Roanfolk

Seaworthy

10:25 AM

J. M. W. Turner's "Slave Ship"

About a month after Nick and I started dating, it was Thanksgiving and he was making a week-long trip to spend the holiday with his family in the frozen north. Because he had such a long trip ahead of him, I made him three CD mixes and I think he made me four CDs. All of the music I put on his was basically nothing like his taste in music, but I didn't really know lol. He is sweet enough to say he listened to them anyway because it was a little piece of me. But the CDs he made me were fun, interesting, and sweet. Of course, because Nick does everything right.

Anyway, on this CD he put two songs about ships: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot and "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" by Billy Joel. Two songs for better or worse, I had not heard before. Who decides to put those on his new girlfriend's mix? What his thought process was, I don't know, but it worked and I love them in a completely weird way.

Those two songs are not ones I regularly listen to and it's been some time since I'd thought about them, until I was making fries for dinner, and the brand I was trying out is called "Alexia." I started singing the Billy Joel song, and Nick, who was in the living room, joined in, and before I knew it this song was back in my life again and I'm kind of obsessed. I've fallen down a shipwreck-themed rabbit hole. Follow me:

Downeaster 'Alexa'

While the song is about a fictional person, it decries the plight of the Long Island Baymen (known locally as Bubbies). The Baymen represent a dying breed of people who, like farmers, work the environment to provide for their families, honorable men and women forced out of their livelihoods as much by the creep of urban society and government regulation as the decline of fish stocks. Joel was always sympathetic to the hard working men who worked the sea, even getting arrested during a protest supporting the Baymen. -Wikipedia, a trusted source

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Carrying a full cargo of ore pellets with Captain Ernest M. McSorley in command, she embarked on her ill-fated voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, near Duluth, on the afternoon of November 9, 1975. En route to a steel mill near Detroit, Fitzgerald joined a second freighter, SS Arthur M. Anderson. By the next day, the two ships were caught in a severe storm on Lake Superior, with near hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet high. Shortly after 7:10 p.m., Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian waters 530 feet deep, about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—a distance Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at her top speed.
Although Fitzgerald had reported being in difficulty earlier, no distress signals were sent before she sank; Captain McSorley's last message to Anderson said, "We are holding our own." Her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered. -Wikipedia, ironclad

These things are far too expensive for what they are, so I won't bother linking. They're from Polyvore.

Do you have any songs you like but don't know why?

art

Art Inspiration: Portraits

12:24 PM

I'm currently in the midst of trying to find cheap ways to add some flair to our boring apartment. For a while we thought we'd get a house soon, but now we've decided that cheap rent is the best way to save up and pay down on debt versus buying a house and sweating every time we want to go have some fun with money. I'm glad we're staying put for a little bit longer, but now these off-white blank walls are starting to make me want to climb walls.

All this is to say: I want to make a portrait to hang on the walls. Phew. Anyway, it's taking forever to figure out exactly what I want to do and can also execute. Here's some inspiration I've compiled so far.