We could all use some
The center says that Deborah Dancy's multimedia artwork walks between abstract and figurative work. “Her paintings, photos and drawings capture everyday moments through a unique lens.”
She explains in her Web site:
"My work is an investigation of abstraction’s capacity to engage beauty and tension without justification or narrative. In my paintings and works on paper, I do not specify references; meaning is organic since images mingle, shift, and position themselves within a field of agitated or flat color. Within these works, inspiration springs from diverse sources sponsored, in part, from the views of gnarled and jagged trees and bark from the woodlands surrounding my home, discarded shards of construction debris, and constant encounters with the internal and external world. In this odd combination of elements, the initial mark prompts the starting point. Hesitation and agitation of brush strokes within the gesture reveals content. Incompleteness- the unfinished fragment of what - ‘almost was’ and ‘might become’ amplifies meaning. In this orbit, painting explores what I consider as embracing the unpredictable and accidental. Accepting this means I suspend assumptions and allow discoveries to emerge. This edge of conflict and sequence of processes, including scraping and repainting, fresh forms, and constructed imagery, becomes the elemental act of painting.’’
Trapped in a cycle
“Water runs up the beach,
then wheels and slides
back down, leaving a ridge
Of sea-foam, weed, and shells….
One thinks: I must
break out of this
cycle of life and death….’’
-- From “The Sea Grinds Things Up,’’ by Alan Dugan (1923-2003)
Timeless sky
“I passed by the fence
and looked up,
and whatever happens
happened to make that sky
seem timeless,
awash with well-being….’’
— From “A Green Evening, September, 1952,’’ by Brendan Galvin (born in 1938), American poet. He was born in Everett, Mass., and now lives in Truro, Mass., on Cape Cod.
Lonely in the universe
….this is just one sea
on one beach on one
planet in one
solar system in one
galaxy. After that
the scale increases, so
this not the last word,
and nothing else is talking back.
It’s a lonely situation.’’
— From The Sea Grinds Things Up,’’ by Alan Dugan (1923-2003), a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. He lived in Truro, on Outer Cape Cod. The town, as with Provincetown, just to the north, has long drawn artists of various kinds, along with other exotic tribes, such as New York City psychoanalysts.
'Season demands endings'
"Always the damage is irreparable.
Here the wind is right for suicide,
blowing up from Sagamore and down into Truro;
there the dead girls lie pale by scandal.
The highway curls over the Bourne Bridge, but a widow
has jumped this morning: the season demands endings
here and they come in fashion, dark as
the New York Buicks.''
-- From "Cape Cod Murders, 1968,'' by Mira Fish
--
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Restoring the ecology of the Herring River estuary
A $700,000 Massachusetts state grant was recently awarded to help advance the restoration of the Herring River estuary in Wellfleet and Truro, one of the largest ecology-restoration projects in the Northeast. The grant leverages a total of $985,034 in funding for the project in fiscal years 2017 and 2018 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Restoration Center.
Spanning some 1,000 acres across the Cape Cod National Seashore, the Herring River estuary hosts one of the largest river and wetland systems on Cape Cod. In 1909, a dike was built across the river’s mouth, severing its connection to Wellfleet Harbor and the life-giving tides of the Atlantic Ocean. Without that connection, the salt marshes decayed, the river turned acidic, shellfish beds were contaminated by bacteria, and multiple fish kills resulted from low dissolved oxygen. The loss of tidal flow transformed this once-thriving and productive coastal ecosystem into the highly degraded landscape found there today.
The towns of Wellfleet and Truro are working with the National Park Service, the Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration (DER) and other partners to revive the health of the Herring River and its wetlands. The project will rebuild the main dike at the river’s mouth and make other improvements across the estuary, allowing carefully controlled restoration of tidal flow to the ecosystem while protecting low-lying roads and other structures from flooding.
Reconnecting the estuary to the ocean will improve water quality, increase habitat productivity for fisheries and other wildlife, restore large areas of shellfish beds, and enhance boating, fishing, and other commercial and recreational opportunities, according to state officials.
“We look forward to the day when a restored Herring River estuary provides much-improved habitat for waterfowl, shorebirds, river herring, white perch, and other fish and wildlife,” Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Ron Amidon said. “The project will also greatly enhance people’s access to the natural environment by improving opportunities for shellfish harvest, fishing, boating, and other outdoor recreation.”
The DER grant will also support engineering design and permitting to prepare the project for construction. The project is being managed by Friends of Herring River, a nonprofit organization based in Wellfleet.