LOWE LEAVES FOR BOSTON

here is another  excerpt from the novel

THE BALLOONIST

The Story of T. S. C. Lowe - Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force

Stephen Poleskie

 

IN THE SUMMER OF 1847, T. S. C. Lowe’s father decided, as his family was growing again, and his finances were still not doing well, they should move to Randolph. This town had been Clovis’s birthplace, and he had dreams of returning to a farm there and opening up a guest house.

           Thaddeus  listened patiently to his father’s schemes, but was secretly making plans of his own, knowing it was time for him to set off. He realized it would not be easy to leave as he loved his family. But he wanted to go to Boston, like his brother Joseph. After considerable discussion, the matter was settled. Although he was sorry to see his son go off, Thaddeus’s father wasted no time in talk, but agreed to write a letter to Joseph. Hopefully,Joseph would find an apprenticeship for his younger brother as a boot and shoe cutter. The father reminded his son if things didn’t work out, he could always return to the steady habits of home.

           With the passing of each summer’s day, Thaddeus became more impatient when Joseph’s answer had not returned. Moreover, T. S. C. Lowe was not sure that he even wanted to follow in the cobbler’s vocation. Although he thought not unkindly of his father and brother, Thaddeus considered himself much more intelligent then they were. It was a difficult decision to make, but he felt he had more to do with his life. He had been brought up to believe that duty to ones family came before duty to ones self. Nevertheless, one moonless night Thaddeus packed his kit, and slid down a rope, secretly leaving without saying goodbye.

           In August, 1847, toting his carpet bag on his shoulder and with two half eagles tied in a sack hidden under his shirt, young Thaddeus Lowe began his journey from his home in Jefferson to Portland Maine, more than 100 miles away.  Lowe walked the dugways, and hitched rides on Owensboros with farmers, who often gave him food and a place to sleep in exchange for doing chores. At that time, $10 was an “almighty sum” for a boy of fifteen. Thaddeus had been saving this money since he was twelve. Despite his unusual height, and ungainly appearance, Lowe moved with a fluid grace, a skill he had learned from playing with Indian children when he was young, and hunting with them when he got older. Considered a clever lad, and a hard worker, Lowe had never had any difficulty finding jobs, and was good about saving his money.

           When he finally arrived in Portland a month later, T.S.C. Lowe was overwhelmed. He had never seen so many buildings. Red-brick structures as tall as three stories lined the streets leading down to the wharves. The waterfront bustled with activity. Numerous drays and wagons rattled to and fro over the cobbled thoroughfares, the drivers shouting and fanning their horses with enthusiasm. There was commerce everywhere, with hawkers and peddlers doing business right out on the sidewalks as well as in the shops. The fishmongers shouted from their carts, and blew loud on their horns, selling porgies at five cents a pound. The salt air smelled of drying fish, wood, leather, tea, tar, tanning acid, and the dozens of other odors of cargoes coming and going to various ports around the world. After some searching, the awed mountain boy finally found a place to stay in exchange for doing odd jobs while he waited for a ship that would take him to Boston. A few days later he learned of a lumber boat going that way, and arranged to have a berth on it as a cabin boy.

           Threatening clouds hung over the harbor as Lowe’s ship set sail the very next day. Never having been on the water before, the up and down movement, as the old hull creaked and groaned across the swells, did its best to upset the boy’s digestion. He spent the better part of his first morning with his head hanging over the rail. But Lowe soon became used to the boat’s motion. He loved the surge of power as the sails caught the wind, plowing the bow through the white waves, and the sudden change of direction as the boom came around causing the hull to tip, and the boat tacked off on a new heading. He decided that if he wasn’t to become a balloonist he would be a sailor. However, by the end of the trip, Lowe had set his choice firmly in favor of ballooning. The vast number of rats scurrying back and forth between the ship’s deck and hold, which one of his duties was to contain, and which he was told were an integral part of any sea voyage, had turned his mind to the clear skies.

           After a sea voyage that lasted the better part of three days, young Lowe finally arrived in Boston. If he had been impressed by the city of Portland, Boston must have seemed to the boy to be the center of the world. The harbor was choked with boats of all sizes and descriptions. Masts towered above water as sloops, frigates, and whalers lay at anchor. Many ships in the vast armada were flying flags from nations which Thaddeus, even with his vast knowledge of geography, could not identify. The lumber boat had to wait in the harbor for a full day for a slip to be vacated.

           When his ship finally docked Thaddeus Lowe ran down the ramp, relieved to be on land. He had no intention of ever going back to sea. Stories he heard from members of the crew of young lads being shanghaied and forced to go on voyages of sometimes two or three years, during which they were flogged for disobedience, had left him terrified.

           Looking around him, the new arrival realized that he had been ridiculous to even consider remaining in Coos County. How could anyone with an interest in life remain there for long when there was such a stage as Boston? Lowe’s eyes danced about the many people engaged in diverse activities, from lawyers to chimney sweeps. The narrow, crooked streets hummed with the gabble of merchants, market men, ladies, priests, strumpets, street urchins, soldiers, and sailors; and rumbled with the clatter of horses, oxen, carts, coaches, broughams, and cabriolets. He could not stop long enough in any one place to catch his thoughts before his senses were assailed by some new experience or idea. Here, Thaddeus told himself, was where he would make his reputation.   

           The directions Lowe had received from a passer-by to his brother’s cobbler shop led through a labyrinth of dark and winding streets, lined with dank cavernous warehouses, where it appeared that even at midday the sun never greeted the ground. He wondered if he had been purposely led astray. The newcomer did not need to use his imagination to suspect that this neighborhood, the turf of rival street gangs, was not a place a person ventured into at night, especially if one was alone. To Thaddeus everyone appeared suspicious of everyone else; and he himself became the subject of numerous inquiring glances.

           After a long, but for Thaddeus fascinating, trek through the tangle of narrow, foul smelling, streets Lowe found his brother’s place of work. Joseph asked his employer for the rest of the afternoon off. The two left the shop and set off walking, with Joseph catching up on the news from home. Thaddeus told of his falling out with his father over not wanting to move back to Randolph, and of their reconciliation, and how he had left without telling anyone. Out of indifference, or perhaps respect for their father, Joseph listened while saying little. What his thoughts were he did not divulge. The two boys had always tended to side with their mother in disagreements anyway. To them Alpha Lowe was an honored and beloved woman, possessed of exceptional energy, a strong will, and high moral principals, who they loved deeply. While Thaddeus had yet to take a serious interest in the opposite sex, these were traits he would discover in the woman who, after the briefest of courtships, he would eventually marry.

           In a short while, the brothers came to a pleasant area with a green meadow and many trees. Overwhelmed by his rapid passage through what must have been the heart of the city, Thaddeus allowed as how he felt more comfortable now that they had arrived in the country. Joseph laughed, explaining they had not reached the outskirts, but were still in Boston, only in an enormous park called the Common,that sat right in the middle of town. Displaying his newly acquired urbanity, Joseph led his brother to the other side of the Common, where he showed the newcomer the wonder of Beacon Hill, lined with its elegant red brick houses, that led in orderly rows up to the massive yellow dome of the State House. Setting his bag down to admire the setting, Thaddeus asked his brother how much farther to their house?

           The would-be shoemaker was disappointed when Joseph revealed they were merely “sight-seeing” in Boston. Thaddeus was being apprenticed to a Mr. William Otis Nash, who had taught his brother shoemaking. The boy who had come so far to get his start in the big city, would be living further down the south shore in the small town of Hingham. Sensing his brother’s disappointment, Joseph reminded Thaddeus, he couldn’t expect to start at the top, and should be grateful, as Nash, French, and Company was one of the best boot and shoe manufacturers in New England. He assured his younger brother that he would not come out on the “little end of the horn” in this situation. For Thaddeus, who had banked so much, against his better judgment, on working with his brother, it was a painful revelation. He went silent, torn between elation and despair over what might become of him.

******************************************************

Stephen Poleskie did a signing of copies of The Balloonist at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. on Saturday, June 2, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist, T. S. C. Lowe, Civil War,

Tags:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BALLOONING

From the prologue to THE BALLOONIST, a novel by Stephen Poleskie

A Brief History of Ballooning, or How War Was Taken to the Air

IT COULD BE ARGUED THAT the balloon was the most significant of mankind’s achievements. For the first time ever, a human being was able to leave the surface of the Earth and travel in the skies.

The French brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier had long been considered the originators of the hot-air balloon. However, recent research has revealed that on August 8, 1709, almost three-quarters of a century before the Montgolfiers, a Brazilian priest, Bartolomeu de Gusmao demonstrated a model hot-air balloon at the court of John V of Portugal. An artist of the time, Bernardino de Sousa Pereira, recorded the event in a painting now in the museum of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. According to one Salvadoro Ferreira, who witnessed the feat, the small balloon was constructed of thick paper and inflated by hot air,the fire being contained in an clay bowl suspended below the neck of the envelope. Other reliable witnesses included: Queen Maria Anna, the Papal Nuncio, and Cardinal Conti, who later became Pope Innocent III. It was reported that the balloon reached a height of twelve feet before two panicked valets, fearing it would set the royal drapes on fire, used their staffs to batter the strange flying thing to the ground.      

On April 25, 1783, the brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier, paper makers by trade, successfully flew their first balloon at Annonay near Lyons in France. Propelled by hot air from a wood and straw fire, the balloon was reported to have risen to a height of about 1000 feet and traveled horizontally 3000 feet before the hot air cooled and it fell to earth. They had begun their experiments years earlier with tiny paper bags and the smoke from their fireplace.

Two months later, the brothers gave another public demonstration at Annonay with an improved balloon that rose to a height of 6000 feet. This ascension was witnessed by a visiting American diplomat greatly interested in scientific discovery, Benjamin Franklin, who described the event in his journal. The success of this balloon resulted in a summons from the king himself, Louis XVI, who wished to see the new invention.

For their command performance the Montgolfiers constructed an even larger balloon, and hung a basket underneath it. In the basket would be the world’s first aerial voyagers: a cock, a duck, and a sheep.

This balloon was launched at Versailles on September 19, 1783 before the astonished gaze of King Louis, Marie Antoinette, and their court. The brightly decorated craft climbed to approximately 1800 feet, and, carried by the winds, flew two miles before coming down. When the balloon was found the cock was discovered to be somewhat the worse for his adventure. Learned minds of the time speculated that the cock, while admittedly a bird, but not used to flights higher than three feet, had been weakened by the great altitude to which the balloon had ascended. However, further investigation suggested that it was more likely that the poor fowl had been trampled on by the overly excited sheep. The avid Ben Franklin was also present at this demonstration.

King Louis was so impressed with the flight that he awarded the brothers the Order of Saint Michel. From that time on all hot-air balloons would bear the title montgolfieres.

Having demonstrated that it was safe for animals to venture into the skies, the Montgolfier brothers concluded that human beings should be next. The brothers constructed another, larger, balloon specifically for this purpose. This magnificent new balloon was over 49 feet in diameter, and superbly decorated in a blue and gold color scheme, emblazoned with the royal cipher, signs of the zodiac, eagles, and smiling suns. Below its neck was a wicker gondola capable of holding two men, and the fire necessary to keep the the envelope inflated.

Louis XVI, worrying over the experiments success, proffered that a couple of prisoners, who had been sentenced to death, might volunteer to fly in the montgolfier  if they were offered a chance of freedom. However, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, a man who had been a very active supporter of this project from the start, protested that the honor of being the first person to fly should not be given to a criminal.

Pilatre de Rozier won his argument and, on October 15,1783, made a tethered flight to a height of 85 feet. By carefully tending the straw fire in the gondola, the prototype aeronaut was able to remain airborne for a full four and one-half minutes.

Such was the progress of technology in those days that a mere seven months after their first successful attempt at launching a balloon, the Montgolfiers were preparing to put two men into the skies for an untethered flight.

 Having proven himself as an aviator, Monsieur de Rozier was now ready to take up a passenger. On November 21,1783, de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes became the first men to be carried in free flight by a balloon. They made their ascent, before cheering crowds, from the garden of the Chateau La Muette in the Bois Boulogne, Paris. A southerly wind carried them five miles in 25 minutes, before the first aerial voyage in history ended in a farmer’s field. A dream of 5000 years had been realized; man had safely flown through the skies.

Unfortunately, two years later, on July 15,1785, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, the first man to fly, would also become the first man killed in a flying accident when a balloon he was using in an attempt to cross the English Channel, inflated with hot air and hydrogen, caught on fire and crashed in flames.   

Despite their achievements the Montgolfier brothers, with their hot-air balloons, were beginning to feel competition from the phlogiston-filled balloons of Professor Jacques A. C. Charles. The lighter-than-air gas phlogiston would later be renamed hydrogen by the French chemist Lavoisier.

On August 27,1783, Professor Charles successfully launched a small, unmanned phlogiston-filled balloon from the Champs-de-Mars in Paris. This balloon was airborne for about 45 minutes before coming to earth at Gonesse some 15 miles away, where it was attacked by panic-stricken villagers wielding pitch forks who, believing it to be some strange device of the devil, were not satisfied until the balloon’s rubberized silk skin had been reduced to shreds.

Benjamin Franklin, by then a rabid follower of the balloon experiments being conducted in France, had viewed Professor Charles’s launch. Franklin was dismayed to heard many of those in the crowd around him dismiss the balloon as being of no practical value. Even members of the French military present at the ascent, with whom Franklin discussed the balloon’s flight, failed to recognize the potential of lighter-than-air craft as an instrument of war. One officer remarked on the balloon’s qualities as an entertaining toy and laughingly asked, "Of what use is it?" Franklin, always quick to grasp the significanceof any new invention, made his now-famous reply: "Sir, of what use is a new born baby?"  

Following his great success with his model, Professor Charles designed and built a man-carrying balloon. On December 1,1783, the professor and one of the two brothers who had assisted him in constructing the skin, Marie-Noel Robert, became the first men to fly in a hydrogen-filled balloon, ascending from theTuileries Gardens in Paris before a crowd estimated to number 400,000.

On September 15, 1784, Vincent Lunardi, secretary to the Neopolitian Ambassador, rose from the grounds of the Honorable Artillery Company to become the first aerial voyager in England. He described his balloon in letters to his guardian, Chevalier Gherado Campagni, rejecting the Montgolfier’s method of inflating the balloon with hot air as being too dangerous in that it required a constant fire being carried aloft to be applied to the contents of the envelope. Lunardi chose instead to use inflammable air produced by the action of vitriolic acid on metals or semimetals.

The greatest of the early balloon journeys was the first aerial crossing of the English Channel by the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and an American Dr. John Jefferies in a hydrogen balloon. On January 7, 1785, they took off from Dover, Kent in a balloon which had only a small margin of lift considering the weight of the two men and their equipment. At one stage of the flight the balloon began losing height so rapidly that the aeronauts, to avoid going into the water, threw overboard everything they could to lighten it. They conspicuously arrived in France wearing only their undergarments.    

Newspaper accounts of the accomplishments of the Montgolfier brothers, Professor Charles,and other balloonists of the time, generated tremendous interest in the balloon as a sporting vehicle, and a money-maker for showmen and daredevils. Ballooning became such a fad that "even women" trusted going aloft in the fascinating new conveyance, the first woman to fly being a Madame Thible, who ascended from Lyons in a montgolfiere  with the French painter Fleurant.

Artists and craftsmen also got in on the act, decorating every conceivable object, from cabinets and bureaus to vases and snuff boxes, with images of balloons. Some wealthy people even arranged "balloon rooms," where everything including the chandeliers was decorated with or took the shape of a balloon.

Several days after Pilatre de Rozier’s first flight with a passenger in the Montgolfier hot-air balloon, Professor Charles had also taken up a passenger, one Andre Giraud de Vilette. Afterwards, in a letter to the Journal de Paris, de Vilette commented on the ease with which he had been able to view Paris and its surroundings. He wrote:

         From this moment I was convinced that this apparatus, costing but little, could be made very useful to an army for discoveringthe positions of its enemy, his movements, hisadvances. and his dispositions. . . .

In the not too distant future, Napoleon Bonaparte, consummate dreamer as well as master military strategist, would become the first commander to recognize the possibilities of the airship as an instrument of war, and form an air corps using balloons.

However, after Napoleon’s experiments little further thought would be given to using balloons as part of a military strategy, even though the idea went back, at least on paper, to 1670. In that year the Jesuit priest, Father Francesco de Lana-Terzi designed a balloon-ship, which was the precursor of lighter-than-air craft. He doubted that God would ever allow it to be built as, he perceived its immense capacity for destruction. With uncanny foresight, de Lana-Terzi described the ease with which his balloon-ship could bomb fortresses, fleets, and cities.

No nation would successfully establish a corps of war balloons until the American Civil War. This would be accomplished, although not without considerable opposition and difficulty, by the balloonist Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe. 

*****************************************************************************************

The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe, Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force by Stephen Poleskie Category: Fiction / Historical Format: Hardcover, 368 pages On Sale: May 2007 Price: $24.95 ISBN: 978-1-929490-27-1

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist,

LOST BOOTS

A Short Story by

Pamela Goddard

THE MOST NOTICABLE THING about him was that he was never there.  He left traces of himself behind; a tin can from lunch, maybe a dropped rag, a sparse trail of cigarette butts.  One time it even happened that way with his boots.  He just walked out of them along a twisting highway.  By the time anyone noticed any of these bits of debris, he was long gone.
    He was a drifter.  A loner.  He'd been drifting so long, he could no
longer recall when or why it started.  There were vague memories of a
family, or something like a family.  But really the memories were
constructed out of a sense for a need of logic in his life.  People come
from other people.  Every person is born of a mother, so logic dictated
he must have one somewhere.  But who this woman was, or what she looked
like, he could no longer recall.
    You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was very formal in his
mind.  He'd never phrase his though "don't remember," but rather "could
no longer recall."  While he was walking he had very formal
conversations with the company he kept in his mind.
    He walked every where, drifting aimlessly up and down rivers, along
mountain highways, from town to town.  He mostly visited towns at night,
when he could.  His eyes were very good in the dark.  He would walk
along the quiet streets, picking things up and putting them down.  It
was a good time to catch up on yesterday's newspaper by street lamp.  He
picked up ideas and left them behind as easily as he did cigarette butts
and food wrappers.  He liked the still company of town streets at night,
knowing that families were companionably sleeping in near by houses.  He
liked people, but found he somehow made them nervous.  So he'd visit,
and leave a little something behind.  Some of the housewives knew his
kind were around, especially those who lived near railroad tracks.  The
kind hearted ones would leave a little food on the back steps.  A loaf
of bread, or some cans of tuna fish.  He'd leave some lines of poetry,
or a quote from the newspaper, chalked into the paint of the back door. 
By the time they were up in the morning, and read what he wrote, he'd be
long gone.
    As the years went by there was less and less that he could recall of
his early life; who he was, or where he'd come from.  His education, for
example.  Logic told him that he must have gone to school somewhere.  He
knew how to read and write.  He knew about poetry, and would sometimes
recite to himself; Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Robert Frost.  But where
he had learned the works of these poets, and others, he could no longer
recall.  He assumed that he'd either been formally educated, or he'd
picked up the words of these poets somewhere on the road.  The poetry
was a comfort to him during long stretches when he didn't see another
face. The books, which contained those words, well after he'd committed
them to memory he must have left behind, for someone else to enjoy.  He
was always picking things up and leaving them behind.  Maybe he'd left
the pages behind with some housewife who'd put out particularly good
food.  Just now, he couldn't recall.
    He knew he was different from the other men of his kind whom he
sometimes met along the road.  Their minds didn't seem so logical, or so
formally trained, and he found it hard to talk with them.  So he mostly
avoided the settlements of drifters which seemed to spring up near
railroad stock yards.  And he avoided cities, unless the weather was
particularly bad, for the same reason.  Although they were good places
to pick things up.
    He was going to have to pick up another pair of boots.  He sometimes
thought about how odd it was that he'd walked out of that old pair. 
They seemed to fit well, whether with two pair of socks, or no socks at
all.  Worn in enough, and in the right places, they hadn't made blisters
on his feet the way some old boots did.  The soles had been worn enough
that he could feel the texture of the ground beneath him, and yet hadn't
worked through to holes yet.  He'd made something of a study of found
foot wear.  It would be hard to find another pair of boots that suited
him so well.  It was a good thing he'd picked up a pair of sneakers
somewhere.
    As he walked he set his mind to unraveling where and when those
boots might have left his feet.  Maybe... Maybe it was on that bit of
winding road which looked out over the Hudson River.  He'd walked that road before.  It was a highly busy road during the day, with sudden,
unexpected spectacularly views of the river valley.  But at night, late,
late at night, it could be quiet and sublime.  The recent night when he
had drifted up that road, the moon was full and the stars were
multitudinous.  He just stood there, leaning up against the rock face on
the inside edge of the road, and stared up at the stars and out at the
dark expanse of the Hudson River.  He couldn't recall how long he stood that way.  But he had a vague recollection of his feet feeling hot in
those old boots.  So he stepped out of them, and took his socks off. 
The soles of his bare feet enjoyed the sensation of the warm sand and
rocks cooling in the late summer night air.  It felt so fine.  He didn't
always take the time to appreciate such things.  Thinking back, he could
now well recall how,  for a time that night, the logical chatter in his
mind became still.  He was lost in the wonder of the feeling of his feet
in the sand, the river before him, and the multitudinous stars
stretching on above.  The clear light of the full moon reflected
brilliantly off the stone wall across the road, and, farther away, off
the river's rippling water.
    Then, with startling speed, the stark beams of car headlights came
seeking him out around the edge of the road.  He was brought back to
himself and to his need to move on.  He must have left his boots behind
in the warm curve of that rock face.   He really could not recall. The
rest of the night was lost in the pure beauty of that short moment.  He
was not really concerned.  He would surely find another pair.

**************************************************************

Pamela Goddard is a many talented artist, writer, and musician who lives in Ithaca, NY. You can find her web site at www.pamgoddard.com.

*************************************************

Thank you for logging on. And don't forget to check the archives for things you may have missed. If you are interested in submitting material please read the requirements in the box above.

Sidney Grayling, editor

                                                                                                                 

Tags: Pamela Goddard, Onager Editions,

A SWALLOW

by Simon Lapington

A swallow stalls, loops from me, swims
up the light but hits glass; scratches
on a thin transparency of existence,
urgent, I pluck it off. The barn is cool,

high, beams aloft streaked in a luminous
shit, nests in joints of dried oak
on stone their dry dusts descending. I
hold it, a stilled mote - dun breast band,

twin tail spines, white flange of a beak's
rim gaping, thrusting burdening the shell
of my fist; hopeless. Helpless I cast it
out, a joy, a whole pulse into clean air

****************************************************
Simon Lapington is a major contemporary English poet. When this poem was written he was living in a stone cottage in Wales. This work was taken from the book Steve Poleskie, Artflyer published in 1989 by the John Hansard Gallery of the University of Southampton, England, on the occasion of an exhibition of Poleskie's artworks at that museum. The book, which also contains texts by Stephen Foster and Alison Lurie, was printed in a limited edition of 500. Lapington's poem also appears in his collection Legend of True Labor published by Secker and Warburg in 1987.
*******************************************
Thank you for logging on, please check back again. If you have something you would like to submit for publication you can e-mail it to me, Sidney Grayling, editor at OnagerEditions@aol.com. You can read the requirements in the sidebar on your right.

Tags: Simon Lapington, Steve Poleskie, The John Hansard Gallery, English poets, Stephen Foster, Alison Lurie

WEDGWOOD

Author and artist Steve Poleskie writes about the creation of his print "Wedgwood" one of four images which will be shown in the show Emotion -- Black & White and Color, 15 Photographers, at the Terrain Gallery, 141 Greene Street, New York, New York, from March 24, through July. Two other prints in the show, and mentioned in the article, "Grater Light" and "Cherry Stalks" are also reproduced below. Other photographers included are: Dale Laurin, John Reddy, David Bernstein, Louis Dienes, Len Bernstein, Allan Michael, Vincent DiPietro, Wayne Mumford, Amy Dienes, Dan McCling, Harvey Spears, Perry Hall, Doug Cox, and Mary Fagan

Wedgwood, digital photograph, 2005

IN MY PHOTOGRAPH “WEDGWOOD” the light, rather than the subject, was the first consideration. Up until then I had been photographing my still lifes in the late afternoon, when the sun slanted very low and the shadows were long, and mysterious. Of course as the season changed from summer to fall this time became shorter and shorter. In the winter I found the light too cold for my purpose so did not photograph objects at all. Also, using only natural light in a rather cloudy place like Ithaca severely limited the number of days I could work. I found that I was unconsciously dealing with the technical problem of light and dark that Eli Siegel referred to in the thirteenth question of his essay, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?, “Does all art present the world as visible, luminous, going forth? –- does art, too present the world as dark, hidden, having a meaning which seems to go beyond ordinary perception? -- and is the technical problem of light and dark in painting related to the reality question of the luminous and hidden?” 

 

Rummaging in my garage one bright, summer morning for some gardening tools, I became fascinated by the sun shinning on an old work table leaning in a corner. Why had I not seen this light before? I had lived here for thirty-nine years. The sun’s rays, passing through the glass so old that it had a wavy pattern, were warm and gentle, the “opposite” of the harsh gold light of the late afternoon I had been using. I cleared the table of its boxes of rusty nails and empty oil cans and ran to the house for some objects that were more . . . what? More colorful? More picturesque? More artful? My hands full of stuff, I shouted to my wife to, “Help me bring some things to the garage!” “What do you want?” she asked. “Whatever,” I replied.

 

Sometimes I will carefully place the objects I use in my still lifes. Other times, as in the photos “Cherry Stalks” and “Grater Light,” (below) I just photograph them where they have been left behind, on the table or kitchen sink, by either Jeanne or me. That day we worked the rest of the morning, using my new found light source in the garage, placing and replacing things, pots, fruit, flowers, in various relationships, until a tree threw its shadow across the window and the table went dark.

 

I took thirty-three photographs that morning. The files were later downloaded to my computer, where I looked at them off and on over the next few weeks. Thirty photos from that shoot were eventually deleted. Of the three pictures, I kept only one has been printed. The photo is seen exactly the way it was taken. I do not use PhotoShop to alter these images in any way. The title “Wedgwood” while perhaps having a suggestive connotation was chosen for identification purposes only. If you look closely you can see a small Wedgwood vase among the collection of objects. And while I have presented the origin of this work as coming chiefly from an activity, a response to a situation, then a spontaneous selection and placement of objects in that situation, did I perhaps intend more than that?  As Eli Siegel asks, “Does every work of art show the kinship to be found in objects and all realities? –- and at the same time the subtle and tremendous difference, the drama of otherness, that one can find among the things of the world?”

 

 

 

Grater Light, digital photograph, 2005

 

 

Cherry Stalks, digital photograph, 2006

 

Steve Poleskie, Ithaca, NY, 10 March 2007

 

**************************************************************

You can find out more about the Terrain Gallery by clicking on their entry in the sidebar on your left.

 

*****************************************

A short story by Steve Poleskie entitled  Fragile Things appears in the latest issue of SN Review. You can read this by going to the magazine's listing in the sidebar on your left. When the website comes up click on "Winter 2007." It is a rather sad story, but we hope you enjoy it. Steve's wife, Jeanne Mackin, also has a essay in the same issue.

*****************************

Thank you for logging on. Please try us again. And click on the archives icon above for previous posts you may have missed, as only the ten latest items are ever up at one time. You can find a biography of Steve Poleskie by clicking on the Wikipedia listing in the sidebar.

Sidney Grayling, editor OE

 

**********************************************

 

Stephen (Steve) Poleskie's novel THE BALLOONIST, the story of  Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, will be available from Frederic C. Beil, Publishers in March of 2007 You can find additional information about this book posted in previous entries of this blog and in the blog archives, and also on the publisher's web site www.beil.com.

 

Tags: Steve Poleskie, Terrain Gallery, Eli Siegel, digital photography, Onager Editions

Mardi Gras Greetings

Roald Hoffmann at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, 2004

HERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH of our friend Roald Hoffmann, poet, and Nobel Prize chemist dressed as Santos-Dumont for the 2004 carnival in Rio. You might ask: Who was Santos-Dumont? Here in the U. S. A. the Wright Brothers are considered to be the first persons to have successfully flown a heavier than air flying machine. However, in many other parts of the world this honor is attributed to the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont. This is a controversial subject about which we have included some information below. Santos-Dumont's success with dirigbles may have inspired the American balloonist T. S. C. Lowe to return to what would become his final project, his "planet airship," a design for an ocean crossing balloon. He had been working on this idea when the Civil War interrupted his plans, causing him, at the request of President Lincoln, to devote his time to organizing a balloon corps for the Union Army. You can find out more about T. S. C. Lowe from some of the other entries to this blog, including excerpts from the biographical novel Steve Poleskie has written on the balloonist, and a review of the book The Balloonist in the blog entry below this one.

************************************* 

Alberto Santos-Dumont (July 20, 1873 - July 23, 1932) was an important early pioneer of aviation. Although he was born, grew up, and died in Brazil, his contributions to aviation were made while he was living in France.

Santos-Dumont described himself as the first "sportsman of the air." He designed, built, and flew a variety of balloons before developing the first practical dirigible balloons (i.e. airships.). In addition, he made the first fully public flight of an airplane, in Paris in October of 1906. That aircraft, designated 14 Bis or Oiseau de proie (French for "bird of prey"), is considered by many to be the first to take off, fly, and land without the use of catapults, high winds, or other external assistance. In comparison, Wright brothers did not make any public flights until 1908 with an improved Flyer presenting a considerably higher power-to-weight ratio. Thus, most Brazilians, as well as many others around the world, consider him to be the "Father of Aviation" as well as the inventor of the airplane.

Santos-Dumont Number 14 Later the balloon envelope was removed and the aircraft renamed the 14bis meaning "14 again".

The above material on Santos-Dumont came from the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia, a very useful site that can be accessed at www.wikipedia.org.

*******************

And what does Roald Hoffmann do when he's not dressing up as Santos-Dumont for a carnival parade in Brazil? Not only a recognized poet, Hoffmann is also the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University. In addition to sharing the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kenichi Fukui, he has been honored by the American Chemical Society with the Priestly Medal, the Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, and the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry. Professor Hoffmann has also hosted a twenty-six-segment television documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service entitled The World of Chemistry. Additional information on Roald Hoffmann, and some of his poetry, can be found on his web site, www.roaldhoffmann.com.

*********************************************************************

Thank you for logging on. Please check back again. If you have a short piece you would like to submit for publication you can send it in the body of an e-mail, or as a Word attachment to OnagerEditions@aol.com.

Sidney Grayling, editor

 

Tags: Roald Hoffmann, Steve Poleskie, Santos-Dumont, T. S. C. Lowe, early aviation, ballooning,

A Book Review - THE BALLOONIST

Here is a review of THE BALLOONIST as it appeared in the December 15, 2006 issue of BOOKLIST, the magazine published by the American Library Association.

 

 

Poleskie, Stephen. The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe – Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force.

Dec. 2006. 368p. Frederic C. Beil, $24.95 (1-929490-27-5).973.7.

 

            This first full-scale biography of Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) makes fascinating reading for aviation buffs and students of nineteenth-century eccentricity. Lowe is best known for organizing the Civil War Army of the Potomac’s Balloon Corps, though it was disbanded because of losing high-ranking support, bureaucratic infighting, and, to some extent, the technological immaturity of balloons. Lowe was a stage magician before the war and after it worked seriously in such fields as mountain railroading and the extraction of hydrogen from water. His career suggests a failed Thomas Edison. Endlessly fertile in his invention, he lacked an organization to support the development of his ideas and winnow the viable ones from the rest. He never abandoned balloons, however, and left a definite legacy to fixed-wing aviation in the person of his granddaughter, aviatrix Pancho Barnes (1901-75, subject of Lauren Kessler’s biography The Happy Bottom Riding Club. 2000). Aviation and history collections may acquire this seemingly tangential book with clear consciences.  – Roland Green

 

 

Copyright 2006, the American Library Association. This document may be reprinted and distributed for non-commercial and educational purposes only, and not for resale.

 

 

********************************************

Thank you for logging on. Please check back again. And ask for THE BALLOONIST at your favorite bookstore or online. You can read an excerpt from this novel in the entry below. The review of Paul West's recently published poetry book has just been moved to the archieves, look for it there.       

           

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, T. S. C. Lowe, Pancho Barnes, The Balloonist, The U. S. Civil War, The Army of the Potomac, book reviews,