Figure 1 – Moby Dick meets Georgia O’Keefe, Salem MA, Derby Wharf.(c) DE Wolf 2020.

This morning on the wharf, someone had dragged the leviathan fish skeleton of Figure 1 up from the beach and onto the jetty wall. It is kind of a cross: Moby Dick meets Georgia O’Keefe. The grotesque seeming leviathan of the figure is a thing of childhood. Now, we believe we know almost all there is to know about the see. Not so in the time of boyhood and not so in the time of Melville. It is a place of great magic, where strange, yet wonderful things, are set to wash up on beaches, and such things make one wonder again.

“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

Figure 1 – Helicopter, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020

The other morning there was a confluence of new helicopters circle Salem after a traffic accident. The sky was a perfect summer’s morning filled with cumulostratus clouds, and I was struck by the dance of the helicopters between the clouds and, perhaps, more so by the fragile skeleton of the helicopter set against the domineering soaring clouds. And of course, the shut down has given us gorgeous blue skies – a world with diminished pollution.

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

– Leonardo DaVinci

Canon t2i with EF70-200 F4L USM lens at 200mm ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Poppy, Salem. MA (c) DE Wolf 2020

Back in May I commented about a Memorial Day like No OIther, evoking, of course, the poppies of Flanders Field. A couple of weeks ago I photographed the poppy of Figure 1 by the Ferry dock in Salem, MA. I love poppies and always go out of the way searching for them – here after permission entering a private garden.

Poppies are associated as  a symbol of sleep, peace, and death: Sleep, obviously, because the opium extracted from them is a sedative, and death because of the blood-red color of the red poppy.  This goes back to Greek and Roman myths, where poppies were used as offerings to the dead, those who slept eternally. We cannot deny either their luscious shape or seductive and intense color. 

This symbolism appears in both the book and the movie The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. There, a magical poppy field threatens Dorothy and her entourage with endless sleep. Will they be thwarted in their quest. All heroes must be challenged with temptation. Who can forget the cackling voice of Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West? She was really mean and scary to young Davie’s imagination.

“And now my beauties, something with poison in it I think, with poison in it, but attractive to the eye and soothing to the smell . . . poppies, poppies, poppies will put them to sleep.”
—The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Figure 1 – General George S. Patton’s yacht the “When and If” moored in Salem Harbor, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

In December 1944 the Germans launched a massive counterattack on the advancing Allied Armies, known as the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, thereby encircling the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, Belgium. General Eisenhower order the Third Army, under the command of General George Patton, to relieve Bastogne.  Advance elements of the Third Army reached Bastogne on December 26. Patton’s forces continued to push the Germans back, and by the end of January 1945, the Third Army had reached the German frontier. On March 1 they took the German city of Trier. Famously Patton received a message instructing him to bypass the city because taking it would certainly require the efforts of four divisions. Patton famously replied, “Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back?” Such is the legend of the sometime controversial American general known as “Old Blood and Guts“.

In 1939, before the War, Patton commissioned yacht designer John Alden to build a yacht, which he named the “When and If.”  It was built by boatbuilder F.F. Pendleton in Wiscasset, Maine. Patton said that “When the war is over, and If I live through it, Bea and I are going to sail her around the world.” Tragically this never happened, because during the U.S. occupation of Germany, George Patton was on a hunting trip, when he was critically injured in a low-speed car accident. He died from his injuries on December 21, 1945.

The When and If has now been fully and gloriously restored, and I was delighted to find it moored at the Ferry Wharf this past weekend in Salem, MA. Figure 1 is an image that I took this past Friday of the ship, and Figure 2 I took this morning having discovered its ceremonial skipper taking in the sunshine onboard. “Don’t take a leak on the teak!”

Thanks to Kip Sluder for alerting me to the significance of the When and If.

Figure 2 – Ceremonial skipper of the When and If, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Figure 1 – Black lives matter protest, Salem Commons, Salem, MA June 6, 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

“…Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”

John Donne

Figure I – Derby Light looking towards Marblehead in a morning fog, Salem, MA./ (c) DE Wolf 2020.

They other morning Salem Harbor was filled with fog and I took the image of Figure 1 of the Derby Light. The quality of the scene reminded me of the recent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum of John Thomson’s stunning nineteenth century carbon prints of China. It is hard to remember when the museum, one of Salem’s gems, was still open. I am happy to report that I have seen signs that following Governor Baker’s plan it will reopen soon, see Figure 2. In particular is the saturation of the sky caused by the ultraviolet sensitivity of the wet collodion emulsions. Such a tour d’force to produce. And you will note that often Thomson would paint in the subtle hint of clouds. Perhaps this image of the light house belies the fundamental fogginess of the state of our nation.Although in some sense things seem crystal clear.  

Figure 2 – Signs of reopening at the Peabody Essex Museum after the first COVID wave, June 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Figure 1 – Maple helicopters on a field of mulch, Salem, MA, May 2020. (c) DEWolf 2020.

“When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush; Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude; Of golden chalices to humming-birds; And silken-wing’d insects of the sky.”

William Cullen Bryant

Well, it is almost June and the season of chartreuse is just about over, The maples flowered for a very long time this year, timid against the viral threat perhaps. Now they have gone to seed, producing thousands of little green maple helicopters. These so delight all children and the children in all of us. I took Figure 1 the other morning. There was just the right confluence of maple and mulch to produce a mini-field of these delicate fliers.

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Figure 1 – The Brookhouse Home for Aged Women, Salem, MA, Memorial Day in the time of the COVID Isolation 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, and we pause to remember the heroes of wars past and present. On this Memorial Day we also remember the heroes of our war against the COVID-19 virus. We honor and remember them and we rededicate ourselves to truth, reason, science, and democracy. Come November we will be in the fight of our generation.

The image of Figure 1 is of Brookhouse Home for Aged Women in Salem, Massachusetts. Brookhouse Home has stood on the corner of Derby and Orange streets, right next to the Custom House, since 1861, The Brookhouse has served as a haven for elderly women in need of housing and care for a century and a half. It was originally the property of Salem shipping tradesman Benjamin W. Crowninshield (1777-1811). It was purchased by Robert Brookhouse in 1854. Brookhouse, who eventually donated it to the Association for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Women in Salem. 

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you, from falling hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
― John McCrae

Figure 1 – Lilium in the time of COVID-19, May 2020, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Ok, it is the Sunday before Memorial Day in the United States. So I am going to take a breath and think about Lilies. Of course, there are many great lily quotes. But I am going to focus on the the fact that skies are bluer and the sunshine brighter due to the decrease in carbon emissions, due, in turn, to the quarantine and isolation. Climate change deniers take note. Nature is, for a deadly moment, a bit more beautiful. The flowers and Earth might be willing to speak more clearly to us. We are made to hear their song, but are out of practice.  In Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found there, there is a garden of live flowers.

 ‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice… ‘I wish you could talk!’ ‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: ‘when there’s anybody worth talking to.”