOUR PAINTINGS CALLED “THE LOVE LETTER”

AND ONE WAITING TO BE WRITTEN

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Ah, the epistolary pleasures of times gone by…

A few 19th century moments, perhaps not all great on their own, but put together, they build the mood a little…

1834: “Love Letter” by Thomas Sully.

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1872: “Love Letter,” by Emile Levy

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1886: “The Love Letter,” by Frank Richards

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1899 (?) “The Love Letter,” by Marcus Stone

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And this one, which I like far better, also from Marcus Stone, called “Olivia”:

I wonder: what letter is she about to receive? Any offerings, O Fellow Twainers? I know a number of you are writers. How about together we send some time-traveling mail to Miss Olivia?

It’s estimated to be over 500 years old. In 1680, when Bedford was established, the Oak was already an ancient meeting place for Native Americans. Spanning 120 feet, its main branches are themselves like enormous trunks, and host to a myriad of micro-ecologies of moss and weeds.

I was going to snap a few pictures for you, but a sick child kept me home. These are taken from, in order of appearance—New York City Pictures (I think), Jaime Martorano, Daniel Shearer, and Rita Baunok,

You do know that trees speak to one another, right? And if you befriend one, especially an elder one, the others will know of you too? I recommend paying your respects to the Bedford Oak, and you may find a strange magical welcome everywhere you go along the Hudson Valley.

And a nap under the oak will afford you vivid dreams in all different eras it has witnessed, if your mind is so inclined.

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Back to Secrets and Mysteries of the River Hudson…

Twain and Pearl weren’t far from the river in the above scene, in a large meadow, which in 1890, would become part of the Rockefeller Estate. To this day, the Rockefeller Preserve in Pocantico Hills has not changed much. Old stone walls and bridle paths criss-cross the many acres of forest and open fields.

The above photo was taken from this little write-up, which hints at some of the many legends surrounding the area, better known as Sleepy Hollow.

Yesterday evening I decided to go snap a few pictures in Sleepy Hollow for you.

The Pocantico stream wends alongside the Three Witches trail, and has lovely refreshing and healing properties.

Follow it South, and it comes around a hill…

…where a path lined with gnarly sycamores skirts an enchanted brook (here odd colored lights can be seen at dawn and dusk.)

And near this brook is a huge meadow, where Twain and Pearl may have been lying together in June 1879.

Pocantico Hills is home to strange Wood People. I’m not sure if they’re spirits or some very peculiar organic life. But you may find yourself having a conversation with a tree-like person, and think nothing of it until you return home and think about it, or tell some unbelieving friend. I haven’t seen the Wood People mentioned in any folk tales, other than in Beaverton’s book.

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And a little update: see the EXTRAS page for our growing Sailor Twain playlists. It has some of the suggestions you’ve kindly left in recent discussions. Please do keep them coming. I’ll be looking to add music and songs that relate not only for themes, but also for moods.

When the Lorelei docks next, would you like a steward to call a Growler or a Phaeton for you? Or perhaps a Hansom is waiting already?

In 1887, there was a staggering variety of carriages on the streets—more than today’s automobile brands. That’s a Hansom above, in a painting by our friend Childe Hassam.

That is the Basket Phaeton. Elegant, right?

Or you might have the means to build a custom coach for yourself (taken from this lovely online museum):

They say you can tell a lot about a person from their carriage… (Or is that about Good Carriage?) So what would you choose to ride in? Are you more a Surrey or a Clarence Brougham type?

Here is a little window shopping for you…

Now something that doesn’t first come to mind as our 1887 New York romance unfolds—is the humongous manure problem that horse-power brings with it. This interesting little NYTimes article and its links hint at what 150,000 horses producing 25 pounds of doodoo a day might have been like. Nasty.

We don’t often think of it, but it was a major problem big cities could barely contend with. The New Yorker last year had a climate change article which started with the 1880′s NYC manure problem:

(…) the city’s production of horse droppings ran to at least forty-five thousand tons a month. George Waring, Jr., who served as the city’s Street Cleaning Commissioner, described Manhattan as stinking “with the emanations of putrefying organic matter.” Another observer wrote that the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.” In the early part of the century, farmers in the surrounding counties had been happy to pay for the city’s manure, which could be converted into rich fertilizer, but by the later part the market was so glutted that stable owners had to pay to have the stuff removed, with the result that it often accumulated in vacant lots, providing breeding grounds for flies.

The problem just kept piling up until, in the eighteen-nineties, it seemed virtually insurmountable. One commentator predicted that by 1930 horse manure would reach the level of Manhattan’s third-story windows.

This photo hints at the “carpeting” (taken from here.)

Takes away from the romantic feel of 1887, I know. But only a little. Makes you run for the river, doesn’t it.

]]> http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain105/feed/ 11 http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain104/ http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain104/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:01:00 +0000 Mark http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain104/

Hello!

Thanks, all of you who’ve sent in suggestions for the Sailor Twain playlists, from Debussy and Verdi to The Decembrists and more! We’ll be returning to the onboard music soon…

A couple of links to Sailor Twain in the media: one from the Tarrytown Patch, a local Hudson River news site, and an interview by John A. Walsh, where you can also discover his own historical webcomic “Go Home, Paddy.”

Masters of Black and White:

Ba Da Shan Ren

You may remember an earlier entry with one of my favorite painters of all time: Ba Da Shan Ren, also known as Zhou Da and many other names he took on and dropped off in the course of his life. He was a 17th Century Chinese mystic, one of the greatest practitioners of Shu Fa, or The Way of the Brush. Here are two of his chops, or stamp seals… Besides their elegance, I find the translations most intriguing, don’t you? (All these images are from In Pursuit Of Heavenly Harmony.)

I look at Bada’s artwork sometimes when I feel the need to slow down, to make space for something else, in our speedy, crowded world, these crowded lives of ours. So many words, so many dealings, so many details to tend to, so many impressions in one day in New York City. Our modern life can make us so full of noise, and just plain full. I like the Christian idea that JC had to be born in a manger because everywhere the inns were full. In Buddhist and Taoist terms, it’s an attainment to create a vacancy, inside.

Being vacant can allow something to rush into that space. It’s like that for us, and it’s like that for our work. I wonder sometimes about my projects, not in terms of conquest, or of filling up something, but in terms of creating a space that might attract a certain something. Some of the most magical moments with art seem to be in that, not so much what I cleverly contrived.

And sometimes, in looking at Bada Shanren, I feel like my mind brings something to it. It’s not all there on the scroll, on the page; somehow it’s in the meeting with it, what it allows, what it makes space for, what it invites. That’s it. What it invites.

This is a weird entry, perhaps, but maybe some of you will find some nourishing quality in it, and the others won’t mind.

The following four compositions are part of a series. What do they have in common?

]]> http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain104/feed/ 16 http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain103/ http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain103/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:01:00 +0000 Mark http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain103/

(… Okay so maybe not leave too much to your imagination! You being such good people…) * Time for a little onboard music, what do you say? Let’s begin the Sailor Twain playlists. As we update them, they’ll be kept in the EXTRAS section. Please join in with suggestions. Proposed categories for the first playlists: [...]]]>

(… Okay so maybe not leave too much to your imagination! You being such good people…)

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Time for a little onboard music, what do you say?

Let’s begin the Sailor Twain playlists. As we update them, they’ll be kept in the EXTRAS section. Please join in with suggestions.

Proposed categories for the first playlists:

1. Rivers, Ships, and Sailors

2. Twain Themes

3. A Little Operatic Grandeur

4. Other Onboard Pleasures

Let’s start with a tune for each of the first three:

For playlist number 1, Rivers, Ships, and Sailors:

From the soundtrack of the movie “Amélie,” by Yann Thiersen, this is called “A quai.” There’s a side to the river which is not peaceful and majestic, but rather restless, relentless, and this puts me in mind of it. Plus the rest of this soundtrack has some distinctly French essence, which belongs in Sailor Twain’s ingredients list.

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For playlist number 2, Twain Themes:

Next, La Soñadora, by Enya, on her album The Memory of Trees. I recommend listening to this with full stereo on good headphones, late at night, after a couple glasses of Hudson Valley wine, perhaps while writing something, should you wish to be transported.

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For playlist number 3, “A Little Operatic Grandeur” playlist:

This is from a group from the Azores, called Madredeus: O Pastor, from their eponymus album.

A few flavors… More to come.

]]> http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain103/feed/ 17

A few hundred of these have gone out, mostly the second one, the ticket.

What would you suggest, for inviting new friends aboard the Lorelei? I may end up having two or three different styles to choose from.

So questions:

a) Who for?

b) What should it invite them to? To come aboard the Lorelei? To read a story? To join a happening thing with others of kind?

c) What visuals? What would be most appetizing? Alluring? Irresistible?

d) Invite them where? To the current page? Or the beginning?

Thanks for the use of your good minds!

—m.

Isaac the Pirate takes what is sometimes a very tired genre—the Pirate story—and reinvents, subverts, enriches and generally enhances it with complex characters, unusual storytelling, and a superb line drawing that is much copied but never emulated.

Many comics artists have lovely loose pencil drawings that are full of life and expressive as can be—but then they go to ink them. And it all goes inhibited, wooden, tight, dead. Not so Christophe Blain. His pencils range from tight to very loose, but the inking stage is always the liveliest, the most vigorous, theatrical, even.

He also explores subtle shifts in mood, and takes time to develop his characters’ mental and emotional states, in a way that I find most pleasurable to read. Above, a character called “Chemin Vert” is falling for someone in his employ, and hoping to find her. But she’s staying away.

That’s her. Alice. She started out as a secondary character, and her storyline blossoms into a major thread of Isaac the Pirate.

And there’s Isaac in this XVIIIth Century yarn on a romantic shore leave from the pirate ship he was tricked into joining.

Blain is without compare.

Who is this friendly face, you ask?

That, Fellow Twainers, is Anthony Comstock.

Although Comstock’s deeds don’t have anything to do with the above page or the present chapter, what he made his life’s mission will occasionally weave itself into our Hudson River yarn. Once again, here’s an excerpt from Luc Sante’s excellent Low Life, with links and images added in for our onboard enjoyment and discussions:

“. . . Anthony Comstock (1844–1915), incarnated the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock was, in the name of moral reform and the advancement of purity, a punitive monster who boasted that he had hounded sixteen people to their death by suicide and misadventure. His absolutism and terrier-like fixation with rooting out anything remotely objectionable eventually earned him a word, “comstockery,” use of which is only now dying out. Comstock grew up in Connecticut and began his career at eighteen, by opening the spigots of kegs in a New Canaan liquor store, and went on to enter the employ of the YMCA. He began the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873, got it recognized as a quasi-official body during Republican and reform administrations, and under its aegis arrested at least three thousand persons for obscenity and destroyed some 160 tons of literature under various pretexts.

He was best known for his entanglements with famous people of his day. Some credit him with having pressured the Department of the Interior to fire Walt Whitman; he brought legal proceedings against George Bernard Shaw for Mrs. Warren’s Profession (it was Shaw who subsequently coined “comstockery”) and against Paul Chabas for his painting September Morn, a sentimental, hardly salacious tableau that is perhaps the most famous barroom nude of all time; he got the city to ban Margaret Sanger‘s works on family planning.”