Simply Conomo

Sleepy Conomo Point in Essex, before the heat of the day climbs.

By the way, it's low tide!

Simply Conomo

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Simply Ardelle

The schooner Ardelle was launched on July 9, 2011 into the Essex River while spectators watched from the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. The Ardelle, a 50-foot double sawn frame wooden schooner, built by Harold Burnham, was launched using the side launch technique.

Time for the christening!

The Ardelle is leaned on one side and the blocks are removed.
Gravity overtakes friction.

She starts to move!
(And after more than one hour, sitting in the front row, you picked this moment to stand up?)

Time to push. She needs just a bit more persuasion.

S P L A S H !

The ride of a lifetime for this young man.

Simply Ardelle!

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Simply Taken Apart

Two more images from Conomo Point in Essex.
You'll have to watch your footing on this dock.
The first step is a doozy!

Check out this house across the water.
See what happens when two brothers cannot agree?

Simply Taken Apart

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Simply Left

Conomo Point in Essex in early November.
Even the leaves have left from the trees.

Autumn River Song
Written by Li Po
The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.

The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
into the night, singing, they paddle home together.

Sitting Outside at the End of Autumn
Written by Charles Wright

Three years ago, in the afternoons,
I used to sit back here and try
To answer the simple arithmetic of my life,
But never could figure it—
This object and that object
Never contained the landscape
nor all of its implications,
This tree and that shrub
Never completely satisfied the sum or quotient
I took from or carried to,
nor do they do so now,
Though I'm back here again, looking to calculate,
Looking to see what adds up.

Everything comes from something,
only something comes from nothing,
Lao Tzu says, more or less.
Eminently sensible, I say,
Rubbing this tiny snail shell between my thumb and two fingers.
Delicate as an earring,
it carries its emptiness like a child
It would be rid of.
I rub it clockwise and counterclockwise, hoping for anything
Resplendent in its vocabulary or disguise—
But one and one make nothing, he adds,
endless and everywhere,
The shadow that everything casts.

The Death Of Autumn
Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay
When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,—
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again,—but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn!—What is the Spring to me?

Simply Left

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Simply Aground

It is November at Conomo Point in Essex.
The summer has past. Families and visitors have left.
Many of the houses have been closed up until next year.
At low tide, even the sea appears to have journeyed away for the season!

Low-Tide
Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay

These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down
Will show again when the tide is high
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,—
The bottom of the sea once more.
There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty house all day,—
House full of wonderful things and new,
But no fit place for a child to play.

Low Tide
Written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The sea came wooing in mad male fashion;
The strand like a maiden was shy as fair.
He fell at her feet with a cry of passion,
And flung out his arms to clasp her there.

He swore to be true; the bright stars glistened,
And the wind went dallying off with the ships,
While the strand like a maiden leaned and listened
And the sea's wild kisses fell on her lips.

But desolate now in the moonlight's glory
Is lying the pale, deserted strand,
While the sea is telling the same old story
To another shore, in another land.

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Simply Aground

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Simply Damp and Raw

The weather for the week reads as follows:
Today - Partly Cloudy - 48 degrees
Wednesday - Chance of Rain - 46 degrees
Thursday - Light Rain - 45 degrees
Friday - Rain - 52 degrees
Saturday - Chance of Rain - 53 degrees

Great week to be a duck!

Simply Damp and Raw

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Simply BarnStorming

Not all pictures of Cape Ann need to be "seascapes". Here's a beautiful barn just constructed at the Blue Sky Farm in Essex. More details and pictures during it's construction can be found on GoodMorningGloucester.

Simply BarnStorming

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