Crab season is in full swing ... everyone around here in Astoria is in a state of drool over dungeness crab. It's been a rocky crab season, what with crab fisherman strikes and foul weather, but now things are temporarily under way. And the sea has received her first sacrifice of the season in the form of the Catherine M, all hands presumably lost.
Catherine M Story
After being out of work most of the season, my partner B did work a few times unloading the crab boats in heavy rain and foul weather. His knee-high waders split in several places. I was looking all over the place for new ones, and whined about this to one of our pals, Bobby Wilson, a local artist and former fisherman. As chance would have it, he actually had a pair that had belonged to one of his brothers, and miraculously, they fit B to a T. Crisis resolved, once again with the help of the ever-resourceful Bobby Wilson! There seems to be no end to how helpful and kind people are here in Astoria.
But back to the subject of the treacherous sea ... another fisherman pal, Rodney, told me a clamming story. Razor clams are tricky little critters, as they are normally around the tide line, and they can whiz around under the sand. But everyone around here loves these clams, so they go out in droves to dig them when it's allowed.
Razor clams are certainly unlike the clams I am familiar with in New England, who have the good grace to stay put. And therein lies the problem ... you have to go to the tideline and take a risk to get these damn clams. You have to keep one eye on the sea for rogue waves, and one eye on the clam air-holes and your clam-digging tool. If the clam decides to go dancing off somewhere, you have to move your tool (which looks like a post-hole digger) to try to trap it, but meanwhile you'd better be damn sure you are watching the ocean, too. If a rogue wave comes up, the rip-tides are so vicious that if you wind up in water even up to your knees, you can easily have your feet pulled out from under you, and get pulled out to sea.
Rodney told me the tale of a fisherman pal of his, and his wife, who decided to go clamming one day. They were so busy chasing clams, that even though they both knew better, they did not keep an eye on the sea. A rogue wave did, indeed, come in, and hit them. He made a grab for his wife, but only managed to grab a piece of her sleeve before she was ripped away from him. He dug in his clam-digger, held on, and managed to not get pulled out to sea, but all he was left with was a piece of her sleeve. Her body was never found.
Like they say around here, never turn your back on the sea. And don't turn your eyes away from it, either.
Astoria Photografpix
astoria oregon, dungeness crab, crab, clamming, razor clams, sea
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Blustering in Astoria
Wow! A whole two-day reprieve from gale force winds! I was actually able to walk outside without grabbing onto telephone poles or other deeply-embedded stable objects. So I took advantage of the calm to start cleaning out the store-room upstairs, which is an unspeakable abyss of clutter. I'm finding things in there that are antediluvian. Of course these "antiquities" are in cardboard boxes that are in various states of rather repulsive decomposition.
The task at hand was to save these family treasures (more because I don't know what the hell to do with them than any other reason) by transferring them to sturdy tupperware containers, labelling them, and moving them to the basement where they can once again be consigned to benign neglect, albeit neatly packed and stacked.
Which would then leave the problem of disposing of the fetid cardboard boxes that once contained all these white elephants, and that is where the lack of wind comes into the picture.
If I had tried to stack all those empty festering boxes on the porch before crushing them into the garbage can, the wind would have whisked them to Alaska, Japan, and who the hell knows where, and I would probably wind up under indictment for international toxic waste-dumping. However, since it was a nice calm day, I was able to stack and crush with impunity, and was not attacked, even once, by rollerblading garbage cans with attack-lids.
In the midst of this purge, the handy-dandy window-installer guy called. I'm finally having some thermapane windows put in the lower part of the house, mostly because I am tired of my hands turning blue and going numb when I sit in my coma-chair by the one of the windows. When he did the window estimate, I asked him if he knew anyone who could jack up the back end of the house, which is sinking into oblivion in the tar-pit equivalent of what passes for a back yard. The upstairs ceilings are cracking as the house tilts more north towards the river, and unless I want to wind up with my kitchen in the Columbia River, I need to get the house back on an even keel.
Window-guy called this morning to tell me that yes, indeed, he has found a experienced contractor who can jack up the house, which is very good news. I have asked and asked for a whole year, and everyone tells me how it's done, but nobody wants to do it. So to have an actual live body say they will undertake this task is amazing. And maybe scary. But what the hell, it has to be done. I just hope to hell this guy knows how to do it right. Since everyone SAYS they know how to do it, but nobody WANTS to do it, I don't have a lot of choices. And it really needs to be done soon ... the Maytag guy can't jack up the washing machine any higher to compensate for the slope in the kitchen.
Just to add to the sanity of my day ... my so-called coup of having one of my enhanced photos of Astoria's Liberty Theatre used on the cover of the Astoria Review is a complete debacle. Oh, it's on the cover all right, WITH NO PHOTO CREDIT. Let's just say I am pissed beyond belief. I let the singer who wanted to use my image to promote her concert at the Liberty have it for the cover as a one-time thing as a freebie ... all in the interest of supporting other artists, and all that good-will crap. My ONLY stipulation in our contract was that I get photo credit for however she used my image. So there she is, an image of her super-imposed over my image, right smack on the cover, and not one teeny tiny word of credit for me. She's lucky I'm not a lawyer.
If I wanted to play hardball, I could demand they pull every single edition of the Astoria Review out of circulation for breach of contract. However, I'd rather let the owners of the Shanahan Gallery handle it, as they also got screwed on the photo credit. I know they will make every effort to come to a resolution with the Astoria Review that will stop me from gnashing my teeth. At my age, I can't waste what teeth I have left on gnashing.
The truly inexplicable part of all this, at least in my view, is that there are posters of this same image all over town, and the photo credit is there. So why did the Astoria Review NOT give the credit where credit was due? What the hell were they thinking? ARGH!
Okay, I'm getting too wound up. I'm going to move to my coma-chair by the as-yet-unthermapaned window, let my hands turn blue again, and watch trash TV ... which is soothing enough to make me almost forget that my hands are getting numb.
Astoria Photografpix
astoria oregon, astoria review
The task at hand was to save these family treasures (more because I don't know what the hell to do with them than any other reason) by transferring them to sturdy tupperware containers, labelling them, and moving them to the basement where they can once again be consigned to benign neglect, albeit neatly packed and stacked.
Which would then leave the problem of disposing of the fetid cardboard boxes that once contained all these white elephants, and that is where the lack of wind comes into the picture.
If I had tried to stack all those empty festering boxes on the porch before crushing them into the garbage can, the wind would have whisked them to Alaska, Japan, and who the hell knows where, and I would probably wind up under indictment for international toxic waste-dumping. However, since it was a nice calm day, I was able to stack and crush with impunity, and was not attacked, even once, by rollerblading garbage cans with attack-lids.
In the midst of this purge, the handy-dandy window-installer guy called. I'm finally having some thermapane windows put in the lower part of the house, mostly because I am tired of my hands turning blue and going numb when I sit in my coma-chair by the one of the windows. When he did the window estimate, I asked him if he knew anyone who could jack up the back end of the house, which is sinking into oblivion in the tar-pit equivalent of what passes for a back yard. The upstairs ceilings are cracking as the house tilts more north towards the river, and unless I want to wind up with my kitchen in the Columbia River, I need to get the house back on an even keel.
Window-guy called this morning to tell me that yes, indeed, he has found a experienced contractor who can jack up the house, which is very good news. I have asked and asked for a whole year, and everyone tells me how it's done, but nobody wants to do it. So to have an actual live body say they will undertake this task is amazing. And maybe scary. But what the hell, it has to be done. I just hope to hell this guy knows how to do it right. Since everyone SAYS they know how to do it, but nobody WANTS to do it, I don't have a lot of choices. And it really needs to be done soon ... the Maytag guy can't jack up the washing machine any higher to compensate for the slope in the kitchen.
Just to add to the sanity of my day ... my so-called coup of having one of my enhanced photos of Astoria's Liberty Theatre used on the cover of the Astoria Review is a complete debacle. Oh, it's on the cover all right, WITH NO PHOTO CREDIT. Let's just say I am pissed beyond belief. I let the singer who wanted to use my image to promote her concert at the Liberty have it for the cover as a one-time thing as a freebie ... all in the interest of supporting other artists, and all that good-will crap. My ONLY stipulation in our contract was that I get photo credit for however she used my image. So there she is, an image of her super-imposed over my image, right smack on the cover, and not one teeny tiny word of credit for me. She's lucky I'm not a lawyer.
If I wanted to play hardball, I could demand they pull every single edition of the Astoria Review out of circulation for breach of contract. However, I'd rather let the owners of the Shanahan Gallery handle it, as they also got screwed on the photo credit. I know they will make every effort to come to a resolution with the Astoria Review that will stop me from gnashing my teeth. At my age, I can't waste what teeth I have left on gnashing.
The truly inexplicable part of all this, at least in my view, is that there are posters of this same image all over town, and the photo credit is there. So why did the Astoria Review NOT give the credit where credit was due? What the hell were they thinking? ARGH!
Okay, I'm getting too wound up. I'm going to move to my coma-chair by the as-yet-unthermapaned window, let my hands turn blue again, and watch trash TV ... which is soothing enough to make me almost forget that my hands are getting numb.
Astoria Photografpix
astoria oregon, astoria review
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